#75 Talent Chat: Vanessa Feliberti + Kobie Hatcher - A Few Things - 45 Min

We discussed a number of things including:1. Vanessa and Kobie's leadership and entrepreneurial journeys2. How the tech industry sees the talent pipeline3. Talent challenges and opportunities4. Diversity initiatives and best practicesVanessa leads the Substrate Engineering team which fuels a simple, delightful and personal experience, assisting our customers to be the most productive across work and life; by helping them get started, get back to and get the most out of Microsoft 365.  Her purpose is to create capacity in the M365 cloud fabric and engineering systems through Innovation and Savings to enable business growth while safely unlocking access to entities, signals and insights that reside in Substrate to enable “speed of thought” experimentation and innovation for 1st party and 3rd party developers and data scientists.  Substrate is Microsoft’s essential and intelligent productivity services platform to enable delightful, trustworthy, agile, and cost-effective user and group experiences by delivering on the Substrate pillars of Fundamentals, Compliance, and Intelligence. Alongside product impact, Vanessa exemplifies our Microsoft values and culture particularly as a leader who builds diverse teams, drives adoption of inclusive behaviors and creates programs to foster innovation and opportunities for talent in new ways.-----Kobie Hatcher is the President and Founder of Cyborg Mobile, a Seattle-based, technology and management consultancy specializing in solving their client’s most pressing challenges. A certified B-Corp, Cyborg Mobile works with both private and public sectors.Kobie’s work centers around driving impact. He leads digital transformations that deploy technology to bring about positive change and views business growth as a means to create opportunity and promote equity. Kobie created a career accelerator called the New Technologists Academy focused on solving the diversity pipeline challenge in big tech and empowering those who are structurally disadvantaged.Since beginning his career as an early childhood educator, Kobie’s passion for education has played an ongoing role in his work. In addition to helping various school systems improve their technology infrastructure, Kobie also built Digital Training Solutions, an EdTech platform designed to support leaders with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) change initiatives.As a recognized thought leader, Kobie has been invited to speak at hackathons, conferences and orientations to talk about his hands-on expertise in DEI, Inclusive Thinking and the Future of Work. He’s been recognized by Inc Magazine as “Best In Business, DEI Advocacy.”