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n her busiest of days as Google’s director of global pa r t ner sh ip s , T h ao Tr a n might have 15 meetings back-to-back. Calls with Europe mean an early start in California and connecting with Asia sometimes requires evening chats. Long hours are the norm in Silicon Valley, but there’s flexibility, she said, allowing for family time and dinner at home. A busy schedule never scared Tran away from her goals anyway. While managing an ambitious academic load, she was senior class president at San Jose’s Independence High School and co-editor-in-chief of the American yearbook, a 320-page volume with a legacy of Crowns and Pacemakers. The decades between have been filled with opportunities, challenges and achievements, but the connection between the two phases of her life is clear. At heart, she’s a storyteller, motivator and organizer. At heart, she’s a yearbooker. Tran joined yearbook in sixth grade and was identified as “reliable and responsible” early on. She rallied her friends to transform the middle school book into a more credible history with thorough captions and reporting. A f ter three yea rs in the world of picas, coverage and sales, she found she couldn’t be on high school staff until she was an upperclassman. That would be OK, she decided. She’d have time to concentrate on the spacescience classes that attracted her to Independence in the first place. The respite from yearbook did not last long. She contributed unofficially at first, then was invited to enroll in a before-school class as a sophomore. She went to camps and conventions, sought to cover individuals on the giant campus and led the 80-member staff. When her time at Independence came to a close, she took her credentials to Yale, where she majored in political science. »
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success stories
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