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M a tt D u n n e ’ 8 8 ' s path to Google is somewhat unorthodox. Matt, son of the late civil rights activist John Dunne ’61, attended Choate as a postgraduate student for a year and continued on to Brown, where he majored in public policy. He was elected to the Vermont state legislature right out of college, where he served for seven years. Matt then joined the Clinton administration as the head of the AmeriCorps VISTA national service program. In 2002, he returned to the state senate in Vermont for two terms and also directed the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth. Matt ran for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont in 2006, losing a close race. He then joined Google, but stayed closely involved with Vermont politics, vying for the state’s Democratic nomination for governor in 2010. Google offers employees three months unpaid leave to work on any campaign, even your own. Matt did not ultimately succeed in his bid for the nomination, but his work in politics has proven valuable in his current work at Google. As head of Community Affairs, Matt works to ensure that employees in Google’s offices and data centers around the country stay connected to the nearby communities. He meets with local people, and trains teams at all the different Google offices in how best to reach out to those in the neighborhoods and to support local causes and organizations. “Choate started me down a path of having no fear,” he says “It gave me an earnest love of learning and exploration.” Google wants its employees to always be hungry for something new; Matt remembers feeling this way at Choate as well: “There is an intensity at Choate that allows you to be able to connect the dots between many different things.”
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J o r d a n L l o y d B o o k e y ‘ 9 6 , another Choate graduate, occasionally crosses paths with Matt in her work at Google. Jordan has been at Google for five years and and leads the K-12 Education Outreach team to design, develop, and launch education outreach programs globally. Her background in teaching, both as a volunteer and at a high-needs charter school in Washington, D.C., gave her a solid foundation for her current career. Jordan and her team try to generate more interest in engineering and computer science in schools, especially in underprivileged communities, because the supply currently doesn’t meet the demand for those skills. Her team engages an army of volunteers, much like Matt’s. “We create centralized resources, including presentations and guidelines for visiting classrooms and inspiring kids to pursue computer science, and a number of Community
Affairs volunteers utilize them,” she explains. “We also rely on Community Affairs to identify what is working at the local level, and funnel these organizations and schools through our programs and into our partner pipeline so that we can help build their organizational capacity and scale nationally.” Jordan attended business school at Wharton but wanted to return to education. She remembers feeling inspired at Choate by the energy and passion of several of her teachers, including Charlie Holmes and Doug James in the English department. “At Choate I found an openness, an interest in discussing ideas all the time, not just in the classroom,” she recalls. Google, she says, attracts intelligent people who can think on the fly and adapt well to change: “I am constantly amazed by the caliber of people with whom I work. They are productive, passionate, and excited about what they are doing.”
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started at Google in late 2011 in the People Ops department (Human Resources), after working independently as a leadership development and executive coaching consultant with them for several years. She helps teams at Google figure out how to be as effective as possible in what they do, providing assessments and team coaching, often in strategic off-site sessions. Caty believes that Choate definitely cultivates an innovative spirit in its students and says, “At Choate, you’re taught to be a leader and you’re taught to challenge the status quo.” She emphasizes the need for a place like Choate to cultivate the team-oriented mindset and help students feel comfortable in such a setting in order to be successful at a place like Google. “So much of the work we all do now is in groups and it’s such an important skill to be able to figure out how to make that a really effective model,” she adds. Crediting her fellow employees as the most inspiring aspect of her job, Caty says, “I have a lot of respect for the mission and culture at Google. And the people are really bright, interesting, and motivated to develop and learn and grow.” There is constant movement and change at Google, Caty adds, which means “…you have to let go of any perfectionist tendencies you might have because there’s just not time to perfect things.” Yet it is also addicting, she continues, “I’m very drawn to the pace at Google and I like the innovative, entrepreneurial mindset and the intensity. Overall, it’s an environment that I find very exciting and inspiring.” C a ty J a m e s E v e r e tt ’ 9 4