Leadership is about finding a new direction, not simply putting oneself at the front of the herd that’s heading toward the cliff. In the past two years, through its hosts, mentors, speakers and participants, the BOLD Program has taught me how to live by the preceding definition of leadership. I am the product of a mélange of experiences, learnings and serendipitous events at Google.
My return to the BOLD program this summer gave me considerable advantage over my previous summer, as I walked in knowing the company, the culture, and was ready to work, filled with energies that had been inspired by a year of the Ambassador program. The inspiration from individuals at every level- Rosenberg to Roe to Dinsmore, product to sales to hr, gave me the thirst to seek ownership of my projects, and represent Google’s core values as the face of all my exertion by going far and beyond.
Working with the dynamic DSO Consumer Packaged Goods vertical, under Catherine Roe gave me the ability to pitch to clients and be creative in the work I do. I have had the opportunity to do amazing work, be creative, pitch ideas and work hand in hand with the team. For example, an opportunity surged to help the Kraft management team design a full day of learnings and activities for their newly established innovation team, and I raised my hand, spoke-out my interest and jumped straight to the task. This was my opportunity to pitch Google products to Kraft management, while helping them fulfill their adventurous request. This was something that was out of the marketing scope of my internship, but it was new and exciting.
I helped put together a full day event, whereby the participants would visit different small to medium size companies and learn from their case studies to inspire ideas internally. I designed and created an interactive, digital Google map to provide guidance for the Kraft Pub Crawl organized by Google. The map is an interactive interface. The user is able to rate the locales, take notes on the icon's description box about his/her experience, draw lines connecting places and even set routes and directions. I went even farther. I held a tutorial for a VP at Kraft about Cloud Computing, and how we could implement Google Docs, Forms and even Sites for the Crawl, to not only inspire collaboration and communication, but also augment tech-savyness amongst what they hoped to be an innovative team. The list is long- I created iGoogle Marketing Dashboards to help them understand search and prepared a Walmart / Kraft strategy report.
The results were incredible. “Cloud Computing” was the new buzz-word inside of Kraft, they felt at the top of the tech-world knowing that they were implementing this new fashion. Collaboration and communication were unique, and idea sharing was exponential. The Senior VP of Marketing at Kraft emailed Dennis Woodside to thank him for my leadership in the project, and my team applauded my accomplishment as I ameliorated their relationship with Kraft and opened doors that had been locked for some time. Just this past week, I was approached by Hunter PR and Kraft to organize a similar event in New York.
Taking complete ownership of this project showed my ability as a leader and a doer. I was able to help an external team grow stronger, while simultaneously having them adopt Google products and act Googley, by collaborating, thinking of the bigger picture and being open and accessible to the world. This year I return to the University of Chicago as a Google Ambassador for the second time. This summer has taught me many things. Just like I was able to navigate effectively and make things happen at Kraft, I look forward to planting the seeds of Google products in similar ways- from the student who wants to keep his documents online to the school administration that aims to cut costs and integrate email, calendar and other online applications by Going Google. As a leader, I am always in search of a new direction. BOLD has given me mine.
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