Cloud Counsel

Christopher Aluotto’s career has taken him from the Air Force to managing legal issues associated with Google’s Cloud contracts

By Stephanie Zeilenga

“I OFTEN HEARD THE PHRASE ‘FLEXIBILITY IS KEY TO airpower’ while serving in the United States Air Force, and that appreciation for flexibility has been an asset outside the military as well. Anyone who has worked with me knows that I never turn down a challenge,” says Christopher Aluotto, senior counsel for Google.

The nine years Aluotto spent in the Air Force imparted more than flexibility and discipline. As an Air Force judge advocate, he also received worldclass legal training that continues to influence his work at Google. “As a junior officer, I was paired with senior trial lawyers who taught me trial strategies and tactics—not an experience I likely would have had as a civilian,” he says. “And as a contracts attorney, I was paired with a very senior lawyer who provided dayto-day training on everything I needed to know about government contracting.”

Aluotto shifted to civilian life in 2002. The transition wasn’t difficult. He continued his work in government contracts—a natural segue following his work in the Air Force—and he says all of his employers have valued his military background. First, he built a government contracts group at a small law firm in Cincinnati, Ohio, from scratch. “I learned a lot about the importance of hiring the right people who not only have the right experience but also the emotional intelligence and ability to work as a team,” he says. “It took a number of years building up a client base, but by the time I left the firm, it was a thriving practice group.”

Then, in 2009, Aluotto joined Philips as an in-house counsel, building a compliance program to oversee the company’s public sector contracts. He also served as the business unit attorney for its nuclear medicine group.

Finally, in 2012, Aluotto was recruited by Google to repeat the success he’d found at Philips. “I again built from scratch a compliance program to make sure Google complies with any contract it has with federal, state, or local government agencies,” he says. “One innovation I made was to develop a compliance dashboard so management knows at any given time the health of our compliance program. In creating our government contract compliance program, I had to learn Google’s business and identify various stakeholders who needed to be consulted. Identifying the right stakeholders is critical to getting any program approved by management.”

Now, Aluotto is part of the Google Cloud commercial team. He is responsible for negotiating agreements with both government and commercial customers. Aluotto’s work involves drafting and negotiating cloud agreements, professional service contracts, and licenses for software and artificial intelligence models.

He also typically takes the lead on more complicated cloud contracts. “These tend to be large enterprise contracts with the company’s top commercial customers,” he says. “Many of the commercial contracts I work on involve highly regulated industries, such as financial services or healthcare. When working with these customers, we have to account for their compliance requirements.” Needless to say, Aluotto’s expertise in working with contracts for the government, another highly regulated industry, has proven invaluable.

Christopher Aluotto Senior Counsel Google