Director of strategy for Gemini at Google DeepMind
Duke Days: “My time at Fuqua changed the trajectory of my career and life; it helped me chart a new course from policy in Congress to the tech world. But the most lasting impact came from the models of authentic leadership I encountered there. No one embodied this more than professor Shane Dikolli. He brought a genuine enthusiasm not just for the material he taught but also for his desire to help his students learn and grow. His obsession to perfect his craft while building meaningful connections with the people around him has deeply shaped how I approach my work and life. And somewhat surprisingly, I reflect on his Cost Accounting class – a subject that on paper appears dry – as the most memorable and directly relevant for real-world challenges I’ve faced at work over the years.”
Personalizing Success: “Success for me is about scale of impact: I get to help shape a technology that is fundamentally changing how billions of people access information and navigate the world. That is the dream scenario for the career pivot I started at Duke. However, authentic success is the ability to ground that high-stakes work in reality. Raising my girls and maintaining a strong partnership with my wife isn’t just a ‘balance’ – it’s the anchor that informs how I want to build AI for the world my girls will grow up in.”
“Over the next few years, I want to help move the industry from creating AI that is merely ‘impressive’ to AI that is genuinely useful in daily life. We will soon move away from just chatting with a bot in a text box on your phone and toward having a proactive digital partner that can navigate the world and help us actually get things done. My goal is to contribute to that evolution safely and responsibly.”