00:00

Patrick:

Welcome to the Mining Your Business Podcast, a show all about process mining, data science, and advanced business analytics. With me, as always, my colleague, Jakub, how are you man?

00:07

Jakub:

Hello, Patrick.

00:17

Patrick:

You know, it has become impossible to ignore the fact that we have not had a single woman guest on our show, as has been pointed out to us, by even my own mother. Today is the day that this trend ends. As Christine Hunter, VP of Marketing at Celonis and Gabriela Galic, manager at Deloitte, are joining us today to talk about the Women in Process Mining Initiative and its importance in empowering women in tech all around the world, Let's do it.

00:32

Jakub:

Before we dive into the episode, we have a special announcement from our guest here, Christine, about women in process mining. So, Christine, go ahead.

00:51

Christine Hunter:

Thank you so much. We're really excited to be here and extend a special offer or an invite to the listeners of the podcast. We are going to be hosting our next Women in Process Mining Virtual Meetup on August 19th at 11 AM Eastern Time or 5 PM CET. And during that meetup, we are going to be hearing from two powerful women in the field as they share their experiences on making the case for process mining within their organization. So we invite you to register for this meetup. You can do that through the women in Process Mining LinkedIn group or you can also do that through a link that will be posted in the show notes of this podcast episode. We hope to see you there.

01:37

Jakub:

Thank you very much. And now let's get into it. It took us precisely 41 episodes to get a female perspective on the podcast. Not that there weren't talented women out there, although in Processand the pool of talent among our female colleagues is huge. But unfortunately, we've encountered some resistance when invited. Today this will finally and luckily change. We will have not one but two smart and influential women on our process mining show who are creating something very specific for the women community and to empower women to actually go into the process mining field and develop themselves, which is very interesting and therefore, I would like to welcome to our show Gabriela Galic, a manager at Deloitte, with a strong focus on process mining And Christine Hunter, vice president of field marketing in North America for Celonis. Gabriela, Christine, welcome to our show.

02:35

Christine Hunter:

Thank you so much, glad to be here.

02:37

Gabriela Galic:

Thank you so much, thanks for having us.

02:39

Jakub:

So, Gabriela, Christine, you have basically joined forces to build up a community by women for women. The initiative is called Women in Process Mining, and we will surely get into that in a moment. But before we do, let's take a little step back and look also at your careers and how you ended up where you are right now. And therefore, I would say, let's start with Gabriela. Gabriela, I'm going to I'm going to bring up something here on you because I'm following you on LinkedIn and recently I saw there this post about an air fryer and process mining.

03:14

Gabriela Galic:

I love that.

03:15

Jakub:

You must have seen this coming back to you at some point in some way. And here it is publicly and in everyone's ears. The question is how or in what way is an air fryer connected to process mining?

03:33

Gabriela Galic:

That's a really good question. And I hope you need to tell me afterwards if you also have an air fryer. If not, I will definitely recommend to have one and I tried it out and I just love this gadget. That's a funny story. So basically how an air fryer can be connected to process mining is very easy because every transaction we do as a consumer, for example, ordering something online, this is getting captured in the source system with a data basis from companies right? And if you place an order, this order gets processed, somebody needs to get this product from the warehouse or the retailer needs to order this product from the manufacturer. These are all processes, right? Order processes. And that's why you can connect an order or ordering an air fryer or to process mining very easily because it's a process how to get your air fryer home. And then of course, you have some I would say pitfalls or inefficiencies in a process. What happened also to me, what I explained on LinkedIn, basically I had an expected delivery date when I ordered the air fryer, and they said, yeah, they will deliver it in five days but then it turnout out that the air fryer wasn't on stock at all. So I still paid it and I waited for it almost two weeks and nothing happened. And when I called the customer service they said, yeah well, it's out of stock. And then I realized like, ok, how is it even possible to order a product or an air fryer online if it's out of stock? And these questions we also answer in our jobs or generally process mining, but with big customers. Basically how does your ordering process look like? How does your supply chain look like? Why didn't you order on time? Where do you have the longest throughput times, etc. etc. And that's why and how an air fryer purchase can be connected to process mining.

05:41

Jakub:

What a great introduction to our process mining episode. To go also into your career. So very interesting and also very entertaining companies which already you worked with, you know, starting in Celonis as data scientist. And for our listeners, there is also a little circle in this, as Gabriel, if I recall correctly, also worked with the founders of our company with Andreas Klötzel and Thomas Kerschbaumer. So very interesting history there. And you basically worked yourself up also to now that you are in consulting in Deloitte and everything. And my question actually is whether since you are now based also in New York, whether the dreams really do come through in New York?

06:25

Gabriela Galic:

I mean, for me, yes, personally. So maybe when I quickly start what I did in the last year, so I started with process mining in 2016. Exactly. So my first company I work for was Celonis, where I started my process mining journey, but before that I also had process mining in university. So we had it as a course where I learned a lot about process mining and we used disco back then, which is very common in the research field. And then yeah, I kind of fell in love with process mining, the technology and what you can do with it. And afterwards I worked for BMW and I did a lot in business intelligence and I was a scrum master there for business intelligence project for the accounts payable process. But then I quickly realized doing business intelligence that I missed doing process mining because it's special and different and that's why I joined Deloitte in 2018 in Munich back then. And yeah, since then I'm here and what I do at Deloitte is basically I'm a project manager for process mining projects, so we help our clients to work with process mining software tools, we help them analyze their processes, optimize their processes and identify value for process opportunities and efficiencies. Yeah. And as you said, exactly last year, September, I moved to, I had the opportunity to move to New York City with the Deloitte, which was always a dream of mine. I also studied in the US in my bachelors. I have a lot of friends here in the US if I'm honest with you and yeah, I was just curious working here and being kind of somewhere where the process mining market kind of just started or is younger than in Europe and it's just nice to be in a team where everything's kind of starting to develop within the market. And that's why I can say maybe dreams come true. Yes, exactly. Because I'm very proud that I could have this opportunity.

08:42

Patrick:

What would you say is the most startling thing when looking back at your long and tenured experience with process mining? From the very beginning in 2016 to now, what has been the most startling thing that you have seen developing in the space?

08:58

Gabriela Galic:

Process mining back then, especially in this company I work for, nobody knew what process mining is, right? And it was a very new technology and still is and I was doing kind of a proof of concept where we need to explain to customers what process mining is, what they can do. And we went there and analyzed the process within two weeks and then hope that we hope that we get the project again and work with them together and they will apply process mining and it's just great to see how companies are adopting process mining or how companies have adopted process mining in the last couple of years and they are integrating process mining in their organization. They have built dedicated teams who only do process mining. And I think this is kind of a great thing to see and this is something what also inspires me and for the future where I'm saying this is so great what I saw in the last six years and I think the way forward is much bigger and there's so much to come.

10:10

Jakub:

Very interesting. I'm very happy that we don't have to do the approval value anymore that we just choose the number so that I in control. It's like, look how much these customers saved. Let's do it. No questions asked. So that definitely improved and that actually brings me to our other guest, to you, Christine, because you are actually coming up with these numbers and then, you know, sending it out to the world and making our job, our consulting job an implementation job much easier because you create the awareness. And therefore, if you could also tell us a little more about your journey and how you ended up in a process mining world, which in a market thing is also probably a bit obscure thing where to end up in the first place.

10:54

Christine Hunter:

Yes, it is. I started my career working for, I've always been in the technology space and it's primarily been technology for manufacturers, which obviously has a really heavy emphasis on processes. But in the last company that I worked with in I think it was in the last probably year and a half or so while I was there, I was introduced to another company that had process mining capabilities and that company, the two companies were forming a partnership together and they were looking at applying process mining in the context of system transformation and moving from On-prem to the cloud and really being able to evaluate the processes along that way. So I was part of the team that was bringing that partnership, the announcement of the partnership to life, and that's how I first learned about that process mining and then not long after that, again, probably about a year maybe later, I was approached by Celonis to consider a marketing position here. And so I continued the journey with process mining. So obviously knew the technology, was familiar with the company because I had a former colleague that had come to work for the company as well. So and I thought and as a marketer, one of the things that was really interesting for me was to be marketing a new technology, something that's in a new category that's being established and I had previously worked for it in the ERP space, which is obviously a very established technology category. So when you're marketing, you're marketing a little bit differently. People know the software, they're picking the vendor. And in the world of process mining, especially in the US, we're still educating people on what process mining is. So there's a heavy focus on education and then obviously positioning, you know, solutions to the problems that they have as well.

13:04

Patrick:

Now I have to say I am new to marketing. I don't really know much about it. And you're also the first marketing person that we've had on this show. So I must ask you, what does a VP of marketing actually do? What's the day to day look like?

13:16

Christine Hunter:

This is probably the question that I get from friends and family too, like please explain to me exactly because I have friends that are in education and you've been through it yourself, so you have a frame of reference. So a VP of marketing could look different at different companies. But in my role, we really look at the market that we're serving and we team up with the sales team to understand how we're going to grow the business together. So what segments of the market are we going to go after? What's our ideal customer profile and then from there, we look at ways that we can get in touch with the ideal customer to generate new leads. So my team together with me, we look at all of these sales goals and put together our marketing plan and our marketing calendar, and that could be a lot of different touch points. If we're in the retail space, what are the key industry events that we need to be at? What are the online magazines that retailers are reading so that we can advertise or promote our content in there? How can we continue to nurture the conversation with clients that maybe come to our website and start to do learning? How do we continue the journey with them and maybe send them emails on a regular basis so they're continuing to get educated or invite them to a webinar or other. You know, we may send them something in the mail. So any sort of way that we can basically get in touch with them to generate new leads and then progress them forward to opportunities and close business. Obviously the sales team is involved in at that stage and that's where we partner very closely together.

15:03

Patrick:

In the sea of BI tools. Is it different to market process mining as significantly different than your average BI tool?

15:13

Christine Hunter:

I think it is and I think some people when you're learning something that's new you always I find that you look for something that's similar just so you could anchor your mind in what it could be. So if people do that for process mining, I could see where they make the connection. But it's so much more than that. It has so much more depth than I think one of the big differences is that the real time nature, a lot of BI you're looking at the past or looking at the current state, but with process mining, you're really able to also envision what the future would be like and, and take action within the technology, which I think really sets it apart from other things that could be in a similar space.

16:03

Jakub:

Now, there has been one specific ad from Celonis that is just running through my mind every time I think about marketing of process mining, and that was this huge campaign on there is 100 million dollars trapped in your business. Did you have anything to do with this ad?

16:24

Christine Hunter:

I will say it was our amazing corporate marketing team here that put that together. So my role in it was more supporting and making sure that, you know, since I work so closely with the sellers in the field that that they're leveraging that and using it to send out to their clients and prospects and make them aware. But we've had that we've had some other brand campaigns as well that have been fun to do in the local markets in the US and as you said, they help to raise awareness of who the company is, but really ultimately what process mining is about.

17:05

Jakub:

Well, I would say job well done. I saw it many, many times. It just kept popping on my algorithm on LinkedIn.

17:11

Patrick:

Yeah, it lives in his head rent free.

17:12

Christine Hunter:

I'll pass along the things to our team that put that together, they did a great job.

17:21

Jakub:

Now to moving on to actually our core focus topic of today's episode, which is women in process mining. So probably the first question would be how did you guys even meet? At what point? Because I guess that precedes all of this initiative that you co-created then.

17:39

Christine Hunter:

Yes, I could start Gaby, if that's ok.

17:42

Gabriela Galic:

Yeah, sure. Go ahead.

17:43

Christine Hunter:

So I think it was the fall of last year. I had one of the sellers within the company had pinged me a link to a women in RPA community, actually. And I don't recall if he asked, do we? I can't even remember why he pinged it to me, but he did. And when I saw that, I thought, oh, I wonder if there's a women in process mining community out there. And so I started to look and I didn't find anything and I thought, why isn't there, you know, I had at that point probably been through two of our big company flagship events and I had heard women speakers. And so I'm like, I know obviously that there are women in this field and they would love to gather together. So I pinged a few women internally within the company that I knew had been, you know, champions and advocates for women and asked them if they would you know, get involved in a project like this. And as I did that, I connected with a woman named Vivian who leads our or is the chair of our internal women and allies community at the company. And she said, oh, you should meet this woman Gabby. And so I quickly looked on LinkedIn and I saw that in her LinkedIn, I think it's bio or description. It had women in process mining, and I thought, I have to meet, I have to meet her. And so I reached out and and very quickly, we got a chance to connect, I think it was maybe in December of last year and then on into January. And we both shared what our vision was for bringing together a community. And we both had a little bit of a different angle, same kind of core thing that we wanted out of the community, but different ways of getting there. And I'll let Gabby talk about that. But we said, hey, why not do this together? That's part of the spirit of bringing a community like this together. So that's how we got connected or kind of the onset of the idea from my side.

20:00

Gabriela Galic:

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it was similar from my side because last for me, it was November, December when I realized that we have so many initiatives out there, right? They're women in tech. We have woman in AI, we have women in data science, woman in BI I think as well. So there's so many initiatives out there and then it's currently kind of also a situation that women are still kind of underrepresented in the entire tech world. And I think I've done latest numbers are correct. I think only 27% of all tech related jobs are held by women. Right. So that's when I realized I think I want to do something. I want to change something. I want to support all the woman in the space of process mining. So this was kind of a little bit of the motivation behind. And then what I did exactly what Christine just explained, I yeah, just put woman in process mining in my LinkedIn profile and then a couple of weeks later, she texted me and that's how we connected, which I'm really glad about. So that's why you see, you always need to put something on LinkedIn, because you never know who you are going to meet, what possibilities you have or yeah, who are you going to meet? So it's a great tool. I'm not doing advertising for LinkedIn. I'm glad that I did it. Exactly. Otherwise we wouldn't be sitting here today.

21:29

Jakub:

We already know you are doing advertising for air fryers, haha.

21:37

Patrick:

Could you describe the women of process mining, like when you talked about that you aligned your goals and things like can you describe in short kind of what the goals are of women in process mining? What should people be thinking of when they hear this initiative?

21:51

Gabriela Galic:

Yeah, sure. So basically what we want to do with process mining, first of all, our vision is kind of to create and that's the biggest and largest community for women in process mining worldwide and our mission is kind of to connect all leaders, female leaders in work, study and research in the field of process mining or just interested and to learn more about process mining. And yeah, we want to connect these women worldwide to build up a network so that they can learn from each other and yeah, shape the future together. Christine, do you have anything to add?

22:32

Christine Hunter:

I think it's really about bringing their voices. There are so many women that even outside of process mining are at the forefront of transformation. Whether that's in the tech field or, you know, in other fields. I mean, the first computer programmer was a woman, In the US, there's a there is a movie I was telling Gaby about it called Hidden Figures. And there's so many women that were at the forefront of getting, you know, taking astronauts to the moon. And so women are present and are part of these transformational things that are happening in our society and in our businesses. And so that was again, a lot of the motivation is we know they're there. How do we elevate them and really magnify their influence? And we thought about doing that in a couple of different ways. When I had thought about it it, really coming probably from my marketing background, thought we should do a regular event series where we bring these women together and they share and we kind of have panel discussions or in-person roundtables and have that on a regular basis. And when Gabby and I talked, she also had a dimension that she was thinking about connecting mentors and mentees. So people that were earlier in their career in process mining, being able to connect them with someone who has gone down the road a little bit before. So as we've met with different women, as we've introduced that community, we found that there's so many different ideas that women have around what how this community can serve them. Either again, through events, through mentoring, it could even go through scholarships in, you know, in a future state. So we really think that there's a lot of opportunity within the community to connect with women in the field.

24:25

Jakub:

And so speaking of the current state, how does it really run? What are the initiatives that you're running that, you know, fall under the umbrella of this women of process mining brand?

24:39

Christine Hunter:

Yes, so we started out, I'd say, as an online community via LinkedIn, back to Gabby's, you never know what can happen on LinkedIn. So we have started and that's where of course, you can find us. So and people can follow kind of the page and request to join the LinkedIn community. And then through that, we hold regular both virtual gatherings as well as in-person gatherings as well. So we've had women across again, a lot of different fields where they're coming and we actually have a next event coming up on the 19th of August. And in that in that form, we're going to have two women that are speaking about making the case for process mining and how they actually introduced it within their organization and the steps that they took to bring it on board and kind of continue the transformation. So Gabby, you want to talk maybe about the website and mentor mentee?

25:44

Gabriela Galic:

Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. So LinkedIn is kind of the one thing where we shape our community and it's kind of to go to if you want to contact us. On the other hand we also have just launched a website where you can learn more about our initiatives and all our founder team as well, because it's not just me and Christine, there are more women on the team. And yeah, so and then on the website, you can also apply becoming a mentor or mentee. So with the website, we also launched a mentorship program where we want to offer all the women in process mining a mentorship where they can hopefully learn a lot from each other and just shape their future or their work together in future. Exactly.

26:38

Patrick:

Can I go back to the meet ups because I think this is really interesting when you organize a community meet up. All the things that go into the planning and everything that goes in before then. Was this the first time that you did something like this? And if not, how did it go generally? What was the response like?

26:59

Christine Hunter:

I'll say that Celonis had previously done a couple of women in transformation type of panel discussions or webinars. So we had that and one of our founding team members is named Deena, and she had created a lot of that content, you know, kind of over the last couple of years. And so again, this was women in process mining was kind of another step in terms of you know, kind of bringing women voices. So we were able to, again, through our founding team, identify women and just put out the ask and say, would you be willing to come in the virtual format? It's really more like a panel discussion. And so that was one of the founding team members Julie. She's reached out to a couple of her contacts and said, you know, this is the topic. Would you be willing to speak? And what I love about our format is that it is what we call closed doors. So it's actually not reported. And that's intentional because we want people to be able to feel that they can speak openly about their challenges and their learnings and use that so that they can help others kind of take, you know, take those learnings and kind of take better next steps as they move forward within their organization. So that's how we do the, you know, the virtual events, being able to identify women that are speaking and then that's promoted through the LinkedIn group and then promoted through our networks as well. And we've had a really positive response we have, I think, almost 300 women now in the LinkedIn community. And so it is certainly growing on a weekly basis. We're seeing new women that are being appointed to it. And then on the in-person events side, we had the opportunity to do that alongside Celonis World Tour recently, and Gabby got to participate in that as well. And that was again, another really unique format in that, you know, as part of the agenda, but there was no presentation. It was us breaking up into different groups, about six different groups, and the topic there was gaining the seats at the table in digital transformation and so we had different table topics and a moderator, not really a moderator, but maybe a host, a table host that facilitated the discussion and we spent about 20 minutes each table chatting and then we took about 10 minutes at the end to hear from each group so that we were able to learn from each other because each table had a different question. And so we all got to learn a little bit different about kind of how were women keeping up with digital transformation, what do women have that gives them a little bit of a different edge in the workplace? So what superpowers do women have that we should really celebrate and, and make sure that those are known? And, you know, what are some of the ingredients for success in digital transformation? So we're able to really tackle some of those topics in the meetups.

30:13

Jakub:

Now saying this, you know, what would you pinpoint? And some of the problems that especially in tech and this this high tech environment, what kind of challenges and obstacles there are for the women to really flourish and establish themselves among men? As you know, we have so many great women in our team and I love working with them and they're doing great jobs. So at least in our company I have to say that we are quite equal in this. So this is great. But maybe also from your experience, where do you see that these issues are coming from? And how does your initiative actually help addressing them?

30:57

Christine Hunter:

I'll talk on one thing, and Gabby, you may have a different perspective, but I think representation, whether it's in gender or in kind of a racial sense, is so important because I think when you're younger you don't know what you don't know, right? So if you've never seen someone in that field who may just not think it's a path for you, and so you don't know how to take the next steps to get there. So I think seeing women in tech more and I think that's, again, part of the motivation behind this, you know, community is really to pave the future together. In the future, you have to have these generations of women that are coming up, you know, to build the future. And so I think without seeing or hearing from them, it makes it challenging because you think, can I do that? Is there space for me there? How do I get started? So that's what I see again. Could be in this space or in tech, you know, in general. So I think there's obviously been a huge movement of trying to advocate for women in tech through many STEM programs, you know, girls who code lots of opportunities to expose, you know, girls and women to these opportunities. And that's kind of the first step that could obviously then when you get in the work space, you know, there is kind of a different element to it. But I think that's one of the key factors. Gabby, what are your thoughts?

32:25

Gabriela Galic:

Yeah, I totally agree. And I want to add, I think it's very important to have kind of these role models, right? Because when you talk about what were the pitfalls? So I didn't have kind of a role model, a female tech role model when I was younger. When we look, for example, at big industry players like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, they're all men. And it's great, but what we want to do is kind of change the world that kind of younger girls, for example, have this role model or will have a role model maybe in process mining that they can see, ok, there is somebody I can look up to. She did it. I'm not afraid of doing process mining because it's a new technology or that I don't understand it or whatever. So I think this is very important. Having these role models and I think a different thing what we also need to close is definitely the pay gap because women are still not getting paid equally like men. I think in the tech industry the distance is a little bit smaller like in other industries, but still it's not the same. So they're all things which kind of motivates us or brings us to the point that we need a community or a network of women in process mining or general women in tech to change the current situation to a better one.

34:00

Patrick:

Now being part of the movement of paving the way and forging the way for future women in tech in general, do you feel some sort of, you know, pressure or responsibility towards this community? Like what are your feelings with this growing movement here?

34:17

Gabriela Galic:

Yes, as I personally do, it's kind of my little baby, right? Ben, you kind of and you build something up and you're, I would not say I'm a entrepreneur, I think that's too much, but still, making an impact kind of is just great. And during my career, in the last years, I always did something which had had a social impact. For me personally, this was also always very important and I always wanted to do something to help others or the community or the society. And that's why I definitely would say we have a responsibility because when people look up, for example, to this community, right, or they had hopes in getting answers or a connection or support. And I have the responsibility to fulfill these needs or these dreams and to make them kind of happy and to feel supported.

35:22

Christine Hunter:

I would agree. I think that also fuels the, you know, programing that we put together. It's as we've seen such a positive response to this community and so many people wanting to get involved, you really see that there is a need and the better that we're able to meet that need. I think it's enriching for us. It's very fulfilling. But then also, you know, for the women that are in the community.

35:46

Jakub:

Now having this community. Can you think back also in your own past and your own career where you think that you could greatly benefit from what you created as of now than you would be, let's say you're looking at Gabriela a couple of years back, you know, still finding her way in Celonis and like she would be, ok, this community can really help me in this. And what would be the moment?

36:15

Gabriela Galic:

So first of all, yes, also similar to other communities, I'm also part with where to say, oh, and that if I would have been younger, I think I would definitely join this community. Just first of all, to expand my network. Right. I would have loved, back the not that many people were doing Process Mining said was a little bit harder than now. So I think expanding a network and see kind of, ok, what else is out there and if you're, for example, in a very kind of man dominated industry or most of your clients are also men or the teams you work are most of the time men, it's just nice to have kind of someone you can speak to and talk about your things at your job or at your work where you would not ask your boss, for example, directly. I have some examples where I would have loved having kind of female mentor in my space around me, which I can call because as a woman and I cannot speak for everybody, but I had some situation which went not ok, where I said, ok, I think this needs to change, but I had nobody to talk to because my boss was a man and my other boss was a man too. And everybody had a different perspective. So definitely I would have benefited from that.

37:48

Christine Hunter:

I think the same thing for me, and I think what a community brings is it normalizes a lot of things that we go through a lot. A lot of times when we're just in our own, you know, thinking or in our own world, we may think, oh, we're the only one that's facing whatever challenge it is. But when you are part of a community and you kind of share, oh, I'm having this challenge at work or etc. then you quickly find that there are people that have gone through something that's similar. And so that just normalizing that these things happen, I think is already a really great help. And then also being able to find solutions together.

38:25

Patrick:

So you also mentioned this already the this mentorship program that you have for women in process mining. Is this part of kind of tackling that problem, you know, not knowing who to talk to, not knowing who to talk to about a specific topic that concerns women in particular? Is that part of what the mentorship is aimed to tackle?

38:43

Gabriela Galic:

Yes, exactly. So this could be one problem. And in general, the mentorship is there for you to, as Christine also said, how to deal with challenges or ask them specific questions you just don't know. Or you need to help with or just a little bit of guidance in your career. Because what we, for example, do, we ask the mentee particularly, what do you hope to get out of this mentorship? Right. So we're asking for their needs. What do you need? So it's very specific and personal, and it's not just a general mentorship. You can apply and that's it. No, you can come with the problem basically. And then we will hope to match your question or your situation to a mentor which has experience in that. Because we are also asking our mentors, what are your superpowers? Right? Tell me how a mentee would benefit from you. And that's how we we can tackle these problems and hopefully do the right match and help the mentee, but also the mentor. But I think the mentorship in general is kind of changing. We've been reading and listening a lot to kind of also reverse mentoring. So it's not only one sided, right? Kind of a mentor like supports a mentee, yes, this is kind of I think the first thing to support because somebody who is not that experienced needs that support and guidance. But on the other hand, I think it's very important or definitely sure that a mentor can also learn from the mentee because it could be that they are in different generations. Right. Which could benefit also the mentor to do a mentorship with a younger mentee, for example.

40:36

Jakub:

Yeah, I was about to ask like except of women who are the other target, let's say audience in for for your group and for the initiative. Can also, maybe it's problem or question for Christine could also let's say the people with different backgrounds such as marketing or sales benefit from this organization and actually not necessarily being this tech savvy people who are for instance searching for a job as a consultant or, you know, a data scientist or engineer, but rather more on these other topics such as everything else that doesn't require coding, let's say.

41:13

Christine Hunter:

Yeah. I think there's so many different connections, you know, to process mining, You could take myself, for example, right? I'm definitely not on the technical side of process mining, but still connected to the technology. And we see many, you know, marketers, again, researchers, students, you know, people in sales. And I think people if you think about different functions, even what I can gain from the community is hearing more about the business challenges that are being solved through, you know, through process mining and then being able to use that in my own mind to think, ok, well, if this is the main problem, that is, you know, is out there, how could we apply process mining? you know, to this particular area? And maybe it can even influence, you know, other dimensions of process mining. So it's definitely from that perspective, you know, an open community. And we also welcome, you know, allies as well. We know that there are many, you know, men in organizations that also are very motivated to elevate women. So we've had that question come up from time to time is can you know, can men join the group? And I'd say if you're if you're an ally, then absolutely, you know, we need each other in this space. So if you're available and willing to help and then the answer is yes.

42:36

Patrick:

Great. So after creating this initiative and watching it grow, have you seen a noticeable change in the current work that you do based on everything that you've learned in your journey in women in process mining so far?

42:51

Christine Hunter:

It's a great question. Gabby, anything that comes to mind?

42:56

Gabriela Galic:

I think. Let me see, because it's as we just launch it this year, right? Or just started it. I think it's a little bit too early to see kind of the results, or what is shaping, if I'm honest, but what I can say definitely since we launched it or we're doing this, we're getting so many positive messages and people were saying, oh, my gosh, this is great what you're doing. And I think this was the right decision. And if you need to support and even from as a also from men, not only women, how can I help you with this initiative? So I think this is something what I could see already just from starting this initiative and the community. And it's just great because it's motivating and knowing that there's a team or people who would support you is great. And also, we got a lot of positive messages from people want to join, right? Who said, oh, my gosh, I want to join your event. I want to become a mentor. I was waiting for that. I love that. Because it's a new technology and it's a new team and community which just building up in general. And yeah, so I'm happy about that. Yeah. So I don't know Christine, if you have anything else?

44:22

Christine Hunter:

I think just what we hoped would happen but has happened and which is just the positive response and also the willingness of the women to come and speak or participate in these different meetups that we have both being, you know, panelists or even when we did the in-person gatherings, people were really honored. We asked for people to be, you know, hosts at each table and they were really honored to be able to lead and facilitate some of these discussions. So I think people really want to play a part. And that's also part of just our desire for the community. Although we have a founding team, we know that there may be other ideas of ways in which there could be programs for these women. And so if there is that, we certainly welcome people to come in and approach the founding team and kind of share their vision and take an active role in bringing that part of it to life. So we don't want to be like restrictive or say it's just us because we just think that there's a lot of work to do, and the more hands that can be doing it, the better.

45:33

Jakub:

So speaking of more work, what are the next plans and next steps you want to take your community to?

45:40

Christine Hunter:

I would say more frequent gatherings of these meetups. So as I mentioned earlier, we have a next gathering coming up here in about August 19th. And so we'll be hearing from two women there and certainly the launch of the website and the mentor mentee relationship. But we also see in the future there could be opportunity for partnerships with academic organizations you know, again, recognizing women in a more formal fashion. You know, we've seen in some other spaces these kind of most powerful women type of awards. So I think there's a lot that can be done.

46:24

Jakub:

Now, I have actually two more questions before we wrap the episode up. One would be where can people go find out more about you, where do they find you? You said LinkedIn, is there a specific name of the group? Where can people just join and, you know, start engaging with you?

46:42

Christine Hunter:

Yes, I'll say there's three major ways that you can engage. You can certainly follow the Women in Process Mining page on LinkedIn. So if you just go to the search in LinkedIn and type in women in process mining, you'll find that you can also request to join the closed door LinkedIn group. That's another dimension of this community. And then the third way would be through our website where you can sign up to be a mentor or a mentee. I think those are the first three ways that we recommend people getting involved in the community.

47:17

Jakub:

I'll be sure to also communicate this to our internal Slack group and send all the women to you.

57:25

Patrick:

They've already found it.

47:26

Jakub:

Oh, they already found it?

47:28

Christine Hunter:

And the website I should mention is womeninprocessmining.com

47:32

Jakub:

All right.

47:33

Christine Hunter:

Very straightforward.

47:34

Jakub:

Yeah. We will also add the links on our LinkedIn website and also to the website of our podcast. So if you didn't get it, you will find it there. And the final question, and that's really for both of you and that would be what advice would you give to women? And those are probably, I would say any women, but possibly fresh out of universities or just wrapping up their university times and thinking about a professional career, that are just starting or want to get into the field. Is there any recommendation advice you would give them to give them a head start?

48:09

Gabriela Galic:

Yeah, so definitely. So first of all, I would say speak up for yourself, really speak up. Don't be shy. Go there in the field and be in the front row basically. So I would say you can do it to motivate them and say nothing is kind of too hard to do even if you kind of sometimes maybe feel alone or the only one or whatever, everybody has a different motive behind. But yeah, speak up and don't be shy and to go for it. I think there's a lot to come in the future, definitely. And of course, I want also to say if somebody is really interested, I'm always happy to connect with everybody who is interested to learn more about or who is interested in our community. So I would also definitely say, yeah, please feel free to contact us.

49:12

Christine Hunter:

And then I think from my side I think about, you know, maybe two, two things or words of advice. I think one would be around curiosity. So as you're entering the workforce, stay curious, not only in the company that you're working with, the work that you're doing but also the people that you work with. I am a huge believer in, you know, building relationships. And so as you stay curious with people, then you really increase your own knowledge. And that, I think, is a huge benefit again to whatever you're doing. So I would say to stay curious, don't be shy in asking questions. And that's what I encourage. You know, when we have interns that come on our team, I really encourage them to ask the questions because I think also asking questions helps to potentially, you know, change the course of, you know, what we're doing. Sometimes we just get stuck in our ways and someone says, why are you doing it this way? And not in a demeaning way, but it's just out of their curiosity. And then you have a moment there to pause and say, why are we doing it this way? And that's, of course, could certainly apply to process mining, which is, you know, a lot of our processes were designed in a different era, and we're in a different time now that is so heavily reliant on, you know, digital technology and different ways in which we interact with our customers. And so it's ok that our processes would need to change or that something, you know, would be broken or we don't have to do it the same way that we've always done. So I encourage people to, you know, be curious in that way because I think it does help, you know, the organizations that we work for. And then the second piece would be to not feel threatened by other women. This is like a really strange dynamic, you know, within women that sometimes people may feel that because there's not that many spots for women in technology that maybe you have to be a certain way to get that spot and that there's not enough room for everyone there. And what I found more, you know, always is not approaching when I hear about that, I'm just really disheartened. So that would be my encouragement is not to feel threatened by other women, but really to learn from their strengths and band together to see how, again, you could advocate and bring more people forward with you rather than just trying to be yourself or advocate individually. I think that can really help progress women forward in the technology field in general.

51:59

Jakub:

I would really end our episode on these words of wisdom. Christine, Gabriela, thank you very, very much for coming to our show. It's been pleasure and we are very happy and grateful that we can also help promoting your group, help promoting your initiative, because I do indeed believe in it as well. So thank you for coming.

52:20

Gabriela Galic:

Thank you for having us.

52:21

Christine Hunter:

Thank you.

52:23

Jakub:

You, dear listeners, thank you for listening. As usual, you can find any information about the show on the website, miningyourbusinesspodcast.com We are also very active on LinkedIn. Or you can also drop us an email on miningyourbusinesspodcast@gmail.com We are always open for any recommendation ideas or any questions that you might have, and we are always happy to answer those. So please stay tuned. If you like us, rate us on any platform that you're listening to and we will be looking forward to hear from you and be with you with the next episode of the Mining Your Business Podcast. Thank you very much and bye bye.