Yes, It is ok to try something new #2022

In mid 2020, I was asked to join Verily, the Healthcare & Life Science division of Alphabet (Google’s parent company). Verily was formerly called Google Life Sciences and spun out of GoogleX in 2015 and renamed to Verily (same year my co-founders and I were starting our CyberSecurity company at X called Chronicle). X is sort of the staging ground for new ideas/companies looking to spin out and become sister companies to Google.

The Verily engagement was originally for ~6 months to help them build a security and privacy team but also look at the organization and share my thoughts and experience about how the company was operating overall and how they could better scale. It was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a general call to action to help understand this virus and the Alphabet/Google family has been very generous and supportive to me over the years, so I was happy to do this tour of duty with Verily and help where I could. I was not an expert in Life Sciences or Healthcare, but many of the growth opportunities facing the company were in the operational and commercial arena, where I had more experience.

Even with that understanding, I still had a good dose of anxiety and some insecurity joining such a talented medical and science team and culture — as business and tech leader. I asked these teams and leaders to be patient with me and that if I could be a teacher on the operational and commercial side of the organization, please let me be a student on the science and medical side. I became the Chief Operating Officer of Verily a little over a year ago and today am humbled and proud to be named President of the company.

While I have learned a lot (and hopefully taught a few things) over the last 18 months here at Verily, I still have so much to room to grow and learn. We have such a wonderful team of people who are professional, passionate and excited about our future.

The professional/life lesson in sharing this story is that it is ok to take some risks, to venture into new areas and to ask for help and support when needed. People will surprise you and will respond and that even those of us who have had some success in life and in business, still have insecurities like everyone else, especially when taking the risk and trying something new.

I would like to thank the leaders and broader teams at Verily for this first year journey together and looking forward to 2022 and beyond!

Stephen