Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Deb’s book is Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work on how to overcome the obstacles women still face in the workplace – especially in tech. It’s in hardback at https://amzn.to/47OUO9E, and audio at https://amzn.to/3Y6EmOQ.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. Find details about the boo here, or check out the Kindle version or the audiobook.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson; it’s available in hardback, on Kindle, and as an audiobook.
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Paperback, Kindle, and audiobook
• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback and audiobook
• Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback and audiobook.

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Deb Liu joined Ancestry’s helm in March 2021 as President & CEO and a member of the company’s Board of Directors. Named one of Business Insider’s most powerful female engineers, Deb has worked in the tech industry for over 18 years with previous leadership roles at PayPal, eBay, and Facebook where Liu created and led Facebook’s Marketplace. She also led the development of Facebook’s first mobile ad product for apps and its mobile ad network, in addition to building the company’s games business and its payments platform, including Facebook Pay.

Now Liu is guiding Ancestry into a new chapter of growth and innovation – all to empower journeys of personal discovery to enrich lives. Under her leadership, Ancestry is undertaking a bold vision focused on building a more inclusive experience. Where Ancestry has traditionally been Designed for Some, Deb is leading the company to Ancestry for All, where EVERYONE can see themselves and their families reflected in the product, regardless of family dynamics, race, ethnicity, and heritage. And the proof is in her business strategy – from the release of their inaugural Impact Report, to the acquisition of Geneanet, a leading French genealogy company, and strengthening Ancestry’s executive bench, by hiring former execs from Amazon and Facebook and appointing a new female Chief Product Officer.

Actively involved with promoting diversity and women in tech, Deb is also the founder of Women In Product, a nonprofit to connect and support women in the product management field.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] This is innovating leadership, co creating our future. I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, where we help leaders be future ready. Helping us in that mission today is Deb Liu, president and CEO of Ancestry. We’ll be talking about her take on leadership and how she’s bringing her vision for Ancestry to life.

Deb, thank you so much for joining us.

Deb: It’s great to be here.

Maureen: You have a vision of creating Ancestry for All. What does that mean and what do you do to take it from an idea to manifesting it in reality for your employees and your customers?

Deb: Yeah, you know, mission statement is empowering journeys of personal discovery. And what we love is having people to be able to capture and learn about their family stories, their family history. And that hasn’t always been easy, you know, depending on your background, depending on where you’re from, you know, it might be easier or harder.

And so part of the work that we [00:01:00] want to do is actually enable it for everybody.

Maureen: Dan and I were talking, our producer, before you jumped on about some of the his family’s challenges in learning about their lineage. What are some examples of why it might not be available for all?

Deb: Well, part of the issue is, for example, Okay. There are people who come from communities and societies where, you know, paper records are not really kept or not available. And that is really hard because a lot of our documentation is using and scanning from archives. It’s actually taking family Bibles and parish records.

It’s working with governments who have captured and scan that information to make it available to future generations. But there are a lot of communities for whom that’s not true. as well. Or, for example, for previously enslaved generations, you know, that, you know, before nine, uh, 1870, there’s a large group of, of the population for whom there is no records at all because they were not considered part of the records of the United States.

And so some of the things that we do, for example, is [00:02:00] the work of, um, we have a new collection called the Articles of Enslavement, where pre 1870, we take newspaper articles, where there are stories that capture where people are sold or people are, are transported. And some of that work is to document and not forget.

The history that we have, even before maybe governments are actually capturing them.

Maureen: Now, I assume then someone who was enslaved in the U. S. could also potentially track their lineage back to their communities within Africa or wherever they, they originated.

Deb: Yes. Well, part of that is not just the records, but also DNA. DNA is such a powerful tool where we can connect people both with living relatives and matches, but also The community journey. Where are you from? Originally? How many generations ago to that community actually, you know, come and where did they live?

And where did they enter the United States? We have a lot of [00:03:00] that because of the scientific work we’ve been able to do to trace both origins. But also something we call community journeys, which is where did the those from various places come and settle? What are the communities where we’re seeing that DNA through the centuries and so that we can bring it up to today?

Maureen: That’s fascinating. So can you tell me just a little bit more how that works behind the scenes? Because we don’t think about, I don’t think about maybe how I think about how the people traveled. So my, Parents are both from Indiana, um, of European ancestry. We can track some of that, but we don’t think about they settled in Indiana.

They met these people. They intermarried with, um, part of our family is German. Part is Scotch. Part is Irish. There were originally people, I think, from Scotland, Ireland, and Germany, who [00:04:00] met somewhere and, and had children and those children are then a mix. And then they met and married and mixed with other people.

It seems like it would get pretty muddy pretty quickly.

Deb: Well, what’s interesting is we think about our ancestors as individuals, but you know migration happen in waves You know, things like, I think an example is the Irish potato famine, where large waves of people entered the United States or traveled to other countries in order to, to, to build new lives. And you see that, you know, that entire communities are built where people settled, you know, certain parts of, um, certain parts of, say, the Midwest are settled by German immigrants or Swedish immigrants.

And you see that throughout history. You know, there are folks who who are French who went to Louisiana, and so these waves of migration create what we call community journeys. And these communities are what make us who we are today. And you’re actually giving example of how these communities intermarried and create your ancestors [00:05:00] and and your life today, but you can actually trace back and encoded in your DNA.

Is that journey from where are you from originally and then where what communities have traveled through what places over the decades?

Maureen: Brilliant. And so that’s a little bit then of what it is. Can you talk a little bit about why knowing our lineage is so important to humans at this point in history? Because it does seem crucial to identity. Hmm.

Deb: Yeah, you know, we’ve done studies where it says like, you know, even knowing the names of your grandparents, knowing their journeys builds resilience and kids, you know, understanding the stories of, you know, we look at history as if it’s so long past and yet just really understanding the challenges that your own family face and how they overcame that.

That gave you the life you have today can actually make everybody in your family more resilient. And so it is so important that we just not look at the present, but that we are the [00:06:00] history of thousands of people who make, you know, millions of decisions that bring us the life that we have today.

Maureen: It does seem important that the phrase I really like is the arc of time. And when I can put things into context that I may be having a bad day or a week or a month, but as I think about my life, and I’m not 20, so that that arc of time is longer and I’m able to take more perspective. But then if I look at my family history, my grandmother, lived on a farm during the depression and they didn’t have enough food, even though they were on a farm, to feed all the kids.

So the kids went and worked with other families on other farms where they had sufficient food. That’s a very different reality and, and experience than I’ve had. And I do hearken to some of those stories when I’m Complaining about something way less important [00:07:00] than can’t feed my family.

Deb: Yeah, absolutely. And I think as you look at the history of your own family and the migration, you’ll realize that, you know, the amount of adversity that we have overcome as a country, as a family, as a community, You know, it reminds us that we can do amazing things as well.

Maureen: So tell me then, because we’re talking about lineage, tell me a little bit about your background, because that’s, I’m assuming part of that background and things that you took from your heritage brought you to this job versus a job at Budweiser or someplace else.

Deb: I don’t drink, so I guess Budweiser will be out. But yes, um, my, um, you know, my, my grandmother and grandfather and my mother’s side, you know, they, they had actually not met before they married. So there’s an arranged marriage, um, and this was very traditional at the time. My [00:08:00] grandmother was not educated.

She couldn’t read really. Um, and you know, she raised seven children who are very successful and, and gone on to do amazing things who live all over the world. And I just can’t imagine that she could imagine the world would change so much in her lifetime before she passed. And so, you know, I think about that, right.

That you marry into a family, not knowing. Where are you going to go and, you know, and what your life is going to be like. And I think a lot about kind of how I carry that on to my own future generations, to my children, to my daughters and my son, and, you know, the history of, you know, my mom and my dad coming to America with a couple of suitcases, a few hundred dollars.

And then they had to make enough money to buy a ticket home. You know, they came at a time when they applied to one school. They had never been to America and they just showed up with a letter and they just lived an entire life. Completely away from their family and the resilience that takes the courage it takes to leave everything, you know, and everyone you’ve ever known to go to a country where you don’t speak the [00:09:00] language that well and, you know, to go to college to, to build a life.

And in many ways, they live the American dream, and they were so grateful for everything this country has been for them. But also they had so many dreams for their children and their grandchildren too.

Maureen: I imagine they would be very proud of where their grandchildren are now.

Deb: Absolutely. So my father passed about 11 or 12 years ago. My mom passed away a few months ago, and before she passed, I actually had my daughter interview her. And, you know, she, she shared how just, you know, how, what a wonderful life she had had and, you know, how she grateful she was for everything that she had had a chance to experience.

Maureen: What was she most proud of about you and your accomplishments?

Deb: we grew up in a small town in the, in the deep South and South Carolina, and, you know, they lived in American dream that they owned a home, you know, had a couple of cars and, you know, never getting, they worried about making the mortgage, but they didn’t, you know, struggle and they wanted that for us.

And so in many [00:10:00] ways that like the career that I had, the things I went on and had an opportunity to do in tech has been really surprising for them. I remember my dad saying to me the first time I got my first paycheck, um, and my first full time job, he said, you know, you make more money than I do and you just graduated from college.

And he had worked so hard as an engineer for the government. And so he’s like, I’m so proud that you’re able to eat what we were, you know, that’s what parents want is for your children to succeed greater than, you know, what you could have imagined. And so, you know, she was so, um. Gracious. She lived with us for many years and helped us with the kids.

And she was very close to them. And I, I, you know, I know that they would, they know how much she loved them and what’s the best for them as well.

Maureen: how wonderful to have multi generations being close. Mm. We were not geographically close. My dad was in the military, so we traveled or moved around and, and I adored my grandmother and loved [00:11:00] our visits home, but they happened once a year or twice a year.

Deb: But in a lot of ways, they’re an anchor point for you as well, right? Someplace you go every year that, you know, it’s going to happen.

Maureen: well, and what I learned, and I realized this is a slightly off topic, but not entirely because it is the word anchor point and how I, you know, grew as a leader is absolutely informed by my grandmother, the person she was and the leader she was. She ran a flower shop. She had worked in a grocery store that was so minimal education.

I don’t know that she graduated from high school. And yet she went on to have a job and then own a business. And when her husband was laid off, she was the primary wage earner for the rest of their lives. And so also just a different role for women than we’ve seen [00:12:00] in some communities that she was very much the matriarch.

Deb: was true of my own grandmother. And she was the matriarch after my grandfather passed my, both of my other three grandparents passed when they were quite, uh, I don’t. But I go, but my, um, my grandmother, she, you know, my grandfather has successful business and she went on to run it, even though she was not traditionally educated in the same way that we would expect.

And so she was the matriarch of the family. And we went to see her and, you know, spend time with her. And I brought my kids, you know, to see her when they were young as well.

Maureen: Did her journey inform what you saw as possible as a young woman in leadership?

Deb: Absolutely. I mean, she was able to accomplish so much from such humble beginnings. You know, and to go through so much and to live the incredible life she had to be able to, you know, be the chair of the board of her, um, husband’s company and to, you know, help build it. And, you know, when he passed in the sixties, he was quite [00:13:00] young.

And so she lived and she, she really, um, care for her family and her family became the center of her universe.

Maureen: Back to things we don’t necessarily consider on a daily basis, the impact our grandparents, our parents, our great grandparents have on the model they pass down to us. And it’s, it’s not just the college funding, it’s the modeling of how they think about things.

Deb: My parents moved to the South, um, and my dad got a job in the government and my mom who had previously, you know, had a job in a normal office and, um, she started working just part time to make ends meet. And so, you know, she worked at a Chinese restaurant, you know, a fast food restaurant.

She, you know, she did so many things. She drove a bus. She just like, she was a salesperson. So she just did all these things and I knew that she did it. Mostly because she wanted to be home with us. And so she would do [00:14:00] things while we were, you know, she would take these odd jobs, even though she’s, you know, again, she came to America for college.

She had worked at a normal corporate job. And, but she said, I want to be able to cook you dinner and to be able to be home. And, you know, that was a really big priority for her. And I saw that and how she organized her life.

Maureen: And now you’re a president and CEO and you said you have two daughters. How, how do you organize your life to be able to do, I don’t know that any of us does it all, but to be able to do the things that are our priority at the time?

Deb: Well, I think there’s a couple of things. The one is, you know, you pick the things that, as you said, like, you know, anchor points, right? What are the anchor points in your life? For me, it was something that’s so important. My mother in law, my mom, my grandmother, they all taught me how to cook. And so I cook every week for them.

And if I’m traveling, I cook on Sunday and I store it up in the refrigerator and you know, my husband just has to heat it up and I cook their favorite foods. I have a list of things and you know, and, and that’s really important to me [00:15:00] that, you You know, food is how a lot of cultures, including my own show love, you

Maureen: Mm hmm.

Deb: for that, you know, I make sure that they feel loved that way, you know, other things, incredible partner.

My husband is so great. I shared this quote in my book. Um, you know, the most important career decision you make is who you marry. And it’s so true. He has been my biggest supporter, you know, and, you know, when I wanted to go to business school, we were, um, we were about to get married and, you know, he said, I’ll follow you wherever you go.

So I got into Stanford, we came out here, he put me through business school and, you know, we show what a true partnership looks like. And that’s something that’s so important to our kids to see what a true partnership really looks like. The give and take of any relationship. But

Maureen: love the point that the most important career decision you make is who you marry. Because we don’t think about our spouse as

the biggest partnership we have.

Deb: if you think about it, work and home are yin [00:16:00] and yang, right? If one gets too big, the other has to take a smaller space and vice versa. And to keep it in balance, having a partner to help you with the ebbs and flows is so important.

Maureen: I don’t want to go too much into my personal life, but I was single for a very long time after being married to a lovely man. No, no big story there, just we took different paths. And now having someone who I also consider just to be a brilliant partner has made all the difference in my life.

Deb: Absolutely. And I think we underestimate, we talk, we don’t talk about that, right? I guess women are more asked about that in interviews, but do you. Success is not a solo game that, you know, every successful person has often a partner that is helping them and we don’t, we don’t talk about that, right? We think it’s, we’re very individualistic.

Society, but you know, I could not have achieved any of what I’ve done without my husband being such a [00:17:00] cheerleader, a partner, somebody who has encouraged me to take on bigger jobs and to try new things, even when it was hard on him as well.

Maureen: And it sounds like parents being involved as well in your case.

Deb: Well, one thing I think we underestimate is how important a, you know, we talk about a village, right? That

Maureen: Mm hmm. Yep.

Deb: And we sort of say, yeah, everyone has to do it alone. And not everyone has a village, but if you do, it makes your life so much easier. You know, in many ways I took care of my mom, but she also took care of us.

You know, she helped with so many things over the years, pick up and drop off, you know, with, um, cooking. And until she got very sick in the last eight years, you know, she was such an important part of actually helping the day to day. My in laws were as well. And so I think we, Kind of right. Other people have a story.

A lot of these heroic heroes journeys, like you make it to the top. What did you do? And everyone says, I, and everything’s about what I did. But what they don’t talk about is the invisible groups of people that help you and make these things possible. And I hope that we can bring that [00:18:00] out of the shadows and talk more about it because I think it does a disservice to say women earlier in their career saying, well, I can’t do all of that.

How can she do this? When I said, no, we bring the people who supported us. Out of the shadows. And we say, you can do it, but you need a village. You need a community. You need people to trade babysitting with. You need people to help you pick up your kids and do carpool with you. Those things are all such an important part of what we do.

And yet we just pretend that it never happened.

Maureen: To your point of village, it doesn’t have to be genetically related. It’s, it’s the chosen village.

Deb: Absolutely. And there’s so many families that we’ve, you know, babysat with them and they babysat us, you know, our kids or there’s, you know, we do carpool with a lot of other families. You know, and I think that, that it doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be. Not everyone has a family that lives close by as, as you said, but you can have neighbors and community members, you know, people who help support you.

Those are so invaluable.

Maureen: I live in a [00:19:00] community now that is a larger city, but a small community, and we’ve got People with young kids, we’ve got retired folks, we’ve got people still working in the, you know, the, the true grind of long, long hours and days. And it’s interesting to watch how people ebb and flow together and how, Beautiful it is to watch someone’s in the hospital and people come together or new child, people come together or just out walking dogs and making sure people’s people are feeling well, it adds so much to the texture of life, which then does allow us to go back to work feeling supported.

And I think we underestimate the importance of that emotional support and community.

Deb: Absolutely. And I think often, you know, so I talk about in my book, the four kinds of allies, there’s mentors and sponsors, [00:20:00] your team, but the last one is your circle, right? Who, and who makes the rest of your life possible? Who is the one you go to when you, you know, you have a problem and you have an emergency, who’s the one who pick you up and you know, you’re down.

And I think that, you know, so many communities, I think, and I think one of the biggest challenges we’ve had is, um, we are more increasingly isolated. And it’s that community that, you know, where you can rely on each other, where you could build on each other. That’s so critical. And I think that that’s something we lack in, in modern day.

Cause I think people build communities online, but they can’t pick you up from the hospital if something happens and you need to discharge or, you know, uh, pick up your dog from the kennel if you’re running late. So these are, these are things that we need our neighbors and physical, you know, our friends to support each other.

Maureen: And tying that back to leadership, things like the Gallup research saying people who have a best friend at work are much more likely to be engaged. Leaders often talk about it being [00:21:00] lonely at the top. What’s our network or, or group of peer related leaders that we interact with because we all do have bumpy spots.

And how do we share, uh, and look for intellectual support and emotional support.

Deb: Absolutely. And I think it’s that, you know, I’m in a couple of lean in circles and we’re doing an event tomorrow, um, where we’re going hiking. And it’s a chance for us to talk about our work and talk about families. And, you know, all of us met, we all worked together previously, and now we’ve gone on to different jobs.

And, you know, that circle is so precious because it gives us a chance to connect and communicate, but also vent and get support. And, you know, it’s part of carrying each other through difficult times in our lives. Whether it’s difficult times at work or marriage or kids, we’ve seen each other through so much.

And we did a reflection the last time we met and somebody was talking about their son and, and, you know, um, all the things that their son is doing. And I said, can you stop for a second and [00:22:00] think back to a few years ago and where this child was, you know, and how far they’ve come. And, you know, I think sometimes we forget that people both, both to carry you through the difficult times, but also to celebrate.

How far our kids have come, how far marriages have come, our careers. I think we miss a lot of that.

Maureen: It’s a beautiful point to think about back the theme of arc of time and that allowing us to keep perspective and identify. It just feels like the theme of our interview is community and the importance of time and connection, whether it’s Lineage and ancestors generations back or support circle that is not biologically related, but still community related.

Deb: Yeah, definitely. And it’s, you know, one of the things that I love about, um, ancestry is that you’re looking back at your history, but you also find new connection points to [00:23:00] communities that you didn’t know about. You know, you find connections to events or people or to places that maybe you didn’t know your, your family traversed.

And so it gives you a new sense of your place in the world.

Maureen: So let’s go back to a couple questions about Ancestry. Um. Ancestry’s recently released At Risk Records Collections. What is an at risk collection and why is that so important to Ancestry as a company and to your customers?

Deb: Yeah. You know, we, we do a great effort to commit dollars. We’re committing 3 million next year to continue to look for and digitize lost and kind of records that might actually be gone someday. I mean, records, as you know, were timed to great.

Maureen: Mm hmm.

Deb: We have records from the Freedmen’s Bureau, which happened in the late 1800s.

And so you think about what those records look like today. And if we’re one flood or five or away from losing all of [00:24:00] those records from the Freedmen’s Bureau, the Freedmen’s Bank, for example, of previously enslaved people, you know, the same thing with the Japanese internment camps, you know, the records of, of what happened there, you know, to bear witness to, you know, A time in our history when, especially in California where, you know, people of Japanese descent were, were incarcerated, imprisoned, you know, in internment camps and, you know, for the only crime there are American citizens or people with green cards, but their only crime was their descent.

You know, people have been here generations and all they lost. And so what we do is we actually look for these records and we go out and we, we digitize them and we make them available so that people can find their own family history and stories there as well.

Maureen: It seems also important for our, our understanding our heritage. And I think about, As individual humans, we’ve got things that we, in [00:25:00] the psychology space, call shadow, so it’s all the stuff I, I don’t share with you about myself that, that I got angry with somebody and, you know, all the, the icky stuff. Um, and yet owning that as part of who I am allows me to be a much more effective person.

I don’t necessarily run around sharing the worst thing I did, uh, even after a couple of drinks, but I need to own and know that I’ve got hopefully resounding strengths, but also weaknesses and, and connecting with that allows me to have empathy for people struggling and act with humility, all, many of the behaviors we want from leaders.

If we look at that same construct as a, as a country, do [00:26:00] we own the worst of our heritage along with the best of our heritage and acknowledge the, the actions that were taken by people before we were born, but they still inform. Who we are as a culture. And

Deb: you know, the, what’s happened over the generations. continue to impact us today, you know, it’s not just enslavement, but after enslavement, there was redlining, you know, in the 1950s and 60s. And that affects the, you know, the quality of the schools that our children go to because of choices that were made by.

multiple generations ago, actually. And so you look at that and you look at the choices and impact that carries on. And a lot of what we want to do is make sure that history is preserved so that the individual stories of people don’t go away, that we don’t lose the records and that they’re available to everybody to look back on and say, Hey, this was [00:27:00] a moment in our history.

We did something maybe they were not proud of, but we can, you know, out of this, this is what we learned. And here’s, you know, let’s, let’s remember the names of those who are impacted. You know, often in history, we write stories about large groups of people, but there were individuals who lived through that history.

And a lot of us, what we try to do is actually give actual names to people who lived through those things in our societies so that we don’t forget.

Maureen: in some cases we can celebrate that, that we’re now building statues and acknowledging people who were previously invisible.

Deb: Yes, absolutely.

Maureen: So then let’s talk about AI and ancestry. It’s such a big topic now. And, and for ancestry, it’s not a new topic. And in your career, I assume it’s not a new topic.

Deb: Yeah. Well, AI is such a powerful tool and often we, we think AI just appeared last year, [00:28:00] I think generative AI actually has made a huge advances in the last year, but if you look back, you know, AI has been a part of a lot of what we do for a long time. For example, at Ancestry. You know, 1940. We actually 72 years after the 1940 census, we put it out and it took us nine months and millions of dollars to scan and index.

We had armies of people to help index it, you know, and if you look at the 1950 census, which actually happened a couple of years ago, you know, we did it in days. You know, because of our handwriting recognition advances in our ability to categorize what was shown, and so it’s really incredible what AI has been able to make make possible, which is enabling us to drive forward and innovate, but also scan records that maybe, you know, would be would have been outside of our purview before because it was too expensive to process.

And so, you know, a lot of a lot of old records are actually handwritten, handwritten. In which case, you know, having to. Manually key in what it was was very, very expensive and difficult, [00:29:00] and so now we can actually take records that maybe were inaccessible to us before because we couldn’t easily index them and make it possible.

And so I is such a powerful tool, and I’m very excited to see where it takes us. We. Have used AI for a number of things. We’re now testing it with translation so that we can actually translate into more language, our site into more languages, making it more accessible to different communities. And so it is brought down the cost, but it’s also made it so much faster and accessible to so many more people.

Maureen: Yeah, I was fascinated. My dad was doing genealogy and, and he had gone to the graveyards and the courthouses and the national archives and all the stuff. And then for years, maybe decades, and then I get on Ancestry and all this stuff is there. Like you’ve got stuff about me that I don’t have about myself because I didn’t save it.

And so it is fascinating that If my own records retention is bad, like my marriage certificate since I’m [00:30:00] divorced, I, I may not have kept that, but I went on Ancestry and found it, it, it’s just fascinating the, um, and my marriage certificate isn’t that interesting, but, but back to the old courthouse records, things my dad had been trying to figure out for years, I was able to figure out pretty quickly.

Okay.

Deb: Yes, absolutely. Well, the other part is, you know, just for what you’re talking about records is, you know, every family has that shoebox of family memories. They have not scanned, they haven’t digitized, but they’re thinking about it. It’s a someday project, right? It’s like someday I’m going to do this. And I, I was starting to do this with my mom when she got sick and, and, you know, I, we were scanning the photos, I was trying to get her categorized and then she passed away and someday became too late.

A lot of ways. And so one of the things that we do is when you scan those photos, you know, we, you might not recognize a lot of people in the photos because it might be your dad’s best friend from high school. One of the things that we can do is actually help [00:31:00] you, you know, figure out who those people are.

Maybe it’s your, your great, you know, someone else might have scanned a picture of your great grandfather, but you don’t. You didn’t know that, but we actually have an archive of people who have been previously tagged by another customer. And someone else says, Oh, this is my great grandfather standing next to yours.

You know? And so we can use AI in such interesting ways to actually help identify people that might not be seen in those photos. So some of the work that we do is actually going to be able to unlock the mysteries that you might have in a shoe box in your garage right now.

Maureen: that’s fascinating. And I, when my mom passed, I passed all those shoeboxes to my brother. So now it’s my job to go get them back.

Deb: Yeah, you need to go get them back and scan them because, you know, again, as I said, you know, one flood or fire away from all of this going away. And I worry a lot about that, which is, you know, we, we have a Attics full of these things. And yet, you know, when we scan them and we attach them to a [00:32:00] tree, then now they’re actually visible to other people who are related as well.

So your cousins would be able to see, you know, photos, for example, of maybe your great grandfather that they had never seen as well. Yeah.

Maureen: Thank you. So as we’re moving toward the end of our interview, one last question, before we go into how do people find you? So you Are now president and CEO, you’ve got a team of people working for you. I find that leaders who have been very deliberate with their leadership teams are much more able to lead the organization they want to lead.

And so what characteristics do you look for in the team that works well with you? And, and a little bit of why.

Deb: Well, first and foremost is a learning mindset. You know, if you’re, if your attitude is, we’ve always done it this way. You know, that’s not the right attitude because things are changing all the time. [00:33:00] Technology is changing. Things are evolving. So really, I love people who are willing to think outside the box and not just say, Hey, we used to do it this way, but what are ways that we can step function, do it better?

The other part is, You know, a team is only as good as the team together. Often, you know, we’re not playing a solo sport here, you know, companies are actually a team sports. And so some, uh, the quote from my, uh, head of HR is, you know, are you playing for the name on the front of the Jersey or the one in the back? And it was so important that, you know, what we do is, is it, you know, it’s, you could be the best violinist and someone else could be the best trombonist, but if you’re half a beat off. Yeah. It sounds like a company and you know, one of the things is not just having superstars, but people who are able to work together and make beautiful music.

And I think sometimes we value often the superstar over actually the ability to work together to the ability to up level each other, the ability to, to build towards our, what our customers want.

Maureen: and that sounds like the [00:34:00] theme that you’ve talked about, but also I think that you live in things you’ve said that the community matters, the community of peers, the community of people that are on working teams, our family communities, our village, in every instance that collective that informs our lives, whether, sorry, go ahead.

Deb: Oh, I was just saying that, okay, when we get back, um, once you finished

Maureen: That it’s at every point, you talked about the invisible contributors. Who are the people who got me here? My, my partner, my parents, uh, former colleagues who were incredibly supportive. I’d never be here without people. I learned from some good, some not so good, but they got me here.

Deb: I think, you know, we, we think that we, we, we always look at our own effort, but we don’t see like all the people that carried us [00:35:00] along the way. I was, uh, I was doing this, um, mentorship host. Somebody asked us for back to school to do a mentorship host. And I shared it about my high school teacher, Miss Ashburn and how she.

Made it seem possible for me to, you know, she told me like, you can do anything you want, you can accomplish anything. And I was a kid in some small town and I said, what do you mean? And so I thanked her and recently I reached out to her and I thanked her. And I think sometimes we don’t remember. All the people carried us along the way, all the communities that we were part of, all of the people who, who just took the time to inspire us or to help us and lend a hand when we needed it most.

And so, you know, I want that for our team at work, which is how do we lift each other up? You know, how do we help each other? And then how do we build towards something greater? Because, you know, individuals, you play an individual sport, but, you know, we’re actually corporations and companies are team sports.

And we are often inhibited by the structure of the organization and the recognition systems that we reward [00:36:00] individuals. And then we’re surprised that we don’t get team performance.

Deb: Yes. Well, you are, whatever you reward, you get more of. And whatever you praise, you know, especially those of you who praise children, know that whatever you praise, you get more of as well. And so, you know, what we do and what we look for in other people and what we reward, we will, we will sow more of those seeds in you.

And yield for that good and bad.

Maureen: Deb, thank you so much. This is, I love your insight and I wish we could talk much longer. How would people learn more about Ancestry if they don’t have it? Already know a lot about you or people who didn’t recognize that you’re adding collections that even if they were members of Ancestry years ago, that this is a new experience now.

Deb: Well, ancestry is changing every day. We’re releasing new collections every month. We have new records. We also add new functionality every [00:37:00] single month as well. And so we’re continuing to push forward our innovation. So if you’ve tried it before, you. Give us another shot. And if you haven’t done some work around your family history, we encourage you to pick up a DNA kit to, to kind of get a shortcut into kind of seeing more about your family history, the communities you’re from, but then also, um, come and you’ll build out your family story, capture your images, you know, scan your photos, be a part of, you know, telling the story of your family.

Maureen: If people want to learn more about your story, where would they connect or either follow or connect?

Deb: Yeah. So, um, Deb Lou at Substack. So I have a Substack where I write every week and if you reply to it, um, it goes to my email. So sign up for the newsletter and then you can reach out.

Maureen: Deb, thank you very much