Hi, I'm Francis Fry. And I'm Anne Morris. And we are the hosts of a new TED podcast called Fixable. We've helped leaders at some of the world's most competitive companies solve all kinds of problems. On our show, we'll pull back the curtain and give you the type of honest, unfiltered advice we usually reserve for top executives. Maybe you have a coworker with boundary issues or you want to know how to inspire and motivate your team, give us a call and we'll help you solve the problems you're stuck on. Find fixable wherever you listen.

Every single time, I had less than 50 % of the skills. But I remember the difference in my thinking was that I have nothing to lose. I'm going to bring my strengths into that job, and the rest of it I will learn because I had confidence in my ability to learn and grow. And at times I would think, Why did I put myself through that? Why did I not stay where it was comfortable? But what's the point if you're comfortable? What's the point if you're not learning and growing? And that just kept repelling me forward. This is In.

Her Element, a podcast from BCG. I'm Corinne Lynes. Each episode, we have meaningful and vulnerable conversations with women leaders in digital, business, and technology. Suchie has lost her voice, so I'll be your solo host this week. In this episode, we're speaking to Naba Banerjee, Head of Trust and Safety at Airbnb. In 2020, Airbnb faced a difficult problem. A lack of nightlife and the social distancing caused by the pandemic had led to some of their guests booking properties just to throw parties. What to do about a problem like this? Naba had an AI-based solution. She takes hope and inspiration from her five amazing children who are all flourishing teenagers. She's born and raised in India and is the first woman engineer in her family. Naba's philosophy has always been to raise her hand. She asks, What's the worst that can happen if you take a leap of faith and try something new? Here's my conversation with Nava.

I'm Nava Banerjee. I lead trust and safety at Airbnb. I'm also a mother of five and born and raised in India.

Wow! Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to dig into your history in India and children. That's amazing. When you were growing up, did you see many other women who were engineering around you?

Education was always very important in our family. I saw a lot of women around me, my mother, my aunt, who had master's degrees, but they were also in arranged marriages. They had kids, raised great kids. But I was really fortunate to have a mother who kept pushing me to study harder, and a dad who told me that I could do whatever I wanted with that education. I still remember the day he called me during the afternoon and said, Engineering admissions are open. You need to go right now and fill out those forms. I just went there, filled out the forms, went through the process, and ended up becoming the first female engineer in my family. As a kid, I saw that every time you raise your hand, you could either hear a yes or a no. Many times we tell ourselves, I'll probably hear a no, so what's the point raising your hand? I ended up being one of the few people who always raised my hand because you could hear a no, but then you could also hear a yes. So, growing up, I was encouraged by the fact that I could just do that.

I could sign up to be this person in college who organized all the music festivals as a first-year student, while everyone else was new trying to still adjust, I said, I'll do it. And they said, Yeah, do it. And so, similarly, after high school, when I was wondering what to do with my life, and there has to be something more, my dad's encouragement just helped me move forward.

What a beautiful story. That's fantastic. What motivated you to raise your hand each time, just the opportunity of like, Well, it could be yes, or could be no? Or was there something bigger beyond that?

I think of myself as a forever learner. When I think of my why, why I do anything, it's usually to learn and grow without fear and to create an environment where others can learn and grow without fear. That has motivated me as a child. It's great to see that you can do something different. You don't have to follow the beaten path. Even though I grew up in India in a house where it was just not normal for women to become engineers, to come to the United States, I worked at Walmart for 13 years, did so many different roles that I never imagined myself doing. And every time this philosophy of raising your hand, asking questions, and being prepared to hear or know just kept propelling me forward because every time I learned something, whether I succeeded or failed.

So cool. Such powerful advice for all of us who are sometimes fearful and not raising our hands. So thank you for giving that courage and encouragement. You already mentioned that that you had worked for Walmart for 13 years. You said you were in a lot of different roles, but what did you do there and how did you end up at Airbnb?

Thirteen years seems like a long time, but when I look back, it feels like it flashed away in the blink of an eye. But then I started off over there, I didn't know what supply chain was, but I fell in love with how this massive engine was taking customer orders, shipping it to their homes, and I had the opportunity to be part of a team that was building the first e-commerce warehouse for Walmart. Com. I ended up being the technical product manager for that initiative. I often found myself in a room full of men, went with Arkansas, and feeling like I was an outsider. Did I really belong here? Yet there was also this question in my head, Why not me? I just kept pushing. From there, there was an opportunity to lead all of product for samsclub. Com. I had never done cart and checkout and sight-ree designs and front-end user experience. Another opportunity to learn and grow. I raised my hand, got the job, and stayed there for six years, at times increasing mobile conversion by triple digits. Again, working in every part of the customer journey, creating a strategy to grow the business 5x, I just kept raising my hand, taking on challenges, and moving forward.

Then there was a time when everyone was talking about machine learning and AI. That was around the time when I thought, again, why not me? I took an MIT course, studied about AI and machine learning. When an opportunity came up to lead search at Walmart. Com, I raised my hand again and found myself doing that as my last job at Walmart. Mind you, I have raised my hand a lot of times and heard no to. But more often than not, you would be surprised at how many yeses you will get.

That example makes me think of a statistic that I think is commonly known, or at least commonly told again and again that if women don't have at least 80% of the skills, they will not raise their hand for an opportunity. I wanted to ask you, what percentage of skills do you think you had when each time when you jumped in? Maybe it was different each time, but I just think you might be able to empower if you share what that was for you. If you're like, I had 50 %. Or, What was it like for you when you said, I'm interested?

Honestly, Karen, every single time I had less than 50 % of the skills. But I remember the difference in my thinking was that I have nothing to lose. I'm going to bring my strengths into that job. And the rest of it I will learn because I had confidence in my ability to learn and grow. And at times I would think, Why did I put myself through that? Why did I not stay where it was comfortable? But what's the point if you're comfortable? What's the point if you're not learning and growing? And that just kept repelling me forward.

Thank you for sharing that because I think that's powerful. I think the numbers, admitting to the general public, I had less than 50% of these skills, and look at my success is incredibly empowering. So thank you for sharing that. I think that that will really make an impression, so I appreciate that.

The only thing I would add is sometimes people take jobs because they have already done it before and they think that they would be the absolute right fit for it. But sometimes jobs need leaders who bring a different perspective because they have not done it before. It's always hard to onboard, but once you come on board, you bring so much diversity into the thinking, and then you take the team where it has never gone before.

So powerful. Thank you for saying that and adding that. Naba, can you tell us what you do as the Head of Trust and Safety at Airbnb?

Airbnb was formed on the strong foundation of trust. Every day, strangers are opening their homes up to each other. People like you and me are going and staying inside the house of a stranger. This would not have been possible without a really strong foundation of trust and safety. So being the leader of the trust and safety team within Airbnb, I feel so close to the mission of the company. Imagine a customer journey right from the time that an account is created. You're searching for a listing or you're creating a listing. You're going through the booking process. You are staying in the home. You are leaving a review, you're potentially contacting customer support. We want every customer to have a great frictionless, seamless journey. But what if something goes wrong? In the very, very rare event that something might go wrong, my team is running machine learning models and AI models in the background trying to anticipate the potential occurrence of risk.

So one of your most well-known contributions to Airbnb was the 2020 party ban AI algorithm. Can you tell us about the broad strokes of what that AI algorithm does?

I have just been so grateful for how well this algorithm has been received by our community, and the results that we have seen. There has been a 55% reduction in the reports of parties over the last two years. We have also suspended 7,500 users who have violated our party ban. May 2023, when we launched this reservation screening algorithm, as we call it globally, since that time, we have blocked or redirected more than 300,000 guests who we thought were potentially about to throw a party. The numbers are pretty huge, and there is a pretty interesting story behind it. I had just joined the trust team. It was the year 2020. The pandemic was raging, and the company was really struggling. We had lost 80% of our business. Right around that time, even the very rare, we were starting to see reports of these unauthorized parties since bars and hotels had shut down. There are youngsters in the world who wanted to have fun and still get together in spite of COVID regulations. We were sometimes seeing that they were using Airbnb. At that point of time, first and foremost, the thought that came into our heads was not, How do we use AI?

It was, How do we stop this? Our first step was creating our global party ban and then operationalizing this ban by looking at all of our data. Our data showed us that there were some patterns in here that were pretty clear. We were seeing young users who were booking at the last minute an entire home just for one night during the Halloween weekend. As a mother of five teenagers, my radar is pretty strong, and I think it's pretty common sense that what are you doing if you live close by and you're booking an entire home just for one night for a party weekend? There's probably going to be a party. So we created this really strong rule to block these kinds of reservations, and it worked. Right away, we saw a decrease in reports of parties. But then we saw a few people start to circumvent this because as soon as they create a rule, people are going to find a way around the rule. We saw some users leveraging an older friend or a parent to book for them. Or instead of one night, they would book for two nights or three nights. Or they would try to manipulate their IP address to show that they were actually further away from the listing than they actually were.

And we realized quickly that we needed to build something much more intelligent. And behind the scenes, we started working on our AI algorithm. We first tested this in Australia, and we saw a 35% reduction in rate of party reports in there. With that success, we then rolled this out in North America. There again, we saw success in our experiments. Then finally, in May of 2023, we rolled this out globally, and the results have been amazing.

But how do you ensure that this algorithm is not being discriminatory?

Ai by itself is not good or bad, as we all know. It is the people who use AI and why they use AI, and ultimately the data that they are using to drive AI. For us, it starts with our privacy principles. We make sure that any data that we use to train our models, we are transparent about it, our users have complete control over it, and we are also protecting their data using our latest and greatest information security practices. Second, we have a dedicated anti-discrimination team, and all of our critical models go through an anti-discrimination review. But I also think that Airbnb is a mirror of the world. Anything that happens in the world happens on our platform as well. And there is no silver bullet like this AI model or that that can truly deal with everything that's happening in the world. What we have done is, in addition to our tools and systems, we have a rich way of getting and receiving feedback from our community. We have a 24x7 safety line, we have a neighbor support line, and we work with the Trust and Safety Advisory Coalition, which is a group of multiple organizations that advise us on latest and greatest safety trends and how to work with them.

It's definitely a holistic effort.

When you think about young people in the workforce today, how do you think that they can get themselves ready for a career in AI?

It is so important that we bring in diverse perspectives into AI. I'm worried that there are not enough women in AI. I'm worried that it's still in the hands for select few, and there is still a lot of fear about how difficult it is going to be or what it's going to do to the world. As I said earlier, AI is not good or bad. It is up to us. The more good people—and the world has 99.9% of good people. My advice for my children, my oldest son is studying psychology. My daughter who just got into college, got into computer science and is specializing in game design, I think AI is not going to be the separate thing that you have to raise your hand and learn. It is going to be part of our lives. It already is. My advice to the younger generation is just embrace it. Just go for it. Read up as much as you can, dispel the myths, and be hungry and be brave.

Navya, you have five amazing children. Can you tell us a little bit more about them?

I love my kids. They have been wonderful to watch as they have grown up. Their curiosity, their bravery. They make me a better person. I look at my son, he's now 19. He is in his second year of college and studying and has a job. He's soon going to want to travel the world on his own. My daughter, who is just about to turn 18, she's going to want to travel the world. She's one of the most curious people, this beautiful artist. I want the world to be safe for her, for my other daughters, my sons. They have motivated me because I see them every day. Then when I do my job, I look at our community, and I see kids who are starting to travel more and more. I see women who are doing more solo travel. We have seen a 33% increase in solo travelers year-over-year, which just means that people are itching after the pandemic to get out. Our younger generation now has more spending power and has the curiosity to travel the world and create new connections. I am motivated by creating a world that is just safer and easier and more connected.

That's what this company stands for. That's what I want for my kids. That's truly the motivation. I would add that my daughter, when she watches my interviews or she hears about the work that I do, she has also been a great steward for it. Her friend who was about to turn 18 and was planning to throw a birthday party and was considering renting an Airbnb for it, she immediately told me, Mom, that's not allowed. Your systems will stop it, right? I was like, Yes, my systems will definitely try to stop it, but I need you to stop it first. Will you please talk to your friend? And she did that, and that friend ended up having the party in her own house, and it was all fine. But I was just so glad to see that they are watching, they see what we do, and they learn from it.

Can you tell us about a time when you felt like you were in your element?

I can't recall two moments. The first one truly was the early part of 2020 when I had just joined the trust team. When I realizedthat I was, again, I had raised my hand to work at a brand new company, at a brand new domain, trust and safety, that I had never worked at before. I probably had less than 50% of the skills. I brought in leadership, I brought in scale, but I did not know the risk and trust and safety area, but I knew that I could learn, and I knew that I was surrounded by really smart and kind people who would help me. Then the pandemic was going on, and the party problem was brought to my attention. I just remember feeling like I could either be really afraid and get crushed under this pressure, or I could stand up. And why not choose the other thing? We can only get better. I think I am truly in my element in moments of adversity. This other moment is when I gave birth to my twins. I just remember that I now have these kids, and they are looking at me as if I can do anything.

I am so scared of being a mother of multiple kids. Yet when you look at the faces of your kids looking at you, you just know that you are invincible. You can do anything. If you can bring these little beings into this world and take care of them. You have to be the person they need you to be. I think it just made me stronger. And I have been in my element since then.

That was my conversation with Naba. I really love speaking to her. I would say my key takeaways from my conversation with her were I really loved what Naba had to say about having only around 50 % of the skills she needed when she applied for her job at Walmart. I think historically, when you look at the research, you find that women will be like, Oh, I have 80 % or even 90 % of these goes, okay, let me go for this job. But then historically, and it's the gender line there, that males that they have only 50 % of the skills or even less, they'll be like, Oh, I'm all set. That's perfect for me. I'm ready for that. And the challenge that comes with that. And I think that's not very female historically. And so it's really inspirational to see and hear somebody like Naba say, Yeah, I acknowledge that, and this is a learning opportunity for me. I will jump even if I have 50 % or less of the skills because I have enough to get me started. And from there, it's like learning on the job. I love that opportunity. I love to learn on the job.

So that's fascinating. And a great role model for those of us who maybe don't do that to say to ourselves, Well, she can do it, and I can do it, too. And that gives us the green light and just that inner confidence that we can do it, too. I also really love Navas in her element. Sometimes I feel like you in your professional career, you feel like you have to say something about your profession that makes you feel like you're in your element to be validated properly. And I remember when we spoke with Dr. Kate Darling, and we asked her, When were you in your element? And she said, When I'm on my front step handing out Halloween candy to all the kids, which were full size candy bars, and it was the best party and music in the background, and everyone just looked at her and saw her beaming. So it's almost also nice when we speak with these highly impressive women who have accomplished so much, and they don't feel the pressure to say, Oh, when I'm in my element, it's this professional thing. It's really nice to hear from people like Naba and from Dr.

Kay Darling saying, I'm in my element when I'm with my children, or when I'm looking at them and thinking, What is the best that I can deliver to this world to make a better tomorrow to make a better world for them. And what is the best person I can be as myself? Well, that's all for today. This has been In Her Element, a podcast from BCG. Join us next time to hear more meaningful and vulnerable conversations with women leaders in digital, business, and technology. Thank you so much for listening.