Jennie Brooks, host of the Unstoppable Together podcast chats with Senior Vice President Stephanie Boone-Shaw. Stephanie leads the firm's efforts to advance warfighter solutions, which include the integration of robotics. In this episode, Stephanie shares how diversity, equity, and inclusion show up in the robotics field and why they're critical to the missions—and safety—of American soldiers.
Jennie Brooks:
Welcome to Booz Allen Hamilton's Unstoppable Together Podcast, a series of stories that unite us and empower each of us to change the world. I'm Jennie Brooks with Booz Allen Hamilton and I'm passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Please join me in conversation with a diverse group of thought leaders to explore what makes them and all of us unstoppable.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Unstoppable Together Podcast. I'm Jennie Brooks and today I'm excited to be joined by my friend and colleague, Stephanie Boone-Shaw-Shaw. Stephanie is a senior Vice President with Booz Allen's army account where she leads our efforts to accelerate war fighter solutions and identify and combat emerging threats through science and technology. Stephanie, welcome to the podcast.
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
Thank you, Jennie. I'm so excited to be here.
Jennie Brooks:
I'm so excited to be here with you. We have a lot of catching up to do, but let's start with you're going to be moderating a Booz Allen panel that will discuss the future of robotics and the importance of having diverse teams working on that technology. Right? So to get folks ready for that conversation, let's start with your perspective. You have a lot of experience making sure that civilian and military leaders have the real-time information they need to enable faster decision making. Tell us a little bit about robotics and technology, how it's integrating in the missions today to enable faster decision making. What do you got?
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
So thanks, Jennie. Thanks for that question. I am super excited about our panel coming up really quickly here. It's been a long time in the making and this is a topic that's so critical for our army clients, for all of our clients quite frankly, because emerging technology is of course it's changing the way we live. It's changing the way we work. It's changing how we have fun and entertain ourselves in every aspect of our economy today and robotics in particular really has an impact on our lives.
So there are a lot of clear benefits, but my focus and our focus as a firm and where we're driving to is supporting soldiers on the battlefield in terms of how they fight and how they meet mission. And we've got some amazing experts in robotics and autonomy at Booz Allen and they regularly demo our capabilities with clients. And more importantly, they are right front and center with soldiers to get their user feedback and we've gotten some amazing feedback from them. They will tell us that this type of technology, if they'd had it in their hands sooner, would've saved lives. It would help them perform better and faster and really give soldiers the information they need when they need it, really at the point of need and that's the critical piece.
Jennie Brooks:
Awesome. So you're talking to someone who is definitely going to be a slow adopter of some of the capability in my own life. We think about this work and we talk about soldiers on the battlefield, right? In those circumstances, they really need to be able to trust and rely on those technologies when it matters most, right? So when we talk about that trust extending to humans throughout every piece of technology, how do you think about that relationship and the team's composition? How does that diversity of that team influence and impact not only the final product, but also the trusting relationship with the end user?
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
That's such an important question, and Jennie, I've just got to chuckle a little bit when we talk about this topic. If you think about it, the Terminator previewed in like 1984 and the movie I, Robot previewed in 2004. So these concepts in robotics really predate even those movies and that's what we all think about sometimes, like the layperson, we think about in terms of how robotics can impact what we do and how we do it. But if you think about a soldier on the battlefield and what they're dealing with, a lot of the work that we do is in the area of intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance and really what that is is robots helping to gather important information, often in very dangerous environments, and being able to relay that information back to soldiers to increase their situational awareness. So think about a soldier needing to breach a room and go in and clear that room to ensure it's safe for the rest of his or her squad.
A robot can go in and send back video feed in a room clearing scenario like that and enter first instead of a human being to ensure that that soldier is safe. And to be able to continue to evolve these really important technologies, make sure they work, they operate when they need to operate, they operate in environments where there might be disruption to networks, right, there might be disruption or problems with power and energy and those kinds of things, we need new ideas and innovation all the time and that's where having our diverse experts come in and really give those new ideas and new concepts is just so critical to evolving to what's next and you know that this technology is emerging really, really fast and we've got to not only keep up with it, but we've got to get ahead of it to make sure our clients understand how to use it and the benefits of it and we get ahead of our near peers, quite frankly.
Jennie Brooks:
Yes. Talk to me a little bit about just some of the broad stroke challenges, opportunities, considerations that we need to think about in terms of trust of the technology and particularly relative to diversity in technology. What are some of the things we need to think about?
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
That's a great question because I would say number one, trust is and will continue to be a continued challenge just based on the history of robotics and what we've seen within the environment. Trust is really Booz Allen's secret sauce for human machine teaming and our experts in the field are working on every aspect of robotics technologies, but we have such a deep understanding and relationship with end users and soldiers themselves and we're uniquely positioned to help them integrate robotics into their missions. And so our commitment will continue to hire our veterans and offer support throughout the workforce community so that we can show up well in this area. Again, technology plus mission expertise and understanding and the experiences of veterans is critical and we depend on it.
I will say, to answer the second part of your question, there's still concerns with things like AI bias, security, equality, and we understand that trust won't be built in a day, but through a lot of training and testing and user feedback and the development process, Booz Allen really is in a great position to continue to strengthen the technologies needed and the areas including the people impact and that's where the training comes in. The process impacts in terms of how the workforce is able to really get to the necessary robotics technologies. All of those elements are important to strengthen the trust between robots and human teammates and this is why that diversity is essential in that field.
Jennie Brooks:
And as we're talking about diversity in backgrounds specifically, I love that you have a background in communications and public relations. Obviously leveraging communication skills is important to any number of requirements in the technology space. So as we look at teams solutioning with equity in mind, how have you found yourself leveraging your communications background in this work? I think that would be really important and helpful for people who might be listening.
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
Jennie, I would say I leverage it every single day in all of our solutioning sessions, in meetings with our clients where we're brainstorming around the art of the possible and what's next. The human element and experience is always going to be a critical part of the equation, regardless of the technology. And we've got to be able to effectively understand the problem and develop new technologies, but also be able to translate those technologies. We've got to be able to share why it's important. We've got to be able to connect it to the mission across all parts of the military and the civilian environment, but most importantly, and really what I get passionate about, is our clients are diverse as well. They've got very diverse teams from different backgrounds across every single echelon. And our senior clients aren't sitting behind a desk and coding, right? They are leading the charge to make sure their organizations run effectively.
They are leading the charge to make sure that soldier and mission readiness is where it needs to be at all times. And this is all getting more and more complex. So we've got to be able to translate the benefits so that our senior clients can execute across these very diverse missions and we've got to be able to ensure that the challenges of any technology, and there are a lot of challenges out there, that we're able to understand those, get in front of it, and then communicate effectively. I've got to say too, one of our values at Booz Allen is collective ingenuity. And to your point in your question around pulling these diverse teams together, this is definitely where we shine and this is where we need to continue to ensure diversity of experience, diversity of expertise, to be successful. We have our technology experts, we have our mission experts, and we need our consultants to really solve these complex problems.
Jennie Brooks:
Yes. Let's talk about the future because obviously the needs will continue to be strong. As you look towards future generations and people that are interested in STEM careers in general, what do you tell them to do to prepare and what do you think the challenges are that they will need to be prepared to tackle?
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
Jennie, I love this question because it really points to the fact that this is broader than just robotics and it points to the fact that we've got to start early. So I have two daughters and I remember when they were elementary school age a long time ago and meeting with the principal and teachers to try to change a new policy that the science fairs were only for AP students. And even though both of our girls were, I remember thinking about kids who would be left behind, potentially the next inventor of something that might change a life or something that might make our lives easier or something that could cut the cost of a new product in half, right? That's where this innovation comes from.
So ensuring diversity in STEM education comes early is so critically important because we've got to increase the expectation that we see a pipeline of more women and people of color in schools, applying for these programs, applying for Ph.D. programs, applying to jobs and getting real-time experience and we can't be resigned to where we are today. And so my advice is always exposure, exposure, exposure to new concepts, new opportunities, whether it's through school projects or internships, but starting early is so critical to us all solving I think this continued challenge. We've got to take more action and we've got to be more aggressive around creating these diverse teams.
Jennie Brooks:
Exactly. So it really is interconnected, right? You've got diversity of team composition and working with the tech to derive solutions that are comprehensive and also help translate to broad user adoption and then you also have diversity of background, diversity of experience based and skills to derive that team composition and then the future talent pipeline where all of industry wants to make sure that we have representation at all levels that reflect our communities, but also across all functional disciplines. And so we have to make sure that we're working collectively to enable that opportunity, the mentorship, development, training, et cetera, to ensure diverse team composition as well. Is that fair?
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
I think that's absolutely fair. You nailed it, Jennie.
Jennie Brooks:
Okay. We got to get to work, Stephanie. We got to get to work.
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
We do. But we're up for the challenge.
Jennie Brooks:
Oh, we're up for the challenge. Absolutely. Absolutely. Stephanie, at the end of every podcast, we give our guests some free space to share their final thoughts. What would you like to leave us with today?
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
I think I'd like to leave you with the fact that we are really leading the way to drive strategic transformation through technology integration and development. We've got a lot of work to do, but I am super excited that we'll continue to identify new ideas and innovation and the art of the possible and we'll do that through our commitment to diversity and the panel that's coming up that I, again, I can't wait, we have some amazing government clients coming in who will have great experiences to share, but this panel shows our commitment to be deliberate and focused in a way that is actionable around diversity in robotics. It's really in alignment with our values, our collective ingenuity, our passionate service, our courageous integrity.
This is a hard problem. And so we need all hands on deck to come in and get to using our voices, being influential, but most importantly, act, decisive action to get more diversity into these key areas. And so if anybody would like to learn more, join the future of robotics panel at Booz Allen's Helix Space on June 23rd. And also to learn more, you can reach out to the team at diversityinrobotics@bah.com. Our panel's going to be the start of a series of events and we're very excited to have this conversation. Hope to see you there.
Jennie Brooks:
Thank you, Stephanie.
Stephanie Boone-Shaw:
Thanks, Jennie.
Jennie Brooks:
Thanks for listening. Visit careers.boozallen.com to learn how you can be unstoppable with Booz Allen. Be the future. Work with us. The world can't wait.