What if Semiconductors Were Gone For Just One Day? An Interview With Carolyn Henry of Intel

In this compelling episode, host Jim Hertzfeld welcomes Carolyn Henry, vice president and general manager of Americas regional marketing at Intel. Together, they explore the pivotal role of semiconductors in the digital age and their fundamental impact on various industries and everyday life. Carolyn provides an in-depth look at Intel's groundbreaking work in AI and edge computing and reveals how these technologies are set to transform the future.

The conversation takes an inspiring turn as Carolyn shares her passionate views on gender equity in tech. Highlighting the undeniable benefits of diverse teams, she delves into the steps needed to achieve gender parity and how Intel is leading the charge. This episode is packed with insightful anecdotes, practical advice, and a visionary outlook on the digital future and equitable workplace. 

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Chapters

• 0:05 Diversity Impact on Business Success
• 4:20 Semiconductors
• 13:35 Gender Equity and Tech Innovation

Transcript

Carolyn Henry (00:05):

We know that teams with gender representation in the top quartile drive 15% higher return, right? If you have one woman on your board as a company, right, you will have better result, right? This is, you know, not Carolyn's data. This is Deloitte, this is Chief, this is IBM. These are studies. This is data that is out there, right? So if you have more diverse teams, you have better decision making, you get through meetings faster. Like, hallelujah, thank you. I, I could do with less. And so if you, you know, have more diversity of thought, you bring innovations to market faster. It, it's been proven.

Jim Hertzfeld (00:42):

Welcome to what if so what the podcast where we explore what's possible with digital and discover how to make it real in your business. I'm your host, Jim Hertzfeld, and we get done by asking digital leaders the right questions. What if, so what? And most importantly, now what? 

And last count in 2021, over a trillion semiconductors were manufactured globally, taking the total number of semiconductors on the planet to a gazillion, and I might be exaggerating a bit, but the reality is that all this talk about digital would not exist without this fundamental technology. And from my perspective as a digital strategist and a former co-op engineer at this company, no other company has had a bigger impact on making digital real than Intel. And I'm excited to welcome Carolyn Henry to explore more about that impact straight from Intel headquarters. Welcome, Carolyn. Great to have you here. 

Carolyn Henry (01:31):

Thanks, Jim. So excited to be here.

Jim Hertzfeld (01:33):

So, Carolyn, tell us a little bit about your, your role at Intel. Like, what are you, what are you guys working on? And, and how'd you get here?

Carolyn Henry (01:40):

Yes, I'd love to. So I'm the Vice President and general manager of America's Regional Marketing, which is an amazing role. And I get to work with our teams across Canada, the US and Latin America, to bring all of Intel stories for all of our business units and product offerings to life in the market. So I get to explain to folks why and what is an AI PC and why you might want one. I get to help our stance in the data center. I get to work across our networking and edge storytelling and really drive that AI everywhere narrative that Intel has very unique offerings. And so it's such an exciting space. And I get to work with 60 of the finest marketers on the planet. And I'm based in headquarters in Santa Clara, California. 

Jim Hertzfeld (02:29):

Great. So what did prepare you for this, Kayla? I love that I always ask this question, you know, for this moment, not this podcast, but maybe this, you know, this, this stage in your career. Like what do you, what do you think really prepared you for this?

Carolyn Henry (02:42):

Yes. Well, I've spent almost 20 years in the data center, right? Working from companies like IBM on the other end and software, and really kind of abstracting that back into how all of this technology works together was such a fun journey across my career, right? So stepping my toes into the mainframe space in the beginning of my career, right? And then yes, I'm dating myself. What's that? And there's still 2000 running globally. And then also, you know, working across all of the B2B landscape to understand, you know, how the hardware and software comes together to really deliver powerful solutions for customers. So I think it's really prepared me to step into Intel and tell that combined hardware, software and system story.

Jim Hertzfeld (03:29):

So there's a, there's a side conversation we're not gonna have about cloud versus data center. 'cause My old, the funny definition of, of cloud that I heard heard once was someone else's data center. So anyway, you know, it's really fundamental and I think is, you know, this is really what people don't see. I mean, how many people, you know, have been to a data center, right? Probably not a lot. 

Carolyn Henry (03:50):

Not a Lot. It is really Impressive

Jim Hertzfeld (03:51):

Takes over? Yeah, yeah. I I've been in one, I've been in one, I've been in a clean room too there. Yeah. But that's another story. So as digital takes over, I think, you know, more and more of our interactions, right? It's, it's really ubiquitous, you know, with brands, with your friends, with your work life, you know, it just sort of blends into the woodwork. I think, you know, again, people probably don't wake up and think about the data center, but we, you know, I think we can appreciate the fact that it's powering so many things, devices, our appliances, it's all around us. So, you know, I think that was, you know, a great question that really you posed, which was that I want to ask you and get your take on is what if, you know, what's, what's powering this? What Intel is really powered, you know, is based on semiconductors, right? Chips and integrated circuits and the boards that they drive. So what if semiconductors were gone for just one day? What would happen?

Carolyn Henry (04:42):

Oh my gosh. Well, I love this, this question and the creative exercise, but I think, you know, you hit on it because every company, right? Really every company right now is a tech company, right? So if you think of Walmart, it's absolutely a tech company, right? If you think of Uber or you think of Instacart or how you get your groceries. So in our day-to-day lives, right? Even just picking up our phones and, and walking through the day of an everyday mom, dad, whomever, right? You cannot avoid the technology and that insatiable demand for processing power, right? I think, you know, each one of us is generating, you know, exabyte every day, every year, right? Of data that goes back and forth that's held privately for us and securely for us, and use to make decisions about, you know, what offers we get or what marketing comes to us, right?

Carolyn Henry (05:33):

Like there's this whole ecosystem around the data that one person, one individual creates. And you can imagine all of the compute power that's needed to move that across the network, across from data center to cloud, regardless of where it is somebody else's data center. It's not actually, you know, in the cloud, it's physically somewhere. And then, you know, I think if you imagine what would happen without semiconductors, right? We would come to a screeching halt. We saw some of this happen during the pandemic when there was a supply chain shortage where folks couldn't get the chips they needed to install in the cars, right? That, that were coming off the assembly lines. We saw that huge demand go through the roof. And I think what's so interesting for me from where I sit is it's a $600 billion industry that could reach somewhere in the trillions right?

Carolyn Henry (06:26):

Over the end of the next decade. And it permeates every single aspect of our lives. So, you know, you could think about, oh my gosh, there would be a communication breakdown, right? You know, we work with some of the biggest telcos in the world, right? To equip their base stations and, you know, those would not be around, we would have transportation disruptions. I kind of mentioned some of that already. Healthcare services. I mean, my gosh, that God partnerships that Intel has with General Electric and their imaging, I mean, for folks, you know, who have experienced an MRI, right? We have amazing advanced technologies in there. So, those would be gone right. But we would absolutely see a financial systems freeze. I don't wanna paint too too terrible of a picture for, for folks. Yeah. But it just goes to the essential nature of what we work on, which is so gratifying to me personally. Yeah. But that we must really have this resilient and secure supply chain around our semiconductor manufacturing and delivery to the world. 

Jim Hertzfeld (07:31):

Right. Right. And

Carolyn Henry (07:32):

I'll pause, I'll take a breath, Jim.

Jim Hertzfeld (07:34):

Yeah. And I'll, I'm just gonna build on that. I mean the I live, you know, close to New Albany, like in, in Ohio where there's, you guys are building a plant, I believe, right? Yeah. Above fab. So at least tell me, okay. Make sure I got there. I'm keeping up. So it's interesting to seeing that happening in the Midwest, but you know, that goes back to the, like you said, resilience and demand, and certainly geopolitical implications of that with, you know, manufacturing, you know, in apac. So Yeah. It's not going away. And you mentioned, you know, just the everyday telecom and manufacturing and kind of driving our jobs you mentioned, but, but healthcare, I mean, you know, anyone who's, who's, you know, had to go to the ER or get something done or had an image taken, we take a lot of that for granted. So Yeah. Definitely impacts every aspect of our lives. And I thought, you know, like, okay, I remember the, the, there was a blackout about 20 years ago in the Northeast. I lived through that. I dunno if everyone, everyone remembers that, but it was like, okay, let's go camping for a day. So that is, you know, that would be my response. Maybe everyone goes on a

Carolyn Henry (08:38):

One day camp experience, right? Let's go camping. Yeah.

Jim Hertzfeld (08:40):

Right. But then, you know, but how do I get to my campsite without Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, A GPS. So, you know, we're not talking about it. You're not, you know, this hypothetical is not about an outage, but an appreciation of things that just exist, right? Today, they're everywhere. I mean, it really is ubiquitous. If there's one thing that, you know, next to, maybe next to oxygen that we need to run our everyday lives, this is, this might be it,

Carolyn Henry (09:03):

Right? And Jim, I'd love to build on that. 'cause You gave you the opening with Ohio, but you know, Intel put the Silicon and Silicon Valley, right? And now we're really trying to create a silicon heartland, right? And we're doubling down on fabs in the western hemisphere in Phoenix and Arizona and New Mexico, and ensuring that we can control more of our destiny. Because over the last decade, you know, we have seeded some of that technology leadership to other geographies. We're also Right. You know, looking at Germany as well. And I think, you know, if folks, we've been talking about everyday usage too, if you kind of abstract that out to Supercomputing, right? And our X 86 infrastructure, those intel Leon, so now I'm geeking out on your audience, right? But that's some most pervasive, you know, infrastructure that we have. And they're in some of the world's best supercomputing instantiations like Mila in Canada, and they're working on real human existential problems like cancer and climate change and all of that research, right? Could not be done without the processing power and the leadership processing power that Intel can bring to market. So if folks are thinking, you know, the auto example is too mundane. Like, let's think about, you know, climate change or the health of our oceans, right? And, you know, cancer research as well. So,

Jim Hertzfeld (10:23):

And you mentioned, you know, you mentioned AI, right? AI com computation and, and some more of that is kind of heading into the chips. Is that kinda the right, right way to interpret that?

Carolyn Henry (10:33):

Absolutely. We have these amazing systems on the chips with a compute processing unit. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, a graphical processing unit, and a neural processing unit. So we call NPUs. And the combination of all of that technology on one chip is a really powerful solution for the AI workloads that we're seeing really come to bear right now. So we have wonderful partnerships with open AI and discussions with Sam Altman and, you know, all of the applications that AI needs to drive and will be driving and is driving can run and do run on Intel processing.

Jim Hertzfeld (11:09):

That's awesome. And I love, and I love that frontier of, you know, around edge computing and ambient computing, and not to take away from the data center, but you know, some of that computing that's out in the field on demand, you know, in place. And you guys are making that happen, you know, and without having to call back to somewhere. Right? Right.

Carolyn Henry (11:28):

Yeah. No, those edge use cases are some of the most powerful, right? I think you're, you don't have the time for latency to go back and forth. You need the processing right there,

Jim Hertzfeld (11:36):

Right? Boy, you, this is like this, you're, you're going deep latency X 86. Like this is, this is one. We're we're it's a tech conversation.

Carolyn Henry (11:44):

Hey, I started as a technologist, now I'm a marketer. I think it's a good combo.

Jim Hertzfeld (11:48):

All right. I gotta agree. So I think we have a lot of everyday things. I'm just wondering if you had sort of line of sight on some sort of unexpected or emerging areas where you think, you know, semiconductors are making new impacts, maybe, you know, especially building on some of this edge computing. I mean, what do you, what are you kind of seeing out there from your, your customers? Anything you wanna share with things we haven't even thought about yet?

Carolyn Henry (12:09):

Oh, well, I'll, I'll share kind of a consumer lens too. 'cause Of course we have the, the B2C area with our partners. And I think the, that space is so exciting. So if you think about, you know, productivity, gaming and creativity, right? So these are everyday things that folks wanna do. You know, our Gen Z our younger folks are absolutely like 80% gamers, right? So the, the use cases is to use AI to drive a better gaming experience, to use the intel infrastructure to really bring that to life. It's, it's so exciting and it's hap it's right now, right? So I don't want people to think that they have to wait. Yeah. You know, five, 10 years from now, you, you can go into, you know, a retailer and purchase an AIPC and get some of these AI benefits into your life right now.

Carolyn Henry (12:58):

So we've maybe some of us have experienced, you know, zoom calls or all of that that came with remote work, right? The noise cancellation, the meeting minutes, the background imaging are so my hair doesn't look fuzzy, right? Like, all of this is happening with AI right? But we just kind of haven't connected it to that category yet, right? But yeah, there's so many use cases that are software vendors are working on. There's like new and exciting areas every day. And I'm just really excited to see what our combined ecosystem, you know, moves together. So

Jim Hertzfeld (13:33):

Yeah, I love these incremental changes. I was talk, talking to somebody this morning, you know about okay, what's, you know, what are you seeing in your corner with AI? And sometimes we're looking for the big thing, and a lot of it's just a lot of small things, right? Right. Hey, we can optimize this transaction. If I can optimize, you know, I have a call coming in and I, you know, can optimize, you know, the mood or the sentiment of this person who's coming in, and I can react to that in the call center. I mean, just tiny little optimizations, I feel like that is going to, you know, add up right. To, to a lot of things. And what I love about that is, you know, people can just sort of create a mindfulness, right? A consciousness about what they do in their jobs every day.

Jim Hertzfeld (14:14):

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> or how they observe their customers, you know, or their prospects. So, and gosh, I need to get, I need to get back into gaming because it's a great thing. This is amazing, the immersiveness, it's just, it's just, there's nothing like it. So, you know, one of the things, you know, I, I really admire Intel and what they've done for years, and we're gonna digitize how we work. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna have remote calls or remote podcasts, but, you know, we work a lot with a lot of traditional companies, manufacturers, banks, retailers. You mentioned they're digitizing their business, but also their products and their service offerings. Like you said, every company is a technology company. I guess, how would you, you know, how would you challenge some of those, those companies and those brands that, that you work with who are not quite embracing these innovations to think differently? I think, you know, everybody's looking for that, that way of doing it. You know, how do you, how do you see companies challenging themselves to think differently?

Carolyn Henry (15:10):

Yeah. Well, we see a ton of innovation coming out of some of those traditional sectors, right? I think that the budgets and the, the power behind the transformation may have shifted a little bit, right? So, you know, five years ago, three years ago, folks were talking about digital transformation projects. And now that, that has shifted to, okay, what's our AI project going to be? Yeah. Right? So it's just a different frame to have the conversation, but they're talking about, you know, increased productivity for their workforces, better service offerings and better customer interactions to drive that almost, you know, the high heightened expectations we all have as consumers, right? I have the same expectations of Amazon as I do of my bank, right? And so I can't go into that, that arena of the financial institution and be disappointed, right? Yeah. So I think they're coming out with really innovative solutions that drive that customer loyalty, that drives that demand for their services in new and different ways.

Carolyn Henry (16:09):

I think that, and that all comes back to compute, right? And what they're doing with the software and, and taking advantage and exploiting the hardware layers also on top of trust and security. So I can't stress that enough, right? So, you know, we have kind of a, a zero trust mantra, right? We, we have to make sure that, you know, even down to the chip level, there, there is a heightened amount of security that folks can rely on, because That's right. You know, the world's banking data, that's your money, that's the, the commerce that we all rely on. So we have to ensure that that is protected against bad actors

Jim Hertzfeld (16:43):

All Yeah, no, no. Back doors, responsible kill switches, you know, all that, all that stuff. Yeah. I mean, again, things that people just don't think about, right? Because it's may take for granted, u it's, it's ubiquitous, it's technical, you know, kind of along the lines of, of hypotheticals, you know, I think you had a, a great challenge and a question for me I wanna kinda raise for discussion, and where we opened was what if we lost semiconductors for a day? Like, what if they didn't, you know, what if they didn't exist or never existed? I think there are a lot of challenges were coming, we're overcoming, and a lot of it's driven by digital, but it's not all digital, right? Not everything is a digital solution. But the question, you know, I wanted to raise, and kinda your pers we could share perspective on is what if we were able to reach gender equity in a day or even for a day?

Jim Hertzfeld (17:30):

I know that's, that's near and dear to you. I have a daughter who's in, who recently graduated college and is in, in IT she had a nudge. And so, you know, I have a, i I have a different perspective or a renewed perspective, but just kind of wanted to get your take on that, Carolyn, when coming up in this industry, you know, and thank you. You mentioned the mainframe. So you've, you've seen a few things. Like what, what's your take on, on, you know, where we're at from a gender equity and even women in tech perspective.

Carolyn Henry (17:55):

Oh, I love this topic. It's so important. And as you said, near and dear to my heart, I think, you know, I would pop the champagne, right? Like, if we got there tomorrow, I am so not happy about having to wait 134 years, right? That's a world economic forum data that says we will get to gender parity and pay and representation in 134 years, right? That means that my daughter, I have a young daughter as well, her daughter like, may have a shot at kind of getting there, right? And, you know, we sometimes feel like as women or women in tech, you know, we've had wonderful careers and experiences and it feels like that parody is at our fingertips, right? But then when you step back and you look at the data, it tells another very challenging story. So before I get all doom and gloom on our, our folks listening, right?

Carolyn Henry (18:43):

I, I think we'd see so many gains, right? So one, we'd see better growth, right? We know that teams with gender representation in the top quartile drive 15% higher return, right? If you have one woman on your board as a company, right, you will have better results, right? This is, you know, not Carolyn's data. This is Deloitte, this is Chief, this is IBM, these are studies, this is data that is out there, right? So if you have more diverse teams, you have better decision making, you get through meetings faster. Like, hallelujah, thank you. I, I could do with less of those if, you know, have more diversity of thought, you bring innovations to market faster. It, it's been proven, right? There was a study in Europe of over 4,000 companies that drove time to market, you know, sometimes two years faster if they had gender representation.

Carolyn Henry (19:35):

That was different than we are experiencing right now. And what we're experiencing right now is probably 18% of women are in senior leadership role. And we know that if more women are leading companies, we're driving more growth. There is an upside of perhaps $7 trillion to the global economy, right? If we can really unleash our women in a new and different way. And that is so multifaceted, Jim, we could go on forever about, you know, how early this start. I work in the nonprofit space in education and stem, and our young women are getting socialized out of math and sciences by third grade. So that's about eight or nine years old. They're picking up the cues and the biases in society. Yeah. And, and kind of self-selecting out or, you know, being encouraged one way or the other. So there's so much we have to do to the education system, to even the childcare and support systems for parents and early, early parenting. I mean, it's just so fraught to be able to work on this multifaceted challenge, but it's one that, you know, I, I think about often I dive deeply into, I fully respect so many organizations that are really working at trying to approach this topic. But I am ready, I am ready for that day to be here tomorrow.

Jim Hertzfeld (20:57):

That is awesome, Carol. I, you know, and, and as you know, I've been in tech my whole life and built an appreciation over time and proud to say I'm an ally and, and, and not just for, you know, familial reasons. Thank you, sir. You know, I look at my daughter and I want the best for her, and I want her to be successful. But, you know, there are real challenges out there. And I do think, you know, the, the definition of mindfulness and understanding and awareness, and, you know, it comes down to like everyday education and practice is, is what I tell my, my colleagues. And I do, I wanna give a shout out to Kim Williams Chopek, who is Mike, the co-founder of this podcast. And she's, she's not on the podcast anymore because she's now the general manager of our commerce team. And she's too busy <laugh> and doing a, doing an awesome job. She is, she's one of my we call her one of my tech idols. Like, she's got the, she's no nonsense. She knows what she's talking about. She's just got a great sensibility for our customers. So super shout out to Kim out there. I hope you hope you listening <laugh>.

Carolyn Henry (21:57):

That's awesome.

Jim Hertzfeld (21:58):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we're proud of what we're trying to do as well. I'm glad we approached this subject. 'cause I do, I agree with you that it's vital for so many in so many ways, right? For the, the health of our society and our families, and like you said, innovation, I love, you know, a diverse team. You know, a bunch of group think is not the answer folks to, to making new things and then, and making old things run differently. So, yeah.

Carolyn Henry (22:24):

And if you think about what we were talking about earlier about AI and innovation, right? You know, the growth in the job growth that we're going to see over the next decade Yeah. Is 5%, six, 7% higher in those technology sector jobs. So we wanna prepare our young people to be able to take advantage of that job growth. And we want that to be equitable, right? I want 50% shot at it for each, for all the genders, right? Yeah. All of the, the fluidity of what we can experience. And it makes sure that that's not leaving anyone behind or leaving anyone out. And I think it's very, very important. Yeah. And Intel's been very proud and in 2019 we reached and exposed to the world kind of our pay equity standards. We have very aggressive rise goals that we will march to and measure until 2030 when we can reach that better leadership percentage, an equitable percentage. And that is a, a large part of why, you know, you'll see women flourishing at Intel is because we measure it, right? And we, yeah, we absolutely are mindful about it and setting representation at all of those levels.

Jim Hertzfeld (23:29):

Well, measurement, I'll go back to Andy Grow and management by objectives, that serves a lot of history there. And I think that's where it started. I'm glad you brought up measurement. That's a whole other topic we could go into.

Carolyn Henry (23:38):

Absolutely. You get what you measure.

Jim Hertzfeld (23:40):

Totally. Oh my gosh. Say that again, <laugh>. We'll just put that on one you on on, on loop. So Carolyn, I, I really appreciate the time. It was a great conversation, great to catch up on what Intel's doing and, and I to hear you guys innovating and you have always been on the forefront of things and including driving gender equity and, and, and building the teams, you know, we need on this planet. Just one final thing, you know, any, any advice, especially on that topic? Like, if, if for the listeners is there, I love the, they'll leave them with just like one thing they could do from your perspective, you know, to, to reach that goal. What would you leave folks with an action that they can take?

Carolyn Henry (24:17):

Oh, okay. I'm gonna do two. All right. So for parents. Oh,

Jim Hertzfeld (24:20):

Okay. Okay.

Carolyn Henry (24:21):

So I want you to expose your young children and your girls, especially to these amazing female role models. They're all around us. There's no lack of representation, right? Jim just shouted out one in his world, expose them to people because if you can see it, you can be it. And then for us in more leadership roles at companies, set those goals at every level and track them and make sure, and hold people accountable to meeting them. So I went two ways on you, Jim, so,

Jim Hertzfeld (24:53):

No, that's good. Actually, that is that, that's my new line through the rest of the week. If you can see it, you can be it. And then we'll just fall back to like, yep, please measure your stuff. <Laugh>. What? Great. Well, Carolyn, again, thanks from so much for being on the podcast, and I hope you have the great, great rest of the week.

Carolyn Henry (25:09):

Oh, it was my pleasure. Completely. Thank you. Take care. Thanks.

Joe Wentzel (25:12):

You've been listening to What If so what A digital strategy podcast. From Perficient with Jim Hertzfeld, we want to thank our Perficient colleagues, JD Norman and Rick Bauer for our music. Subscribe to the podcast and don't miss a single episode. You can find this season along with show notes at perficient.com. Thanks for listening.