The Lawyer Stories Podcast Episode 188 features Cheree McAlpine, Chief Legal Officer at Zoom, located in San Jose, California. Cheree tells us about growing up in rural Alabama and her journey from law school in Boston to Silicon Valley in San Francisco. Sheree tells us to listen, learn, and fall in love with the problems and to show up as your authentic self. Cheree was appointed as the Chief Legal Officer at Zoom in March 2024 a time when the platform helped us collaborate during the Covid-19 crisis. As Zoom continues to evolve, Cheree’s leadership will play a pivotal role in navigating the legal complexities of the dynamic tech landscape.1
The Lawyer Stories Podcast
Ep 188 | Cheree McAlpine | Chief Legal Officer at Zoom is a Leader in the Dynamic World of Legal Tech
You are listening to the Lawyer Stories podcast with host Benny Gold. Lawyer Stories was founded in July 2017 on Instagram and is an expanding global network of lawyers and law students sharing their personal journeys to the noble profession of the practice of law. Join us on this podcast as we dig deeper into these stories and hear from lawyers and law students from around the world in all areas of belief and profession. Here at Lawyer Stories we believe that every lawyer has a story. What's yours? Welcome to the Lawyer Stories podcast with Benny Gold. Today we welcome in Sherry McAlpine, Chief Legal Officer at Zoom located in San Jose, California. How are you? I'm doing well, Benny. So happy to be here, nice to meet you, and excited about the podcast. Thank you so much. Likewise. And yes, I did say Zoom for everybody listening. Zoom was such a huge thing this past couple of years. I big shout out to Zoom for keeping lawyers stories going. We had a lot of virtual events, networking events when I was first starting to meet everybody in the community. We use Zoom. We use Zoom for our podcast. And we're super excited to have you here with us. So first off, I want to just say congratulations on your position that you got like in March. We're in July now, so it's really pretty new. It's very new. So congratulations. Thank you. I mean, the story is similar to what you just described. I wanted to join a company that has an impact on people's lives and Zoom above any other company taught us that we can endure a pandemic, and without Zoom during the pandemic, we would not have had some of the connections that we so sorely needed. My own personal story, I had aging parents who were living in a rural community, and I wanted to connect with them. And I just sent my cousin over to their house and I said, just tell them to press that button. And they couldn't see me and my brother, and I'm not going to say that Zoom saved their lives, but it certainly had an impact on their mental health. Sure. And I mean, I think Zoom is like the foremost at the forefront. I mean, I think it's just something that everybody turned to over. I mean, even with my friends, you know, we do a little tailgate before a football game and they live elsewhere, and we would just meet up on Zoom. So it's really cool, and there's a lot of stuff that you're doing, like there's AI, and you're just trying to pull it together. I think it's a super interesting job, too. I mean, it's obviously a huge responsibility, and a lot of lawyers out there, and legal professionals are probably pretty interested in what you're doing there for Zoom. But we'll get into that, because I want to hear about your backstory first. Just tell us a little, like, where were you born and raised? So I am from rural Alabama. I grew up in a really tiny town in Alabama. It was so rural, Benny, that at one point my address was rural route one, that communication of how rural-- it's a small town on the Alabama, Georgia border. But it's also a town that I continue to go back to very often. I have family there. I have strong ties to the community, and I think people have perceptions about what it means to be in a rural community, but for me it was a great childhood and a great experience growing up. I was raised by a single mother, and she raised two children quite well in rural Alabama. Wow, that's awesome. That's a cool story. Rural route one. So like, is that like the location, or do they just kind of like, is there a rural route too? Like, who would be there? There actually is a rural route too, but there wasn't a rural route three. So it was a very small county method of identifying neighborhoods in the community at that time. They no longer use that system, thank god. But for a while there, yeah, it was rural route one, and it was a very rural town. Gotcha. Okay. So we haven't featured you on Laura's stories on Instagram, we're going to do that soon. But I did like just look at your story, I want to obviously get a background, and you wrote in your lawyer's story that you didn't grow up knowing any lawyers. So what inspired you, so my question is like, what inspired you to go to law school? And what was the moment that you knew you want to do attend law school? Yeah, so you're right. There weren't a lot of lawyers beating down my path in rural Alabama. I didn't know any lawyers, and in fact, Benny, I didn't meet my first lawyer until I was in law school, and my only connection I think to lawyers, which was very common to a lot of people in rural communities, was the TV, probably not just rural communities in a lot of communities, but I'm a corporate lawyer. So even on TV, they were more litigators, they were trial lawyers, they were trial lawyers at the end of 50 minutes, solved all the problems. And that was kind of my perception of a lawyer, it was not nothing like the reality of being a lawyer. I went to undergraduate University of Alabama, I majored in English literature, and I am from the rural community four years passed by, I'm graduating and oh no, what am I going to do with an English literature major in rural Alabama or in Alabama in general? But I had also been in RA, and so I applied to a lot of universities to become an RD, it was becoming more of a profession at that time. And I ended up as an RD in Boston. What's the RD, so RA? Resident advisor, or okay, director, director, it's the RD. And so I ended up in Boston as an RD, and I thought at that time, okay, I'm going to have a career in higher ed, I'll be like a dean of students or something like that. And at the time universities were having a lot of legal issues, and so I thought I'm going to have a career in higher ed, I'll go to law school, because then I don't have to go and get a PhD and do all of that work. I'll, my advanced degree will be a law degree. And so that was kind of my first inkling about going to law school. And then you're in law school, and I realized, you know, some of this stuff is pretty interesting. Yeah. Some of it, it's a little bit more fascinating, but I thought even at that time, I thought of law as litigation, and I thought, okay, I, if I decide to become a lawyer, I'll definitely be a litigation, I was really good at advocacy, all of the types of programs, absolutely going to be a litigator. Graduate from law school, I had clerked for a judge in Middlesex County. I asked him for references, who do you know? I think I want to be a litigator. I ended up moving to California, applying for jobs in California, and got a job at Wall Gotchill, and their, their corporate practice was very, very busy, and they had just started their San Francisco office, and they didn't have a litigation practice. They had patent litigation, but clearly you didn't know anything about that. And so I ended up getting thrown into a corporate practice, and I thought, oh, this is going to be a disaster. You know, I, I don't know a corporate lawyer, I don't know very much about corporate law. You know, if I'm going to go down this path, it was clear that it needed to be litigation, because that's the only thing that I can relate to. And I tell you, and I tell this story often, a partner walked by my office one day, and he walked by, and he stopped, and he came back, and he looked at my name on the door, and he looked at me, and he said, hey, you're new here, aren't you? And I said, yes, he said, what are you working on? I said, I'm literally just sitting down at my desk, and he said, come with me. And I got up from my desk, and I followed him, and I ended up following him for, you know, for two different law firms, and that began my career as a corporate lawyer. Oh, so he was like, follow me to like my next, his, my meeting, he followed me to my meeting, and I'm sitting in this meeting, and he's talking to a client, and it's an imminent deal. He was a securities lawyer, and coming out of that, at some point in the meeting, I realized, oh, I probably should be taking notes. And so it just was the beginning of an amazing opportunity, an amazing career. Silicon Valley was a very interesting place at that time. I never thought I'd be a tech lawyer, I never thought I'd be a corporate lawyer, and I've only ever been a tech lawyer and a corporate lawyer, and I have loved it. And you stayed with the same guy, like, for two jobs, like he kind of- I think for two different firms, and then, and then I eventually went in house. I wanted to be closer to the business. That's what I loved. I loved the, I loved the, the, the partnership that happens. When you do that at a law firm, there's a lot of different clients, but I really loved rolling up my sleeves, learning the business. How does my legal advocacy advance the business? And I tell you, it is that love of the business and how it mails with the law that has let me on this long journey as a corporate lawyer to where I am today at Zoom. Yeah, you have a very, very impressive resume there of where you've been before Zoom and then coming in here in March. I just want to comment one thing on law school. I know we kind of passed that, but first of all, lost it. Like I live in Massachusetts, so go South, it's a super cool. You went to Suffolk Law, okay, that's a very good law school around here. But also, you know, you, you mentioned earlier, like you didn't, you never met a lawyer, like before going to law school, like, so that, that to me, like, that strikes me, like, that's something pretty strong about your character and who you are, like being able to just enter law school, like never meeting a lawyer, sort of just like, you know, I think this is for me, I like this and then, like, succeeding. I think that that's, like, huge. Yeah, you know what, it was, I love the risk taking. I love that this created an opportunity because, of course, I didn't want to, you know, return to rural Alabama and I've had the opportunities that it presented to me and even sitting into those, sitting in those classes that first year and meeting my first lawyer and starting to really develop an understanding of what lawyers do and I still wasn't quite convinced that I would be a lawyer again, I thought, this will supplement other things. And I always, even when I talked to lawyers and people, students in Moscow today, I always think, you know, you don't have to be a lawyer to be in law school, law degree can help you with many other things. And so, I think that was my frame of mind, at least that first year and I think it was only in about the second half of the second year that I started to take a legal career more seriously. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's... So you do have the good litigation experience, I mean, you went to wheel golf shells like a huge firm. I mean, they're everywhere, well, I know they're in Manhattan and they're just all around. Yeah, they're a big firm, they're a big firm. But never one day of litigation and as a GC, of course, I have to manage litigation but I let the litigators do the litigating and I do the managing of the litigators who are doing the litigators because it would be a disaster for me to try to try a case with my corporate background. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's smart, you know, to kind of stay doing what you're focused on. So it seems like a lot of what you were doing was sort of timing, right? Like how much is timing played a role in like getting your jobs and moving to Silicon Valley at the right time? I think timing plays a big role and it's also kind of seizing opportunities when they are placed in front of you and being bold about that and believing in yourself and thinking that you can do things and achieve things. The partner looked at me one day and said, "Follow me." And I was not afraid to follow him in that meeting and to go to two firms and it really just solidified my confidence as a lawyer, the types of projects, it was the dot com period, the types of projects that I was working on were really transforming the technology industry. I worked with partners who had a lot of confidence in my skill, probably more confidence than I had in my own skill at the beginning, but really had a lot of confidence and I learned a lot and it just, it really did set that course for where I am today. Yeah, that's great. So I mentioned you have incredible experience at like some really well-known corporate entities and so I'm just curious, and I'm sure a lot of people out there are curious like what qualities and characteristics do you really need to succeed at like a C-suite legal position. What does it take as a person? Yeah, I mean, of course you got to decide if that's where you want to be. It's not. I once had a CEO that I worked for who said, "Every day is not a high five day." And so if you're looking for the nonstop high five days, then please don't run in the direction of the C-suite, run in a different direction. What it takes is someone who first of all wants to be there, who understands the business, who's willing to roll up the sleeves and operationalize the legal aspects of the job. If I needed someone to just tell me the law, who just tells me the risk, then outside councils are great for that. But what makes an in-house lawyer special and what makes an in-house lawyer at the C-suite level special is that we're not just lawyers, we're also business people and we're able to operationalize the legal piece of it to help solve problems for the company. I always tell my team and I tell young lawyers when I talk to them, the in-house lawyers role is to help mitigate risk for the company, but also to help drive business success. You can't have one without the other. And if you want to sit in the C-suite, you need to understand that role of mitigating risk, but you also need to understand what that means to put on the business hat to try to drive business and that's the important thing. Yeah. Is the legal department zoom big, like do you have people like attorneys who are working there and how does that work? Yeah, I mean, our legal department is over a hundred people globally, but that includes lawyers, that includes contract managers, that includes peer legal homes, we also manage trust and safety, which is just not monitoring our sites, but when issues of fraud or cyber issues come up related to our site, we also handle those as a legal department as well. Okay. So what advice do you have for young professionals wanting to make it into C-suite? I would say be strategic about your career. Be very thoughtful about where it is you want to go, talk to people who've gone there, find out how they got there, create your own map, your own plan on how you're going to get there. But I think the biggest problem is that sometimes young lawyers make or young professionals make is that they think I'll sit here and I'm just going to work super hard. I'm just going to put in my heart work will be recognized and I will have the success that I want to have. You need more than that. You need more. You need to know how to be a self advocate. You need to know how to build relationships. You need to know how to solve problems and you need to know how to, I'll call it, have a little ability to promote the good works and things that you're doing so that it gets the right places. And I think oftentimes young professionals are too shy to do some of those things. Yeah. Right. Now you in doing some of those things or saying or most often is I'm just going to sit here and let my heart work speak for itself. Okay. This speaks for itself and people may recognize the hard work that you're doing. That's only a piece of it. You've got people who think it's great that you can do other parts as well. I think that that's a great combination with all of that. Well, you just said those elements and yeah, you do have to be like, you know, you have to work hard but there's so much more than that, you know, the self promotion and there's just so much more than that than just being able to work hard and, you know, put your head down and grind, I guess. So that's, that's really good advice. Thank you. So I'm curious too, like what, what kind of issues like in the legal department are we handling over at Zoom? I mean, look, we are a AI first company and it is an exciting time to be a tech lawyer because we are talking about AI and legal issues related to AI all the time. Wow. So we're talking about issues or matters or first impressions, so there's not a lot of specific laws around AI and there's not a lot of specific guidelines to help us chart our course. And so in a lot of respects, we're charting our own path with other companies to make sure that we're doing it in a responsible way. You know, I'll give you an example of one of the biggest things that we talk about at Zoom is the responsible use of data, right? And so making sure that we're doing it responsibly and ethically, but also that we're doing it legally and mindfully. Okay. That's, that's interesting. And then definitely that's, I mean, obviously you're collecting, I don't know how much data but a lot. So you want to, you have to like protect that, make sure it's not leaked or whatever like mitigate risk like we talked about earlier, right? Zoom does not collect customer data to train our model. Gotcha. Okay. I didn't, I didn't mean to say that. I wasn't trying to. So just let me do that. We're very, we're very deliberate about doing that and we're very outspoken about. Okay. All right. Good. Sorry about that. That was my part. I'm so glad that I get to go on record with that once again because it's so, it's important to our customers. Okay. Good. That is important. Do you think the legal issue, and I know this was sort of before your time, but do you think the legal issues and what the discussions have changed since COVID with, with Zoom at Zoom in general? Like, has there been any, have you seen it? Have they, did they see anything different because of COVID and like the increased use maybe? I think that it, COVID was not just unique to the legal department at Zoom. Sure. I, I was a lawyer at a different company during the pandemic and, you know, some of the biggest challenges that we had, which, you know, Zoom had and other companies, it was the workforce and how do you deploy the workforce doing a pandemic and how do you do it in a way that keeps people safe, that's responsible, but also keeps the doors open and keeps the, you know, I have, enable our ability to provide products to our customers. I think, Zoom had to have that challenge, the company that I was at during the pandemic had that challenge and companies around the world had the challenge of keeping workers safe. I think in this post-pandemic environment, it's been about how do we return to work? You know, we, you know, what are not just legal considerations, but also business considerations and returning to work. I think that has probably been one of the, if you walk into any C-suite or any management meeting, that's probably a topic that's been on people's mind and part of the agenda at most companies. Okay. Makes sense. So, so what's it like to be a lawyer in tech? I know you've had some great experience, like, tell us about it. Yeah, you know, for, you know, for someone who was a English literature major, not an engineer, not a biologist, not a chemist, does not have a serious background, I have loved every minute of being a tech lawyer. And what has been interesting about it for me is that I've been doing this for a very long time. And so I've seen the different iterations of technology. I was there for the .com phase. I was there for your net phase, I was there for the social media phase. And now I get to be here for the AI phase and so you get to see what technology is capable of doing and not just how it stabilizes economies and drive economies, but really just the innovation and the creation and what we're capable of as humans, interest really pushing technologies in ways that hopefully will make our lives better. Do you see any threat to like lawyers with AI? Yeah, people ask me this all the time. I think it's going to make our jobs better. I think there's something that is so unique and necessary about how risk is balanced by lawyers. It's nuance and I don't think machine learning yet has really understand that nuance and that situational awareness that lawyers bring to how we provide advice and counsel. So I'm less concerned about that. I think that technology and AI may be something that we can use to make our jobs better, using AI and machine learning to help with contract management, to help with the good and execution of commercial agreements. Imagine how we use this for entity management around the world and outside counsel management. All of those things, I think we are starting to see AI in these areas and I think we will continue to see AI's and less concerned about the threat to the profession. But I do think if there's any threat to the profession, as for those who are not willing to embrace technologies and find out ways in which we can use it to make our lives better. Yeah, I know you mentioned your parents getting on Zoom and trying to press the button like how would you go about like kind of presenting technology to somebody who's not so tech savvy? Yeah, I mean case in one, it was definitely my parents during the pandemic at the end of the day. I think you make that case as to how it improves lives, right, how it will make your experience better, whether it is driving an electric car that helps the environment or whether it is pressing the button because now you can see my face when you talk to me and we can have this great podcast and we can read each other's facial expressions and all of those things are great at making that case on how it improves lives and how it's easy. The user experience has to be one that is easy and friendly, that makes people so engaged that they are not afraid of it, that they want to embrace it. You and I both have had experiences with technology that have just not been user friendly, has been just kind of clunky, we're less inclined to kind of go back to that experience, but when the experience is easy and useful and it makes things better, I think we're running towards it. Oh, totally. I mean, I think Zoom has been so helpful and really like easy and user friendly. And I obviously have a subscription for lawyer stories because I want to keep the chatting going and I think it's just having multiple conversations and bringing multiple people in so it's been a great experience. So what have you learned? What are some couple lessons that you've learned along the way in your career? I mean, you've had some incredible jobs. I have some of them listed here, I don't need to go into all of them, but just one thing after another. First of all, how did you manage to make those transitions between such amazing places and build such a good resume for yourself? What's a good trick? And I know you did talk about self-promotion, but. I think even more than self-promotion, it is when you're building the resume, make sure you're building the reputation in the right way. Most of my jobs, certainly my GC level jobs, have not come from seeing a job posting where I sent in a resume and got a call. It comes from hit hunters who know me or other CEOs or CFOs who know me or have worked with me who said, hey, I think Shari would be great for this job or pick up the phone and give her a call and at least talk to her. So that reputation is very important. What happens now, I'll let everybody in on a secret, but what happens now is the back channel, right? I can give you five references and people are like, yeah, I know those five people are going to say great things about you, but I have a lot of these people who know you and know me and LinkedIn, those are the people that I want to talk to. And so just making sure that you, when you're in the legal profession, everybody's not going to like you because sometimes it's just an adversarial profession. It is an adversarial profession, but even when the people don't like you, respect the work that you're doing, respect the work that you're bringing to the table and making sure that reputation is solid. And I will tell you that in order to be a successful person, the C suite, in order to be a successful chief legal officer, chief financial officer, you've got to fall in love with the problems. You've got to be able to see the problems, solve problems and be known as someone who can solve problems and fix problems that help drive whether it's revenue, whether it is operational efficiency, whether it is the right level of risk management for a company, but you've got to fall in love with the problems and be willing to fix those problems that you're falling in love with. It's easy to fall in love with the solutions and it's easy to celebrate the victories. But it's those people who recognize problems and said, "I'm going to love all over this problem until I fix it." Those are the people who typically you see in the C suite and typically it would be successful and that's some of the reasons why I'm sitting in front of you today. Is that a mindset shift or is that sort of like, you know, I actually, you know, I really heart for these problems type of thing because I, you know, like, I say, like sometimes if I'm asked, I say, I love the journey. You know, like, I know this is so different, but I like the lawyer stories journey, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not. It's fine if it takes a little while. I'm enjoying the journey. So, like, you're talking about, and I don't know if, I mean, like, if technically like they're the, just looking at the reasoning behind both of them, just, I carry us what your thoughts are. Yeah. I mean, I think you got to love the journey because the journey gets you to the part where you're the executive, making executive level decisions that doesn't happen overnight. And it does, it's not always a straight line, right? And so that journey sometimes have twists and turns and so, yeah, you got to learn, you got to love the journey as well. I do think it is akin to falling in love with the problems, but you've got to find out where are the weak spots, where are the pain points, what are the problems, where are the points that are barriers to a company's executing, where are the problems that are holding back revenue, and what can I do as a lawyer to help ease some of those barriers. Okay. And, and you can't solve everything overnight. And so it is a journey and trying to kind of figure out what my, my job, sitting on the C suite, being responsible to other members of executive management team, shareholders and a board is to make sure that I'm equally focused on problem solving as I am on all the other things that I have to do in my job. So like, where do you even start, like when you, you take on this huge for all that zoom, right? Like, where do you even start to be like, okay, like I need to figure out the problems and the weak spots and the pain points, like, I mean, like, I mean, you've been there since March, like, I would, I would, I don't know what I would honestly, I'd probably be, you know, reading the manual or something, I don't know, together a 90 day plan. And I think at the top of that plan always has to be your listening and learning tour, right? Where you're meeting with leader leaders and you're asking them those questions. What's going well? What's not going well? Okay. What's proud of? How can I help? How can I really help? And then you kind of, you take that back and you operationalize the feedback that you, that you've gotten and you form a plan, I like to call it during the first 90 days, the 90 day plan, because it's about listening and learning and because you're not just meeting with executives, you're also meeting with your team, your media stakeholders, and you're starting to form a sense over time about how you can bring value to an organization. And I always say to leaders that I work with is that at the end of the 90 days, what I need to be able to demonstrate is that I've been listening, I learn, I can put together my one year strategy, but ultimately I'm starting to give you an indication that I can bring value to the organization and that piece is that I'm thinking, is this a job where I think I can bring value to absolutely and do the key stakeholders, my management, my team, my subordinates, my peers, is everybody else starting to form that same opinion about me and my ability to bring value, that's critically important. That's super helpful actually, to know that you're talking to this one, that one, and is it usually just kind of, I don't want to say higher ups, but is there a level, do talk to like, I don't know what other positions are at Zoom, but is it everybody, how many people would you say to, you talk to, or maybe you have your staff talk to them to organize some sort of like a position? I think it is your peers, your manager, your immediate staff, and then other key stakeholders because there could be people, key roles that don't fit into any of those other three, but they could be the holder of the information that you need to help you start forming your opinion about how you're going to bring value and so even before day one, before I even start a job, I'm reading the 10Qs, I'm reading the 10Ks, I'm looking at press releases, I'm looking at the products, and how the products, and who are the customers, and starting to form an opinion about, oh, I want to make sure that I'm touching people who are responsible for these things because I know they're going to have critical information that will help me in my 90 day plan. That's amazing, so Sherry, do you ever see trends after talking to people, is that what happens, like you start to see trends of like, okay, will this person sort of mention that, and then this thing looks like it's kind of trending to what this person said, is that? I think it's very common for people to have, for there to be some consensus around what certain pain points are, often times you couldn't pain for a while, and so until somebody falls in love with it and is willing to tackle it on, then there will probably always be a consistent consensus that certain things are problems. So the answer to the question is yes, there's oftentimes one or two or three, or even more where the more people you talk to, the more people are saying, hey, if you can help us with this, this will be great, but then you also get some things that are unique, and then you get some things that you say, yeah, that's important, but that's not going to be my 90 day focus, that may be my one year focus, or that may be something that my team will handle, or maybe that's for another department. It's amazing. I think I might adopt that at my full time job and call it the sherry model, because I have done that, I've talked to people, but I don't do it as often as I should, to figure out a lot of those things. I do it as much as I can, and I talk to people here and there, but it's not really systematic. You know what you obviously know what you're doing, but do it for a while, you have amazing jobs, and you have a system, you know, you're already checking out A, B, and C person before you step foot in the C suite, so that's really, that's really interesting. Thanks for sharing that. So who inspires you, and what inspires you? I want that question, because I think I'm inspired most by everyday people who show up as their authentic selves, and people who are willing to be creative, willing to be funny, willing to take risk, I love seeing people who will buck the trend, who are willing to kind of walk to their own beat. Those are the people that always get my attention. As you know, the legal profession is not one where you can buck the trends a lot. It's one where you've got to be persuasive, where judgment matters, where perceptions matters, and so I always am curious and inspired by people who, whether it's in the legal profession in the business or even outside, who are willing to do things like start their own podcast. But willing to kind of do things that are creative and try new things and do that independent of others' perceptions. Cool. I like that. That's really cool. So you recently spoke, and I know I'm going to butcher how I say this, this shows maybe a sophistication level, but in France, is it was in France? Hands. Hands, okay. So advancing equality. I just wanted to ask you about that a little bit, like what that was like speaking there, and maybe what your message was? Yeah. I mean, it was a wonderful experience, first of all, you're in the south of France, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Cool. I mean, I've been to Paris. You've had about that. In France, Lions is, it's a huge event that is hailed annually, and it's largely marketing advertising professionals, but is expanded. And I was there as part of the female quotients advancing equality initiative, and it was really talking about advancing equality in the workplace and how showing up as your authentic self helps you feel that you're in a safe space and how do you protect safe space? And then what happens when people are, you know, what are the triggers of stress and trauma in the workplace when people don't feel connected? And so I was asked to speak about that, and it was just a great, and one of the best things about that is someone quoted me who was in the audience and tagged me in the quote, and I was like, I was so excited about that because I thought people were there, they were listening, and they took something away from it. Sure. Yeah. No, that's great. That's a great feeling, for sure. And so, Shari, one year ago, you were named top 100 diverse leaders in tech. So what does that honor mean to you? Look, for a young black girl growing up in rural Alabama who never knew any lawyers until they were actually in law school, to be called one of the most diverse lawyers in tech, be on that list of top 100. It means a lot to me because it means that maybe other young girls in rural communities or young boys in rural communities of all colors, but who have never seen a lawyer may have an opportunity to see themselves in their future careers through me and to see the sky is full of unlimited potential for everyone. I love it, that's great. So just going back a little bit to Zoom, tell us a little bit about, I think this was a quote, Zoom is revolutionizing collaboration and shaping how the world works. Yeah. I think it's pretty, it's pretty straightforward, but I'd like to hear it from you a little bit. I said that, and I truly meant it because I think everybody gets both pieces of it. But revolutionizing collaboration is the story that I shared with my parents because I was really sensing from the phone that they were just wasting away over time. They were in a community where they were isolated, and having the ability to connect with us through over video, really, I think, save their mental health. And my story was not a unique story. Everybody had a Zoom pandemic story about connection, whether it was the happy hours that people were doing on Friday evening, or how they were connecting and continuing to work, or talking to their parents, or talking to their children, or talking across countries, everybody had a story. And that is revolutionizing how we were able to collaborate in a crisis. And I love that, and it is also revolutionizing how we work. I think on the day that we all decided that we had to go home and we weren't going to be going to the office, there was a lot of fear on how we would connect, how we would continue to work, how the economy continued to survive with people not in the office. And what we've discovered through Zoom is that we were able to work quite efficiently remotely. That's true. You were able to continue to do the business that we needed to do because of the wonderful tool that Zoom was. And so when I think about revolutionizing collaboration and how we work, no one has taught us better than Zoom on how to do that. Yeah. No, I love that. Collaboration. That's in a crisis. I think that that's an amazing way to put it. So what's up next for Shari? Well, every day is fun, I love being a lawyer, I love being a lawyer at Zoom, I love the legal challenges and legal opportunities that a job like that, I love the team and what we're trying to do with Zoom workplace, it's just a lot of fun. But I also like to have fun, it's a summer, I'll take a holiday, I love Vikram yoga. I do that and I'm trying to work my way through the top 100 restaurants in the world. Really? And I've done about half of the ones that are on my list and so that's one of the things that keeps me motivated, it keeps me fun and that I do that is in and of the legal profession. That's totally fun. So tell us about like one of the best meals you've had or like where was it? So that's always the second question that people ask me, I had a whole show I was interviewed at Zoom about the top 100 restaurants because someone got word that I've been working my way through the list. My number one restaurant in the world just happens to be the number one restaurant in the world. It's a restaurant in Lima, Peru called Central and it is wonderful cuisine, it is edible food, it is great service, it is just enough fancy to be kind of at the top of the list, but not too fancy that it is inedible, it is a wonderful restaurant. It is also number one on the list, it was number one on the list and then kind of fell off and now it's number one again and there's a reason for that because the food is delicious. And you've been there once? I've been there twice. So what do you look for when you go into these restaurants? Number one above everything else is taste, you know, there are other things like creativity and service and you know, what are the options? I like the tasting menu because I like to, these are restaurants that you, if you're lucky you go to twice, but most of these restaurants, if you're lucky you'll want, so I like the tasting menu because I want to try as many things as possible and so I, at the end of a tasting menu, it is, did I enjoy everything on the menu or did I just employ one or two things on the menu? A great restaurant means that that entire setting was fantastic and that's not always the case. Now are these top hunters, is that like sort of like the Michelin or like summer Michelin or is that? Yeah, the list is not the same obviously, obviously if you're considered to be, Michelin has a list obviously, but if you're considered to be some of the tops in the world, then most of these are Michelin star restaurants, but Fooders has a list, Travel Magazine has a list, yeah, there are different lists. Was the Peru restaurant on two separate visits or once? Like you liked it so much, you went back the next day. I have done that at places, but like two separate times in Peru and we're equally delicious and I feel very well qualified to proclaim it as my number one because I had it twice years apart. That's amazing, okay, so Cheri, is there anything else, any other advice you would like to give the lawyer store's community? I think just if this is what you want to do, it can be a wonderful career and don't be afraid to try something different in the legal profession, there are a lot of different areas of practice. Some people want to be individual contributors, some people want to be legal managers, some people want to manage legal departments, and some people want to just be a subject matter of expertise in a specific area, all of those wonderful. Well, you're doing tremendous work at a really cool company. It's been an honor to talk to you and to thank you for sharing your story and a little bit about what you do. I think it's really interesting and I'm going to try to take back some of those things to my own day to day. I love it and it's been such a pleasure to talk to you and to be a part of the lawyer's stories podcast. Love it. Please stay right there, everybody else. Thanks for tuning in and wherever you are in the world today, enjoy yourselves. Cheers. [MUSIC] (upbeat music)