studies prove women on the board lead to better profits so why do tech companies have so few of them? plus, what can small town america teach us about business? economist tas take to the reporo find out. our reporters, john schwartz of sought, and "fortune's" mikayla graham this week on "press here." >> good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. far more women than men use twitter, but there's only one woman in the twitter boardroom. the company only hired her after extreme pressure to diversify its all-male board. throughout technology there are board with one woman, maybe two, apple one woman, amazon, one

woman, facebook has two. google, a staggering three, bringing it up to 30% of the board. senior vice president at morgan stanley sits on the national board of women entrepreneurs and is co-chair of the san francisco women corporate directors. thank you for being here this morning, joined with john schwartz of "usa today," mikayla graham of "fortune." this doesn't economically make sense to me. it's been proven a good diverse board makes good decisions, can lead to higher profits. if that is the case, economically we should see more women on boards. it just makes sense. >> it makes complete sense. >> what went wrong? >> it's an ongoing what went wrong. talking about women in the pipeline, right. typically when a person is looking for a woman director or male director, whatever director, it goes through the nominating committee on a board of directors, and you go to who you know.

and if there are not a lot of women in the pipeline, you're going to look around in the suite and that's a problem. >> we look at diversity report from facebook and google recently. i think likedin was another. diversification has always been a problem in the valley. it's not just women, it's hispanics, african-americans. and it's all -- comes back to the pipeline. but this has been a problem for decades. >> that's correct. >> so did it start at the educational level, or -- >> it's hard to believe that it just bills down to that -- just boils down to that. you see the case with urban outfitters, they didn't have a single women. they cater to women, a lot of their brands do. they finally brought one on to the board. it's the wife of the ceo. really they look around and that's the only woman that they have in their network. >> sorry -- >> my concern with the pipeline idea, though, is that logical ically -- logically it's going to get better. give it ten years and look ten

years ago for goodness sakes. if the issue is it's the pipeline and women haven't issue reached the ceo level -- >> i think it's a convenient excuse. >> i do, too. >> a kiered excuse, too. i heard it 2 -- a tired excuse, too. i heard it 20 years ago. when you write about the valley, people from the valley becoming incredibly defensive, it sounds like -- >> from a shareholder's perspective, it makes the company more profitable. if you go back since the correction when we had the great recession in 2008, the numbers are astounding. you know, a company is more profitable by 14% over that six-year period versus 10% with three women on board. economically it makes no sense. also doesn't make sense as a reflection of the population of california. it's starting to change. people are becoming more aware of it. you have to look outside the box, the only way you're going

to find women that are perfectly capable are experts in finance, experts in patents, international global economics. i mean, there are plenty of smart women out there and plenty of smart people of different genders, different color, different ethnicity and age group. >> it is a bit of a chicken and a egg thing. if i were forming a board, i want people with experience with p&l. i want people who can say i created or grew profits, tends to be a ceo of a different company. >> right. or cio. >> yeah, yeah. and that tends to be still a male, and therefore that's who we pick. >> the percentages on the boards are lower than percentages of women in c suite. what's the level of tech -- that's an anomaly because that's what we do. >> tech's what you do. amanda kimble who runs the u.c. davis study on california business leaders and i were

talking. the recent numbers are pretty intensive. santa clara, semiconductor, highly consecentrated area, 6.1 of corporate board directors,kwats to one female director -- directors, equates to one female for every male director. they get the worst award. when you look outside the box, the global situation, women corporate directors is a global women's organization. we have 3,500 members. we placed 300 women on global companies. and we're creating our own old boys network. we're interfacing, we're promoting each other, we're working with the kinds of people that help place directors on boards. and they're starting to make a difference. so it's -- it's also, you know, the other problems like talking about waning in -- >> i was going to mention cheryl sandberg. kind of a lazy question, but nonetheless i'll ask it. cheryl sandberg, ibm ceo, do they -- is that having a slow impact because in a sense

they've raised the profile and maybe -- i know cheryl sandberg and companies, startups that have women in charge -- >> you've got to be in the deal flow. that's part of it. a lot of us work with, you know, helping women do angel investing and getting involved early on in smaller stage situations. that's a great way for women to get involved, not just putting their money there but being involved as -- in an advisory counsel capacity. >> what about scandinavian company who say you have to put women on the board. germany i think is considered the -- has considered the idea. un-american to go that far? >> well, you know, it's interesting you bring that up. >> a lot of people -- >> yeah. in resolution 62, it went through last july actually. and what it says is they want, you know, corporate responsibility, they want more women on boards, and if you've got more than nine board seats,

they want a few more women on there. it's -- it's starting to happen. now the question is, can you mandate it or can you not? in the scandinavia, norway, france, they've mandated it. it's been an issue. i like what they did in great britain which is the 30% group. they took the top ftse 100 ceos and helped -- not mandate but contribute to enterprise and having women as workers together in order it push it forward. and it's worked really, really well. >> talked about the economic advantage, too. this -- the funny thing, i was talking about lisa stone. a blogger. one of the stats she throws out is the number, percentage of women who buy goods off the internet or make the decisions on purchases. >> right. right. >> it's high -- >> huge, like 80% in the united states. >> i was going to say, 80%. >> 60% globally. we're buying all the stuff. >> yet it's people in position to make the key decisions are decidedly male -- >> what do you make -- in light

of the recent scandals out here in tech land, tinder and gethub and there have been quite a few of these -- it's not quite clear dish>> the fr. >> -- not clear -- >> the frat boy. >> yeah, is it systemic iic to silicon valley culture? what does that say? >> it's an evolution. you know, i went to the awards and was astounded what i saw there. >> what is -- >> as host of the show, the bad word if we're going to see what we saw there. you're talking about the app, right? >> yeah. >> an app uses a word it describe a woman's anatomy. it was presented as a joke, it was a horrid, horrid, horrid joke. continue -- >> yeah. so i think we have to grow up and, you know, look at the fact that women are experts in a lot of different areas. it's not just about women. it's reflecting the population of california.

we want multi-generational, multi-culture, multi-gender involved because i think -- you know, this resolution is pretty important. if you look at california and see that a lot of the stuff starts here and then goes across the rest of the country. >> i've got to cut you off there. i want to talk more about this resolution. let's do it -- we'll do a piece on the internet where our guests could join and talk more about that resolution. in the meantime, if you're watching television, i need to let you go. i encourage you to watch on the internet, as well. up next on "press here," what can middle america teach three of the country's top economists about how business really works? three ph.d.'s hit the road in a camper in the worst buddy movie ever.

welcome back to "press here." i can't think of the punch line, but three economists walk into a shoe store might be the start or three economist walk into a dairy or three economists pretend to be cowboys. they're not just doing it for the laughs, they're doing it on the road it find out what america knows about business. real america, the kind of america you find when you cram three middle-aged guys with ph.d.'s into a camper. well, here is one of those economists, professor at stanford, editor-in-chief at the

"journal of labor and economics" andtor of "roadside mba: back road lessons for entrepreneurs." two other economists -- i have trouble gone between economists and economics. two other economists joined you. whose idea was it? >> i think it all started one day, scott suggested it the others of us -- >> the economics scott. >> yes. scott schaefer, my economist, he talled us up and sort of -- called us up and sort of sketched the idea of driving around and talking to people. i believe my response was, "this is either the best idea you've ever had or the worst." >> right. called it the worst buddy movie ever, right? >> there's no chance -- >> no one's going to ever option this. >> we do occasionally talk about who would play us in the movie. >> when would play you? >> i'm sometimes told i look

like sting. i don't know if he's much of an actor. >> how do you sing it? >> you know, he might have better options. >> what -- what were some of the learnings? i mean, i read over a few anecdotes, and one of the ones that i liked was the best -- best hires are single women with two kids. >> so you have to be really careful when you say it that way. >> yes. >> the big -- >> as reporters tend to do. >> the point of the back is the answer, the learning is everything depends on context. and we -- we give an example of a distributor in st. joseph, missouri. really interesting business. he distributes to convenience stores within a few hundred miles, and he found the best employees fit the description you said. as we say later, that's not the best choice for everybody. >> why is it right for him? >> because he doesn't want to run a night shift -- i'm sorry. typically they run night shifts, but he's found that these

employees in his area, single moms with a couple of kids, they're dedicated, hard working, velible, and so -- >> if you run a night shift, you get -- >> wow. okay. >> that might work. >> how many miles did you travel? how many towns or cities did you vis visit? did you find people in certain regions lent themselves to certain skill sets? >> no. we -- i'll take those backwards. >> uh-huh. >> i think the skill sets we've seen, sure there are certain industry engine certain areas, but we saw everything everywhere. it's amazing how many people -- you ask them to take an hour out of their incredibly busy day. and people said no it us. the vast majority said, sure, and spent a ton of time. and the skill sets were pretty similar across places, i would say. we've been to 27 states. and we've traveled over 4,000

mile now. >> paul, there's something that you walked in to -- you went into a dairy, for instance. you walk interest this dao thise manager has discovered something by accident that you teach in in mba or economics classes and call it bob's rule. it's something entirely different. he stumbled across the concept. >> yeah. we reverse engineered the economics of what was going on here. >> right. >> regularly. that was the funnest part -- no, the interviews were great. another great part was we'd get in the car and say, "oh, my god, he's using -- implementing the spence model," or you gave the -- example you sgaf what an economist would refer to as adverse selection. if you run a night shift you use adverse selection. he stumbled upon this and figured it out over time. what we want to be able to do is then explain those principles and maybe in the future, the next guy's trial and error process is a little better. it's not going -- we can't get

rid of those errors. >> i think what you're trying to is ask is are mbas worthless? >> these guys would have discovered this over 20 years of horrible trial and error. >> but did it change your opinion at all on the kind of traditional mba -- >> no. not at all. because -- and i'll come back to the point of the -- constant theme in the book is it depends. so should everybody get an mba? absolutely not. is there a group of people for whom a stanford mba, for example, is a great thing and with a huge return on their investment? definitely. that's that still holds. these guys who -- we're trying to reach a different audience, who can learn -- who can gain in from some of the principles we teach in that context and save themselves a little of the trial and error process, and don't have the time or the resources to commit two years out of their jobs and so forth. i mean, the dairy guy, he's -- has a formal education, but he's very busy running his farm now. and hopefully if he takes time to read the back, he'll save

himself a little more trouble. >> did you document any of this on video, social media? interesting to see the -- to see the progression of the trip and how -- >> yeah. there's quite a bit. if you go to our website, roadside-mbawebsite.com. we're getting this up and running. stanford helped on the last trip, the dairy and so forth. they took a lot of film, and we'll be documenting quite a bit more. >> like the britney spears movie, right? >> right. >> exactly. >> we have the horses, we have the welding -- >> the sting comparison. >> britney spears -- >> like i said, the worst movie ever. >> yes. >> i asked you, you know, have people learned mba skills without realizing they were learning mba skill? is there anything you learned or -- of course you got more insight into how businesses are run. is there anything in which you said, you know, that would be

worth a future study? >> yeah. i'll tell you, the research study i haven't done yet that i want to think about here is we saw a lot of interesting patterns where there were family businesses and certain types of businesses. for example, funeral homes tend to pass down through families. we talked to one guy who was in the furniture business because his father and uncle and grandfather -- from a research perspective thinking of what goes down the family tree and thing like degree which are more innovative. sergei bryn's father didn't do search engines. this was insight that it seems like there are natural patterns. i'm probably not the first to think of that. but it helped me. >> you tend to do interesting studies. we don't have time because i have to go to break. but one on the economics of dating, as i recall. >> that's my other book. >> that's your other book. and you can google paul oyer,

o-y-e-r. >> correct. >> and "roadside mbas," soon never to be a movie. thank you for being with us. >> thank you very much. next, a top mathematician figures out how to help post 9/11 veterans get a job.

welcome back to "press here." we've seen the economy improve steadily. in some parts of fran the unemployment rate is under 4% -- of san francisco the unemployment rate is under 4%. that's not the case for veterans and their families. the latest numbers from the bureau of labor statistics say unemployment for veterans is still near 7%. recently bay area startup mobile works teamed with california national guard to help the soldiers find work. mobile works allows people to perform tasks over the internet. and paul kareny is the founder

and cove mobile works. he is -- carney is founder and ceo of mobile works, he is also involved with 30 under 30. thanks for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> a couple days ago, the latest jobs numbers come out at 6.1%. the economy is on fire. but veterans are still having trouble finding jobs. why is that? >> you know, veterans face unique challenges that the rest of the work force doesn't necessarily face. for example, transitioning back into civilian life, difficulty of moving from place to place. it's something that veterans of the community despite being disciplined and having lots of useful expertise haven't managed to overcome so easily. >> they go on line mobile works -- anybody can do this. what sort of work -- it's remote work, right? >> purely digital work. workers are finding work that is -- involves them working from home at a computer, jobs that are assigned to them via the

web. things like web research, marketing activities, sales support, working in a virtual workplace, virtual office with no face-to-face interaction. >> are these veterans dating back to vietnam -- >> no, our population skewed the young. we're specialed in working with post -- we're particularly interested in post 9/11 veterans. national unemployment rates for veterans. it's the post population -- just over 7%. >> in terms of being computer literate and savvy, i'm guessing it excuse younger -- >> certainly easier to work with a younger population. >> your service -- jessica mah says she uses your service almost as a backbone for what she's doing. so a little bit like amazon web services can be the backbone of a company. you are essentially employing people for all kinds of other

kufls. >> that's right. instead of companies -- companies. >> that's right. instead of companies like this building their own work force that might be difficult to manage, we let them tap into a work force that's available on demand to fill in their needs as they go along. >> is there a reason why you work with veterans? is there a personal back story behind your interest? i don't normally read much about veterans and n tech atech and j >> a great point. a lot of kumcompanies, we don't know how to engage and interact with them. our company has a unique position because we are first and foremost a social enterprise. we try and work with groups that are a little bit less likely to find employment in a traditional economy. for us, we connected with a third party organization as we usually do called work for warriors. plugged us in to an active community of veterans that needed to find work. >> so how -- what percentage of the community of workers that you have are veterans now? >> it's pretty small. we started our veteran program in the last few months. but overall we try and place

about half of our work force coming from backgrounds such as veterans, youth, women, or other relatively high unemployment segments of the population. >> you have had a social message all along. it's one thing to just hand out jobs at very low wage. you claim to pay fair wages. >> that's right. >> now, if that makes -- that makes you more expensive, does it not? >> it does, but i think there's a tradeoff that companies have to make when they're hiring people who are paid a little bit better. sure, the up-front cost might be higher, but ultimately you end up with folks who are more likely to stick around, more likely to be invested in the work outcomes, and people who are ultimately going to be better performers. >> right. and using their real names, to use amazon mechanical turk is an example. something that lots of people can use for relatively small amounts of money. this is more of a -- this is this person, here's his or her resume. the company knows who's doing

what work. >> uh-huh. that's right. an argument that goes back to the early days of business, right? if you treat people better, if you invest in them more, you'll end up with better work product. and ultimately a cheaper total cost even if you're paying each person more. >> what companies do you currently have using your network? tapping in to your network? >> it ranges on the low end from smaller businesses that maybe can't afford to set up a work infrastructure on their own. all the way to hybrid technology startups, companies like stripe, all the way to a smattering of fortune 500 large enterprise companies. >> let's use strive as an example. he office last week. exactly. so what are people doing for that? i understand there may be things that you can't talk it. >> sure. >> but for example, how do i start working for stripe through you? >> actually you might not be able to. >> because i'm an english man. it's okay.

you can say it out loud. >> not because of your background necessarily. but of course, we preferentially take folks who come from -- we take folks who come from a -- >> more technical background -- >> impact background. where they were paid to make a difference. and provide security or other pieces. >> yeah. >> you come in, you'll go through a battery of tests that will decide what we think your aptitude lies in. after that, we'll assign you to work as part of a virtual team. which is assigned to one of the companies that we do work for. >> but the -- with a minute live, give a solid example. i've been hired, assigned to stripe, i sit down at the keyboard, what am i doing? >> a typical example -- a lot of tasks we do are -- you might be doing things like researching to try and compile lists of date bases for marketing purposes, right? find a list of every new company formed in the bay area in the

last year. >> okay. >> so that you can feed this into a marketing data base. for example, every cove a marketing company in the u.s. -- ceo of a marketing company in the u.s. and put in place. >> the company is mobile works, helping out veterans and people in need, as well, with a social mission. we appreciate you being here. >> certainly, my pleasure. >> "press here" will be back in a moment.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guests. a programming note -- we're off next week to make room for nbc sports, but there are lots of good interviews coming ahead including a founder of paypal the following week. i'm scott mcgrew, thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.

hello, and welcome, i'm damian trujillo. today the latest on the national hispanic university. what is happening with that campus. plus, silicon valley latinos. this is your "communidad d "communidad delvalle." >> we begin with the genealogical society. with me here on the show is the president of the organization, welcome to the show. >> thank you. >> so tell us about the genealogical society. who started -- why did we start it, and what is the purpose of it? >> it was started in 2005 in sacramento. and just recently in april, we -- they granted us the opportunity to start a charter here in silicon valley so that we could serve t