Please welcome ServiceNow's Chief Financial Officer, Gina Mastantuono and ServiceNow's Chief People Officer, Jacqui Canney. (lively music) - Yeah, woo. - Wow, wow. Gina, you think this is for us? - I don't really think so, but I'll take it. I'll take it. - Yeah, amazing. Thank you all for being here. What a crowd, and I know exactly why, but I wanna say a few words before we get into it, right. So I wanna welcome you all on behalf of Gina and I to our Women in Tech luminary session. We all know that the power of a network of women is so important to all of us, and celebrating that here today is really important to ServiceNow. So I want to also say, we know we have a very special guest who's gonna join us and help us learn more about the power of a network of women and courage and hope, and that's Viola Davis. (audience cheering) (audience applauding) - So before, before we get into the questions, I just. (audience member indistinct yelling) Oh, thank you. - I love that. Before we get into the questions, I just have to start with the intro of the amazing accomplishments that you have achieved, which is just incredible. So Viola, critically revered award-winning actor, producer, "New York Times"-bestselling author. She's the first, yes, please. Yes. The first Black actress to receive two Tony Awards, an Oscar, an Emmy, and she also achieved EGOT status by winning a Grammy for her incredible audiobook, and it's the recording of her memoir "Finding Me," which I just finished reading and if you haven't picked up the book, please do. It is the most powerful memoir I've ever wrote, read, and so welcome. Obviously the ServiceNow card is so excited that you're here. Thank you so much for being here, Viola, and I also would be remiss without talking about what she's doing, even lately. She and her husband founded JuVee Productions with the aim of elevating the next generation of filmmakers and artists, but they didn't stop there because it's Viola. They recently launched a book publisher, JVL Media, with the goal to amplify underrepresented voices in publishing. It's our deep honor and privilege to welcome Viola to the stage, hear about your hero's journey, and just talk real about your experiences. Thank you so much for being here. - Thank you for having me. - All right, so let's start at the beginning, Viola, okay. I know that you talk about your sisters, and how your sisters gave you so much power and hope and courage, especially through some really traumatic times in your childhood and I know, you know, we rely on our sisterhood. I'm honored and happy to have Gina by my side every day at work and beyond to know how, what the power of women can do, and my friends. Can you tell us about the sisterhood and how it really did shape your dreams and how to have the hope? - Well, you know, here's the thing. You can't go it alone, right. We hear that statement a lot, and I think that what's behind that is that sometimes you don't have it within you, and growing up poor and in dysfunction, (Viola clearing throat) it's in my book, but we were all bed wetters. We, the abject poverty and the fact that when you're dark skinned Black, Black people understand this. When you're dark skinned, people do not see you. So you're poor, you're dark, you're a woman, they do not see you, and so therefore, if you have anything that is within you, which I did, that little ember, that flame that said, "There's something out there for you, Viola, "something better," but there's no one to ignite that flame. That's when I had to rely on my sisters. It's sort of like that fable that you told your kid when we were younger of the man who just was out in the woods and he wanted to make soup, but he didn't have any food, so he put the water in the pot and then he convinced certain people. You have the onion, you have the potatoes, you have the meat, you have the, and then pretty soon you had the whole town, right, putting whatever they had into the pot, and what it made was a fabulous stew. That's how I see my sister Dolores, my sister Diane, my sister Anita. They each had an ingredient that grew my pot, that grew my stew amongst really challenging and dysfunctional and dark circumstances, and I held onto it. I held onto it like it was, I held onto it like you would if you were dying, seriously. It's like that saying, "Some people lived to be 75, "but they died when they were 25." Yeah, yeah. - I didn't wanna die at six. No. - And I didn't wanna die at seven. So my sister Diane was a big dreamer. My sister Dolores was a big schemer. (Jacqui and Gina laughing) My sister Anita was a troublemaker, I love troublemaker. They all made my stew. Yeah, wow. That's so, thank God for them and that sisterhood, really. I mean, I'm so grateful that you persevered through because what beautiful things you've created for all of us is just amazing. So thank you for that. - And it's crazy, it's an incredible message that you can't go it alone, right. You can't go it alone, we cannot do it alone. I think that's an important message, and so, whether it's your sisters or whoever it is, and we were talking backstage with your beautiful daughter about making sure that that group of friends or those group of people that you spend time with lift you up, ignite your flame. Absolutely. - I know you talk a lot about that. - There is a great, great saying, and she is a wonderful writer, Anne Lamott. Okay, let me articulate this correctly. I'm all, whenever you see me being silent, I'm negotiating. (audience laughing) In my profession, when you look at social media, the stories that make it on social media are the stories of the winners. They're the stories of the people who have already overcome, who have already won the EGOT, the Oscar or whatever. So you don't hear about anyone else's story, but everybody has one, okay? It doesn't matter the destination, everybody has a story, but what happens oftentimes with us, this is a big secret, is once you hear the story, you don't think about the journey. Nobody's telling you the journey. So I would say 99.99% of the time, nobody understands what it is that I do. They don't understand all the failures, the darkness, the regrets, the failures. You don't hear any of that. You don't hear the abusive nature of the business. All you hear is, I came to Hollywood, I was homeless for one day. I made money at the chicken shack downtown, and then I got a movie and here I am, but really, Anne Lamott has a quote that says, my leap, "I did not start with a leap, "but rather with a series of staggers "where I went from one little safe place to the next," and that's what moved me through doubt and fear, and that's what my journey has been about, is a series of safe places that I saw that was created through either mentorship or women who stepped out of their ego and stepped out of any sort of self-serving nature and lifted me up even for a moment that kept me and led me to the next safe space and the next one until I grew, and that's how life works, because otherwise there is no leaping, and maybe there is, maybe there is one story out there where someone just had a dream, they leapt and then they just got there. I don't get that, but for me it's, there are countless number of people that provided that leaf that traveled me across the pond of fear, of doubt, of really sometimes of complete loss of faith, 'cause you do lose that along the way. You do, and that's a whole other story. - So speaking of faith and authenticity, we talk a lot about being your authentic self when you come to work. You've talked a lot in your book about finding your authenticity and finding your voice. Can you tell our audience a little bit about how you were able to do that? - Once again, a series of leafs, right? I'm still working on it. Aren't we all? Yeah. - I'm a work in progress, I say, where I started from, which was massive social anxiety. Massive social anxiety, massive lack of self-love, 'cause I grew up in dysfunction. My father was a severe alcoholic. My, I grew up in domestic violence. So what happened for me, it was a series of, this is what I would call it, disillusionment. So what happened at first is I said, "I want to be an actress. "I'm gonna be an actress. "I'm gonna be," and I even said, "I'm gonna be a famous act," I'm gonna out myself, I said, "I'm gonna be famous." Okay, so then I started getting, to make a long story very, very short, then I got started, getting a series of plays, Broadway, off Broadway, and I was like, "Oh my God, I've hit it," and then I saw the other side of it, and then I got "Doubt," which got me my first Oscar nomination. I was like, "Okay, I really have made it." Then I saw the other side of it, and then "The Help." So what can I say? Yeah, by the way. - In a nutshell, what brought me to the place is what I realize with "Seven Guitars," that was my first Broadway show, "Doubt," first big, big movie, and "Solaris," "Far From Heaven," those were big, big movies for me, "The Help," big movie for me, what happened is the disillusionment of the dream and the management of the dream, the reality of the dream. What happened was, I got out there and I didn't realize dreams are not the same for Black women. I'm just gonna say it. You know what, I'm just gonna say it. It's not the same for Black women. It's not the same for women in general. It's not the same for women. It's not the same for women of a certain age, and it's not the same if you don't have a name. The business is brutal, and also on a personal tip, what I didn't realize is if you throw a piece of cheese in a room full of rats, they do not step aside to let the rat that's the closest to the piece of cheese eat the cheese. They will claw at you. They will kill you for that cheese. I always thought, when you became successful, people saw your talent and your gifts and they fed it. They challenged it, they fed your flame, your creative fire. I did not know the level of hatred and vitriol out there amongst women. Okay, but at first it destroyed me completely after "Seven Guitars." Got to "Doubt," it was really destroying me even more. Friends all of a sudden getting agitated, going all of a sudden because the status of the relationship has changed now, right, so that was happening, and then I realized after "The Help," Viola, it's on you. You know, it's a famous Shakespeare quote, which is, "The fault is not in the stars, it's in ourselves," and I realized that I literally had the power within me to create the change I needed to see in the world to service the other Violas so they did not have to have same path that I did of, of sort of, and I know this is like a long response, but I. Oh, completely. - I'm sorry, I have to say it, you know, is that after "Doubt," after "The Help," and I know that you guys watch movies all the time so you see, or maybe don't see, is the journey in even getting a play done or getting a movie done is rife with abuse. So let me make something up, or not. What you realize is the sort of nature of the business is about money. It's not about quality. If quality is out there, you have to be the captain of that ship. Really, if they have to skimp on quality and make money, they'll make the money. If they wanna invest in the quality and skimp on money, they're not so attracted to that, they being the power structure. So what makes money for them is that 18-34 year-old white male. I'm gonna be honest, it took us seven years to get "Woman King" made. When you do a Black movie, you have to test it for a white audience. our white counterparts. You, once that movie is done, you have to test screen it for an audience of white males, 18 to 34, white females, 18 to 34, and then maybe a Black audience, but they're on the bottom of the caste system. So in my brain, what I needed to do is say, either I accept that and find material that's gonna feed that narrative, or I'm going to find a way to work within that narrative, but to change it, and that means jumping into a pond of alligators and trying not to be eaten. That's why we created JuVee Productions, because I didn't wanna be another maid after "The Help." So I said, "If I were the captain of the ship, what I have control over "is I can find that material, I can find those writers "who are standing on the periphery because I can see them. "I literally have the gaze to see them, "'cause I'm not just looking at the money, "I'm looking at the talent." So I created JuVee productions, me and my husband, as a conduit to which those artists have a safe place to knock on the door and say, "I got something for you. "I've been out there for the last 15 years "and it's not selling, but I heard that you guys "have created that leaf, that safe place where I can, "can you do something for me?" Hence "The Woman King," hence "G20," a movie that I just did, which I hope is good, you know, hence a number of projects that I'm working on right now, but it's been a series of disillusionment. Now, the other side of it is working through my pain of isolation, which comes with success. I always say, that's not the ceiling is success, 'cause once you hit it, you're gonna be really disillusioned because once you hit it, you find out that that's, you don't, you can't put EGOT on your gravestone. It's significance, and so now working through the isolation of walking in the room and knowing people are not gonna be on your side because they're like, "Okay, that's great material, but we don't know "if we're gonna make money off of it. "So bye, see you later, I'm out," (Viola laughing) but it's like the Rumi quote said, "The cure to the pain is in the pain." So I try to embrace the pain of the isolation, of the rejection, of being called old, of sometimes the project like "The Woman King," even though everyone said, "It's successful, it made a mark," it didn't, it didn't make any money. A lot of Black people didn't see it. A lot of white people didn't see it, and it was a great movie, and you know what, but it made enough of an impact as a leaf to bring me to the next leaf. Right, right. - But it also made, blew enough hole in this world for me to understand what the dynamics are out there when I put something in the world that people haven't seen before and how they agit, how they are agitated by it. The women are too dark. The curls are too tight. These are some of the notes. I can't pronounce the names. I don't want to have sex with them. More lipstick and less dirt. Oh my. - I can go on. Those are the storms that you have to face, the warrior spirit that you have to have, and that's what my pain and my journey has taught me. It has been my warrior fuel, and if I allow it to not break me, then it will fuel me. Does that make sense? 'Cause I went on. - Oh my God. I mean, 100%. - I'm sorry. - Yeah, no. - Yeah, oh my gosh. I'm throwing all the questions out. - Yeah, it's like. - We're just gonna go on that, right. So you talk about all this pain in the journey and then you are taking that and trying to empower the next generation of women, of Black women. Tell people why that's important to you. Tell people where you get that energy to do all that work, 'cause let's, let's face it, you could just sit back and enjoy the ride right now. Why is that so important to you? - Well, I'm gonna try not to cry 'cause I ugly cry, y'all know that. Yeah, we love you. - Oh, well thank you. I love you too. Well, I remember going to, I start my book out like this so, going to a therapist, 'cause it's a lot, y'all. Everyone knows this, right? Especially working moms, all of that, anxiety, 'cause I definitely have anxiety, but I remember going to my therapist and saying, "Oh, it's because I gotta heal six-year-old Viola. "She's damaged. "If I heal her, then my life will be released," and I remember him saying, "I think that she did great. "Little Viola does not need healing. "Can you allow six year Viola to, six-year-old Viola "sit next to you and squeal at the 55," I was 55 at the time, "55-year-old she gets to become? "Can you let us celebrate it?" What it opened up to me is that through my life that the six-year-old, the 25-year-old, the 35-year-old Viola still is very much alive, and 58-year-old Viola gets to sit with them and actually gets to enjoy them and they could heal her. So, I do what I do because it is my legacy. I don't wanna go to the grave with the top regret of the dying, which I did not run my leg of the race. I didn't live a life that was pleasing to me, and listen, I love the money. I have a nice house, beautiful daughter. She goes to private school, but that doesn't fill up my cup. When I think that my life could possibly end with all my memories, all of my challenges, the EGOT, the Grammy, the Tony, the accomplishments, the money takes a backseat to the six-year-old Viola who didn't think that she could ever be anything. That voice is way louder than the paycheck. It just is. It's eternal, and knowing that is what gives me fuel. That's what gives me fuel. Knowing that literally it's, I think I did it the other day when I think I was going through some anxiety and little Viola showed up and said, "We get to go outside today and sit in the pool? "And you know, if I had food today in school, "I would be great." That allows me to go back to my city of Central Falls, create a foundation that's gonna help the school system, help the food programs there. We're at three quarters of the people live in poverty. Most of the people are in homes that are food challenged. It's, it allows me to say the little Viola who says, "You know what, I would love to have five books today "and sit outside and read, but I don't have any books." It allows me to go back to Central Falls and give it back to the library system. That's what that allows me to do. The whole journey of the hero is that you are thrust into a world where you do not fit in, and then you get a call to adventure, and that call is not to just slay dragons and go to Harvard and just be the top badass in the world. That call to adventure is to slay the dragons and the demons within yourself. It's the gold to that inmost cave and not face a god, not face a dragon. It's to face you. You are in that cave, and if you have the courage to face it and heal it, then the walls to your life are literally knocked down and the blessings are released, and guess what? You have the elixir to journey back to that ordinary life that you didn't fit into. You journey back, and you share that magic potion with other people. That's what life journey is all about, but now I got it, but I got it through a series of failures, and I'm not gonna lie, during "The Help," it was really hard because that was a time when I was nominated for an Oscar and I was up against Meryl Streep. Like, who wants to do that? And she was a friend. I think I got, I literally got shingles. Oh. - But the shingles taught me, "Viola, this is not it. "Viola, this isn't it. "This isn't it, Viola, you gotta think deeper." - Oh my. Incredible. Well, I mean so much to talk. One question as we've been talking that is on my mind is there's a lot of leaders in this room too that have the ability to make change, and you know, you make change for all the reasons that you said, and as the people leader, I think about equity and inclusion and all the things that Gina and I want for this 23,000 person company. You're the CEO of so many. What's your advice in how to drive that equity and inclusion from a leadership perspective? Because we are accountable. (Viola sighing) - I always get a hard question. She's negotiating. - I am negotiating because I think that a lot of people define leadership as singular and solo. I do, I, listen, I love the introduction, love the introduction, and there is a part of me sometimes, I'm not gonna lie, a little bit of the ego shows up and goes, "I won two Tonys, not one." I said two. - No, no, no, no, no, no. - I'm not saying that. No, no, no, no, no. I'm saying that, no, no, no, no. - Yes. - I don't care if you can do that. I'm, I'm. - No, we love your Tonys. - I say that to make a point that I think that a lot of people see leadership as a solo thing, as something that just sort of shores up your resume, something that builds you up, builds up your legacy, and you have to think deeper. You do. There is no way that you are going to create a space for change if you don't bring other people up with you. It's just not gonna happen. The thing in our profession that literally people say is once it's, I gave a perfect example of a woman. "The Woman King," actually, a better example is "How to Get Away With Murder." Okay, that's a better example. Yeah, that's a better example, because before that time it was Kerry Washington who became the first Black woman on a television series after Diahann Carroll, who it was 1964 when she came up with "Julia," and then you had Kerry Washington and then you had me, okay, and the reason why I'm saying that about me is because, I'm gonna say it again. I am darker than a paper bag. Literally conversations in the room is, "Ah, she's too dark for people to consider her "to be attractive, and oh, she may be too light "for people to see her as ethnic," so colorism is alive and well, okay? And a number of people that said, "It's miscast, she shouldn't be on TV," blah, blah, blah, blah, but what happened when "How to Get Away with Murder" went on television, it became successful. Then I won the Emmy, it opened the doors for others, see? It becomes a domino effect, that you cannot go out there with the narrative of how the situation is dire for women or with Black women if you are not creating a space where no one's gonna have that conversation for the next 20 years. So if you don't create that space, the conversation is gonna keep going. It just is, and so in terms of equity, in terms of creating a space in whatever business you've created, you have gotta create a space that is a sacred space for people to move through it, who can share their ideas, share their truth, their authenticity. There are some great people out there, and some of them are really young and green who can just grow you, and I think that is actually a proper term. They can grow you. It's not an insult to you. If you could put your ego aside for one minute and redefine what it means to be a leader, if you create that space for them, that's a badass move, because that's greatness. That's great right there. That's what I see in JuVee. They are young people out there, and especially in terms of young people and technology, what they've created, I mean in the interactive space, in writing, in, I mean in publishing, some of the ideas that are out there, and one of the reasons why we created publishing with our production company is once you own that IP, if we had owned the script to "The Woman King," then anyone who came in and said, "Oh, less dirt, more lipstick. "We don't like your hair. "Oh you know what, in scene two, can we change "that woman's name because no one can pronounce it?" If I owned that script, I wouldn't have had to listen to any of that, but I made the choice of not doing that, and I went, "Aha, I'm not gonna do that again," hence the publishing, hence other publisher, other writers coming in and being able to bring their work to me and bang, bang, bang, and trust me, because the world is changing, there are a lot of diverse voices out there and they may not be voices that you may not be entirely comfortable with, but they land, and if you are the conduit to bring those voices out there in the world, then you are just going to grow whatever seed you've planted, but if it's just on you, the only thing you're gonna grow is maybe a little bit, your bank account. - I love that, I love that. You met Bill behind stage before we came out, and he is the quintessential servant leader and truly believes the type of leadership that you're talking about, and it's about bringing people up and sometimes getting out of the way and letting them grow and be phenomenal. - And that's the type of leaders that we are really trying to build and develop at ServiceNow each and every day. So thank you so much for that. - Can I say one thing also about being a leader? Little Viola needed a leader. Little Viola, who was a bedwetter, who was deeply neglected, could have used a leader. I had an imagination and I knew somewhere in that imagination I lived and I had my crown on in that imagination world, because there are a lot of people out there who are just caterpillars, and they're waiting to become butterflies. They're waiting for you to see them, and when you see them and you could give them the encouragement and the space to just feel like they're not dying, they're just maturing, they're growing, if you could give them a space to be able to do that, that's the kind of leader that can change the world, because sometimes there are people out there that have great ideas and they're not in this room. They don't know how to get in this room. They sometimes don't even know how to speak up, but they want you to have that x-ray vision to be able to see them, and you have it in you to be able to see them. You have it in you to be able to go to look at that person in the back of the room that's not speaking and go in a metaphoric sense, "Can you come closer? "Sit in this seat right here. "What's your name? "What do you live for? "What's getting in the way of what you live for?" And ah, that's what a leader does. They're the person who jumps through the plate of glass first. They're not the grandstanders, they're the ones who make the first sacrifices. They're the person like me, 'cause I'm one of those leaders. I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna show myself right now and it's not necessarily good. I'm the leader, sometimes it's like, "I'm tired, I'm sleepy, I'm stressed out." It's working beyond that. You have the baton and it's your job as a leader to pass it on to the next great runner who's gonna run their leg of the race and pass it on to the next great runner. - So I am gonna go back to one prepared question 'cause I think it's really important. As a Chief Financial Officer, I love hearing you speak about finding your financial prowess. As women, it's not always the easiest thing. It's so important, and many feel the topic is really taboo. I actually found this statistic, 61% of women would rather speak about their own death than money. Yep. - Right. I think that's true. (Viola chuckling) - It's, and so you talk a bit about this in your book. What advice would you give to your younger Viola self and what advice do you give to women all over about really finding their financial future and making sure that they're talking about it, that they're getting their due? - I always get the hard question. (Gina laughing) Because you're so good at answering them. - I would literally say, "You are worth it." I would say, "You are worth it, you are worth it. "You are worth it, everything. "You are worth it, you're worth that, everything." Here's the thing with women. I'm 58 and I'm still trying to, what is the thing? I'm still trying to liberate myself from all the toxic things that I've been told that I should believe as a woman. You gotta be nice. It doesn't matter if you're uncomfortable, you don't wanna do it, it costs you something, or whatever. Oh, it's so great that you sacrificed yourself for all these other people. Oh, it doesn't matter if you're poor. You look pretty. I believe that people use finances sometimes to control women and to keep us in a deficit. What I learned about financial literacy, I learned through being broke and failure through, literally when I was younger, I had a 500 credit score. I remember I went to a financial advisor. Don't ask me how I got there. That's, I don't know how I went, 'cause I had no money. I don't know how I even met a financial advisor, but he told me to keep a dossier of all the money that I spent, and you know what? I spent, this is when I was, I didn't have a lot of money at all. I spent hundreds of dollars in one week on food, going out to eat because I have to go out to eat. I'm in New York. It gives me pleasure. I didn't have money to pay my phone bill, and I would say the number one thing, I'm gonna get very personal, is giving it away, giving it to my family, giving it to people who literally did, money was not the solution to their problems. I threw money at them because it's what I'm supposed to do, because it's bad karma. People are gonna say that I'm a bad person if I don't do it, and then I went back to New York at one point and I did not even have my rent money. Until you take care of yourself, you can't take care of any anyone else. Health insurance costs money. Leasing a car costs money. Death? You wanna talk about your own death? That costs money. Trust me, I paid for a lot of funerals. You know, all of that costs money, and if you're not taken care of, you cannot throw someone else a rope. That's just the bottom line, and you cannot be, and money, giving it away decreases it, and sometimes, I had this conversation with a friend the other day, I had to be honest with her. We have to be honest to each other as women. A lot of times we're not because it's not nice. I had to tell her, "Why are you giving your family this much money "when you don't have it? "And you are in this business, our business, "which is a changing, morphing business, "which means that your job in probably "another year or two may be obsolete, "and you do not have the job skills to get you the finances, "the health insurance, the money that you have right now "to take care of just you. "You don't have the skillset to get that "once this job is gone, but you are gonna give it "to your family who's not gonna be there to take care of you "when you're at a deficit," and you gotta keep saying to people, saying it to people, because what's cemented in our head is what was cemented in our head is children and with me, I did not grow up with financial literacy. I grew up with people who as soon as you gave them money, they spent it on lottery tickets, they spent it on liquor, they spent it on gambling. They spent, spent, spent. They did not think of the future. They did not save. I am a part also of a group of people, Black people who are extremely financially intelligent, but we are the biggest consumers in the world by trillions of dollars, and yet we own close to nothing. That money, without loving it, just being smart with it, can grow your power and can be the conduit which releases a dream, an idea, and which can provide the legacy, that can actually help your family members in the proper way, that could give them even the financial literacy. I'm saying that 'cause I created a foundation, which I wanna do all of that. I'm not gonna lie, I'm going for it. I'm going back to Central Falls because I know financial literacy would've been it. You know, it's, you can either leave something for people or you can leave something in people, and when you leave something in people, that's the lasting change. That is the eternal $5. I know what a million dollars look like. I have an agent I have to pay 10%, a manager I have to pay 10%, and a lawyer I have to pay 5% before I pay the United States government 40% of my money. So that's 65% of my money that's gone immediately. You have to be smart, and the smartness starts with understanding where all of it comes from so that you can keep the lights on while you're dreaming big. And I love what you've said first. Know your worth. - Yeah, oh yeah. - Those were your first three words. I love it, I love it. Viola, you are absolutely incredible. - Thank you. Thank you so, so very much for being with us today.