- Thanks for joining us.
My name's Mung Chiang.
I'm the John A. Edwardson
Dean of College of Engineering here
and welcome to spring weather.
Today we are above freezing temperature.
So compared to Monday,
we're now officially in spring.
And we also take great
delight in welcoming back
an alum who has done amazing
work throughout her career.
And welcome her back to
both give a fireside chat
and to give a lecture afterwards.
This is part of the Purdue Engineering
Distinguished Lecture Series,
where we bring the brightest
minds around the world
in different engineering disciplines
to be here at Purdue.
And it takes great delight
for me to introduce
Lila Ibrahim, who is one of our own
from electrical engineering.
And she has traversed
so many different paths,
it's hard to summarize everything
in a brief introduction.
But I'll say that,
part of what she's gonna talk about today,
will be on entrepreneurship.
With social impact and
with diversity impact.
She has both in her capacity
at Kleiner Perkins and Intel
and startup now is very big, Coursera.
Served in different roles
in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
But also personally,
been doing a lot of
social entrepreneurship
with impact in different countries.
And then, afterwards,
she will also talk about
the research advances
happening at DeepMind,
where she's serving as the
Chief Operations Officer
since last year.
And prior to that,
she has also worked in
different capacities
related to AI, machine learning
and implications to different
scientific engineering fields.
What is amazing about DeepMind I think is,
since being founded about
a decade ago, in London.
And being acquired by
Google and (mumbles),
about five years ago,
DeepMind is like a university
research institute,
or college, but without some of the
bureaucratic processes involved, in AI.
And it has attracted some
of the very best talents
around the world to
London and has branches
in other parts of the globe
and it has made tremendous advances
documented in Nature
Science, other publications
in an interdisciplinary way,
bringing together
traditional machine learning
and engineering and scientists,
along with neuroscientists, with ethics,
with the humanities and social sciences.
In a beautiful combination.
So thank you, Lila, so much,
for sparing your time with us here today,
back at Purdue, in ways more than one.
Now we're gonna start with the first topic
in entrepreneurship and introducing also
my great colleague, Arnold Chen,
who directs the Burton Morgan
Center for Entrepreneurship
and Arnold along with his colleagues,
also in Purdue Research Foundation,
the Foundry and other
parts of the ecosystem,
been doing amazing job,
in getting us to where we are today.
The Wall Street Journal ranked last year,
Purdue number six in the world,
number three in the country,
in number of start ups created,
licensing Purdue technologies.
And that is just one statistic among many,
we can brag about, because of efforts
by colleagues like you.
So thank you, Arnold, for
having this moderation
for the fireside chat today, with Lila.
So welcome both Lila and Arnold.
(clapping)
Thank you so much.
- Mung.
- Give the mic to you.
I got one.
- You got one.
- I got one.
Well welcome back.
- Thank you.
So I kind of just, I know
there's a lot of stuff
we wanna talk about.
So I'm just gonna kind
of jump right into it.
So, walk us back to your decision
that brought you to Purdue?
If you can think back,
what made you choose Purdue,
what else were you looking at?
- I actually am from Lafayette, Indiana.
(mumbling)
And I went to Harrison High School.
So I grew up basically on Purdue campus,
from the time I was a young child,
I was actually taking classes at Purdue,
there were a lot of activities for youth
and then when I was in high school,
even our senior, my senior classes,
my final exams for calculus,
were Purdue exams,
so I was able to test out of a lot.
So by the time I started Purdue,
I actually had about 49 credits.
So I was really looking at,
here's a campus I know.
Top engineering school.
Or I could go somewhere else.
I was thinking about MIT.
But, I think the quality of education,
the proximity, and I was really interested
in the co-op program.
And that is how I ended up at Purdue.
- [Arnold] Did you always know
you wanted to be an engineer?
- Oh no, I wanted to be an archeologist.
I wanted to be a translator.
And then my parents sat me down and said,
"It's easier to get out of engineering,
"than to get into engineering.
"So why don't you start
there and then figure out
"really where you want your path to go."
- [Arnold] Okay.
What were you like as a student,
if you can remember back?
(laughing)
What was Lila back,
- Someone, I have a
- as the electrical
engineer?
- Classmate in the audience
and they're gonna hold
me to, be honest here.
I think I worked really hard.
I developed my resilience
I think, at Purdue.
I was a member of Phi Sigma Rho,
the engineering sorority.
So, really tried to connect
with other women engineers
as well, because there was
a limited pool within EE.
But also found like a lot of collaboration
with my male colleagues.
So I think it was like
this kind of very social
in terms of in it was
both the academic aspect,
as well as getting to know
who my colleagues were,
especially because Purdue
was so familiar to me.
And then, the other thing was,
at the time, we used
to carry tackle boxes.
I don't know if,
they still
- Yeah.
- carry tackle boxes.
Okay we have resistors, capacitors,
and mine was purple.
- [Arnold] I remember mine was blue.
- Was it?
Yeah and I painted mine, so.
- [Arnold] Okay (laughs).
- I was often known as the girl
with the purple tackle box.
And I got really involved
in the International Center.
So it was a chance for me to
take a more global perspective,
while still being here in Lafayette.
- And then if you can remember,
were there any favorite
these favorite classes
that you took?
(mumbling)
I actually have fond memories,
I can't remember their,
whatever class we had
the tackle box, the lab,
I have very fond memories
of that one as well.
- Well I liked a lot of the optic classes,
the semi-conductor.
But what I found was,
actually, I liked doing a
little bit of a lot of things,
rather than one topic and going deep.
So I ended up doing a
generalist EE degree.
What I did not like,
which is kind of ironic,
so don't judge me,
but I did not want to do computer classes.
So, in fact,
when I first interviewed,
for my co-op, which I'm sure we'll get to,
my dad gave the sage advice of like,
"Don't tell Intel that
you don't like computers."
So.
(laughing)
Pretty good advice.
- [Arnold] So then you
ended up doing a co-op
while you were studying?
- Yes.
- [Arnold] And that
was obviously at Intel?
- Yes.
I was actually, Purdue's first co-op ever
to go to Intel.
- [Arnold] Oh wow.
(clapping)
That's awesome.
And so did you, you went
out to the Santa Clara?
- Yes, I actually wanted
to go to the East coast,
and my dad, my wise dad who told me,
he said, "I've heard of this company
"out on California called Intel
and I see them on your list.
"You really should talk to them."
Like, "Oh no, I don't wanna go out there."
I'm like, "Who is this, what
is this company anyway?"
And that's where the, "Don't tell them
"you don't like computers", came from.
- [Arnold] What other
kind of organizations
or things did you do on campus,
while you were here?
- I think--
- Were there any other
student organizations you were part of?
- I think Phi Sigma Rho.
The Society of Women Engineers.
The International Center.
I did a lot of volunteer work, as well.
Community service was
important in my upbringing,
so it was a chance for
me to also get involved.
But when I was at Purdue,
I also really tried to
focus on my academics,
because during my co-op sessions,
that's when I was able to do other things,
like, when I was in California,
I took fencing, for example.
I did art classes.
So, I tried to have a
more portfolio approach
to my college years.
- [Arnold] Okay.
So for the students who
are all sitting out here,
what advice would you give them,
looking back now,
to make the most of their time on campus?
- I think there's a couple things.
One is, it's okay to sample
and to try different things.
Figure out what really gets you excited.
You don't have to make a
decision and stay with it
for a long time.
In fact, these are the
years that should be
kind of experimenting with
different clubs and activities.
Hobbies, interests, I think that that,
and Purdue has so much to offer.
In fact, I've been really impressed
in my meetings here at Purdue,
to learn how much more the
university has to offer,
than it did when we were students.
- [Arnold] Yeah.
- Whether it's entrepreneurship,
whether it's programs
in community service,
or working in cross-functional teams
and I think that's really unique, so.
Purdue offers a lot.
Take advantage of it, learn from it.
You'll build a great network
and you'll develop skills.
I think the other suggestion I have is,
and I was talking with a couple of the
women engineering seminars earlier today.
And I always start by my third slide,
I talk about failure.
Because I think it's really hard for,
it can be hard for Purdue engineers,
who are extremely talented,
got the grades to get into Purdue,
and all of a sudden you're
faced with a new reality.
Like, the quality of your peer group,
the complexity of the courses,
the intensity of everything
you're trying to do
in university.
It's really easy to
like mess up on a test,
or maybe a class doesn't
go as you planned.
And I had that experience.
And it would've been really easy
and I've seen this happen,
to opt out of, like, "Oh,
that's it I can't do it."
And instead, I think there
is an opportunity to say,
"What did I learn from this?
"What support do I need?
"What are the other scaffolding
"that I need to learn this subject?
"How can I rely on my
peers, my TAs, et cetera."
I think that element of resilience,
so my suggestion is,
if you face some adversity
while you're here,
don't be scared of it.
Don't let it stop you.
In fact, lean into it a little bit
and use it as a learning opportunity,
because, you're, you know, I'm 20 plus,
almost 30 years down the road
and that class that I failed
doesn't matter, right?
I've had a very successful
career, despite that.
And in fact, in some
ways, because of that.
Because I learned how to persevere
and to move myself forward.
- Yeah, work those problems,
yeah.
- Yes.
- [Arnold] So then moving on
after graduating from Purdue,
the first job you had was at Intel.
- Correct.
- [Arnold] And I noticed
that you had a lot of
international experience.
You had two different stints overseas.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
- Yeah.
The story of my going to Tokyo,
is pretty interesting.
I was on a rotation program at Intel.
And, one of my,
through the rotations,
people had discovered
that I speak Japanese,
because I was an exchange
student in Japan in high school.
So when an opportunity came up
to start this new technology in Japan,
they came to me and asked
if I would be interested.
And I'm like, "Oh that sounds amazing."
So I went to my manager,
and, I said, "I really want,
"I'm really excited I
have this opportunity
"to move to Tokyo.
"And this other group at
Intel at wants to sponsor me."
And he looked at me and he said,
"You're ruining your career.
"What are you doing?"
And what I realized later was,
he was putting his own
career path and perspective,
he wanted me to follow him,
because he saw that as
a successful career path
and that's great, that's
what he wanted for himself.
But it wasn't what I wanted.
The best part of that conversation was,
I told them what I would be working on.
This next generation type of
CD and video type of work.
And he didn't understand.
And he said, "Who's ever
going to watch a movie
"on a computer?"
(laughing)
You know?
"There's never gonna be a
computer in a living room.
"You're wasting your time."
Not realizing that,
DVD, you know I was the
computer industry representative
into a lot of those conversations,
around DVD standards.
Which led to things like copy protection,
software encode and decode,
which now, you know,
DVD is now obsolete.
So when I tell people I worked on DVD,
most people are like, "What is that?"
- Yeah, yeah.
(laughing)
- Being in Tokyo and having such success
of getting a seat around the table,
I think sometimes being
a foreign, woman, young,
American, from the computer industry,
I was like everything
that they didn't expect.
- [Arnold] Yeah.
- And so it opened a lot of doors for me,
because I think it
piqued people's curiosity
and it gave me a chance to actually,
use my difference as an
advantage in the conversations
to maybe push in ways
that I couldn't have.
- [Arnold] Right, so in being
the only woman in the room,
you were able to use that as an advantage,
and not as a barrier, so to speak?
- Right, right.
And speaking Japanese certainly helped.
And then from there I went to Hong Kong,
to set up Intel's developer program.
At the time, a lot of the
computer industry peripherals
were being developed in Taiwan
and Intel wanted to try to
work with the ecosystem,
to align road maps
and to really have the conversation.
Because I had proven both
with my engineering skills
and ability to work in foreign markets,
and with a broad range of stakeholders,
that I'd be a good candidate to go start
Intel's developer program,
which led to Hong Kong.
And then, 10 years later in my career,
I moved to Shanghai, to start,
to grow Intel's education program.
It was an education technology program,
called the Classmate PC.
And it was a worldwide group,
but with manufacturing and
some of the engineering
in China, I was based in Shanghai.
- [Arnold] And then in between there,
you ended up rising in the ranks
to ultimately become
Chief of Staff of the CEO,
Craig Barrett.
- Yes.
- [Arnold] How does one go
about getting a job like that,
even at, you know, 10,000 person company?
- Yeah, in fact, we were
about 85,000 people.
- 85,000, okay.
(laughing)
- So I think, also what happened
in between all of that is,
I went on a sabbatical at Intel,
after seven years, you get
to have two months off.
So, clearly my father has
played an important role
in my becoming an engineer.
And he grew up in an orphanage in Lebanon.
So I went back to the orphanage
and built a computer lab,
during my sabbatical.
And Craig Barrett,
he is an engineer
without a business degree
and he rose to the ranks of CEO.
He was Intel's manufacturing powerhouse,
was kind of his rise to fame.
Then also, he really
believed in education.
He had a saying of, "Computers
aren't magic, teachers are.
"Computers are the tool."
So I think he, I had been through
so many different roles at Intel,
that somebody knew my name
and passed it on to him.
So I was invited to interview
and got the job.
In his final years as CEO,
and transitioned to Chairman.
- [Arnold] So what is the,
can you explain the role of
the Chief of Staff to us?
What did that entail
and what's kind of like
a day in the life of that like?
- Yeah.
It's, I didn't go get my MBA,
but I kind of feel like
that was my,
- [Arnold] Learning by fire.
- Yes, exactly.
Literally, by like,
- By the fire.
- By the fire at times.
So my role was a little bit of everything.
My first project was,
Andy Grove and Craig were
thinking about healthcare
and so they said, "What's
happening within the company
"within healthcare?
"Lila, go find out, you have two weeks
"to pull something together."
So kind of navigating around trying to
unlock things and that led to a formation
of an Intel health group.
I also did things like,
when he, part of the role
is a technical adviser.
So, helping to think
through strategic direction,
communications, dig into certain projects
within the organization that
are of high priority to him.
Then when he became Chairman,
hit retirement age from CEO
and transitioned to Chairman,
I asked him, "Craig, you
know, what do you see
"your role as Chairman being like?
"How do you need my job to evolve?"
And he looked at me and
he said, "You're smart,
"you go figure it out."
And it was an extremely empowering moment,
because, we then pivoted and he became
kind of a global evangelist
around technology,
the intersection of
technology and social impact,
because it aligned with his passions.
So we would travel to
about 20 countries a year,
including the middle of the Amazon.
Or Columbia, or India and across Africa.
And we would work on building
out wireless infrastructure
and computing capability and help
build the local capacity
to sustain and manage this.
So what that meant was,
you could suddenly unlock capabilities
in the global community, such as,
entrepreneurship, healthcare,
helping farmers get weather data.
Helping teachers teach,
with a computer as a tool.
So it was a really cool couple of years
and filled up my passport.
- [Arnold] Yeah, I can only imagine
and with your experience,
having had two stints already overseas,
it seemed like it was a perfect fit.
- Yes.
- To continue
traveling around the world.
So from there, after
that last role in Intel,
you were recruited away
to the most prominent
venture capital firm in the
valley, Kleiner Perkins.
Tell us how that
that process went about.
- I don't, it's interesting because,
venture capital wasn't on my radar.
Nor was being entrepreneurial.
In fact, when I was at Intel,
someone actually told me,
I did an executive program at Harvard
and someone said, "You know, Lila,
"you're really an intrapreneur."
And I'm like, "What's that?"
And they said, "Oh it's
like an entrepreneur
"but within the framework
of a large company."
And all of a sudden, my
career made sense to me.
Because I had opened new markets.
Started new businesses.
And once I had that framing,
it was actually really helpful for me,
because, when Kleiner Perkins came,
and I really didn't know that
much about venture capital,
but I thought, "Here's a
chance to take my experience
"from corporate and
work with entrepreneurs
"to see how I might be able to share
"some of those best practices,
"whether it's, how do you
think about global businesses?
"How do you think about
growing an organization."
Intel has objectives and key results,
which are kind of prevalent
across Silicon Valley now.
You know, "What aspects of my background
"can I help a startup?"
So I went in as a senior
operating partner,
to help run the firm, do
some business development
and, help with some of the investments.
- [Arnold] Okay and then,
having now sat on the, what I'll call the
other side of the table,
on the venture capital side,
what kind of advice can you give
the young entrepreneurs
who are gonna start,
saying, okay if they're
going into that first pitch,
or kind of like common mistakes
you see in those pitches,
that you know, you might be
able to shed some light on.
- I think that there are,
first of all,
do your homework.
Know who you're talking to.
On the investor's side.
Why should they invest
in you and your idea?
Is there something about their background
that's special?
Something about their investment thesis?
I saw a lot of entrepreneurs
just trying to raise money,
but not thinking about what
the direct correlation was.
- [Arnold] Meaning why that firm,
- Why that firm?
- Why there was a match.
- Why that partner?
- Yeah.
- Exactly.
And I think that was actually just,
it doesn't, it's surprising.
To me that feels like
kind of one of the basics.
- Like know your audience.
- No, yes.
And sometimes, you know, you
have to do that homework,
because, if someone invests
that you don't want,
like later you find out,
there's values misalignment.
Or, maybe the way that they
work with their other companies
isn't how you like to work.
It's hard to get rid of investors, right?
- Yeah.
(laughing)
So you have to be very thoughtful up front
when you're recruiting your investor.
The other thing too is,
most VCs make the investment
not just in the idea.
But is there a market for it?
How's the team look?
It's very rare that an initial idea
is exactly what goes to market.
So will this team, will this idea,
be able to pivot as needed and adjust,
based on what they learn?
And, can they move quick enough,
and fail fast, and experiment quickly,
to be able to integrate
and make those adjustments?
So a lot of times,
when you get interviewed about your own
skills or capabilities
some of those conversations,
stories about like
resilience, or adaptation,
how you got your testing quickly,
like how you were scrappy,
are actually really important,
because they signal what
type of entrepreneur
you're going to be.
And it'll also help them know,
like, what your limitations are.
Some entrepreneurs can
grow as a company scales
and some are less able to do so.
- [Arnold] And did you find that,
those types of,
being able to show those
types of attributes,
could kind of overcome the first time
entrepreneur stigma of
students, or people who come in
and say, "Well I've
never started a company.
"Or this isn't my fourth company."
- Yeah, I think we saw a lot of,
we invested in a lot of
first time entrepreneurs who,
did their homework, who were thoughtful.
Who were also humble
and knew that they had
a lot to learn along the way.
The interesting thing for me was,
I expected coming in from
such a well run organization
like Intel, into venture capital,
especially into Kleiner Perkins,
that there would some magic checklist
of how to think through things.
And what you realize is,
every partner has a different philosophy.
And every firm has--
- And also different
methodologies,
- Yes.
- Of how they,
- diligence.
- [Arnold] Make the decisions.
Yeah.
- It's part of why you
need to know your audience.
- [Arnold] I see.
Were there any specific either kind of
companies that you can
specifically remember.
Like the big pitches, or that might be
obviously household name today
that had gone through that board room
while you were there?
- Oh there's so many.
One of the first companies,
I did a lot of diligence on,
was Twitter when it was a
three billion dollar valuation.
So it was still kind of fairly,
early-ish at the time.
There was a company which
recently went public
called Beyond Me,
which was really fun,
because part, once we made the investment,
we got to actually try with a chef
all the different products.
That was really fun.
But there were so many that
are doing really well today.
Some succeeded, some failed.
But, what I was always impressed with was,
the passion, the creativity, the vision,
that entrepreneurs had as
they came through the door.
- [Arnold] How they wanted
to change the world.
- And some of them, the science
behind some of the things
that were happening and
especially in more of the
with the environment focus and green tech,
were just so fascinating.
It's like, I didn't realize,
that some of this was even possible.
So it was a really
interesting and good time.
And of course, the big one for me,
was doing diligence on Coursera.
- [Arnold] Okay, so that segue
ways very nicely into the
next phase of your career, which was,
meeting two Stanford
professors who had an idea
and then ultimately getting
that company started.
So tell us a little
bit about that and how,
like do you still
remember that first pitch
and sitting--
- Oh totally.
And it was around this
time of year, actually,
that it happened.
So how many people here
have taken a Coursera class?
- Oh wow.
That's great, thank you.
(laughing)
So, you know my passion for education
and working closely with John Doerr,
who is the venture capitalist,
who made the first investment in Google
and in Amazon and Jeff Bezos,
for those of you who don't know his name.
John and I were working
really closely together
and he had gotten a call from Stanford
that said this experiment was
running on Stanford campus
and they had actually
figured something out.
So they had done a flipped classroom.
So the idea was,
put a machine learning course out,
so that when students kind of get together
in their class that they can talk about
something other than the lecture.
And Andrew Ing, who does
the machine learning class,
realized that,
there were 100,000 people taking
his machine learning class.
- [Arnold] 100,000.
- 100,000 and he's like,
"This would've taken me 250 years,
"if I was teaching,
- Teaching this, yeah.
- "On campus."
And it really,
and at the time,
this is,
gosh I think if I'm remembering right,
around 2011.
So it wasn't a very
popular subject at the time
and yet, we saw that
and same with the computer science course
that was being taught.
So we made the investment.
Of course, Kleiner Perkins
made an investment in Coursera.
I work closely with Daphne and Andrew,
the co-founders who were professors,
who hadn't been in a company,
really built a company before.
And they, we all got along quite well
and my business experience.
And then I was eventually asked to come in
when the company was
still less than 40 people,
I was kind of the outside
executive partnering with them,
to help kind of take Coursera
on it's next stage of growth.
- [Arnold] Was that a
difficult decision at all,
to join the team and leave
your role at Kleiner?
- Yes and no.
The yes part is,
I really, I mean Intel was
a large, stable company.
Kleiner Perkins, if I
was going to leave Intel,
was a very prominent venture capital.
And all of a sudden,
I'm going into a company
of less than 40 people.
So,
- Who has maybe
18 months of funding, and.
- Yeah, it was, yeah, it was.
So from that perspective, of
being at that point in my life,
was a little bit difficult.
So I actually made a little
bit of a slower transition.
I did some advising first.
But then all of a sudden,
I'm there everyday.
And, I eventually made
the transition over.
The easy part of it was,
I was really passionate about
what the team was doing.
And I learned a lot working
with Daphne and Andrew
and the chance to have
an impact on millions
of learners worldwide.
You know, every week at
our all hands meeting,
we would read stories and
emails from our learners,
and about the impact that
Coursera classes had had.
So it was a very fulfilling,
very fulfilling experience.
- [Arnold] What were the early days like?
If you can kind of go
back to your first year.
Kind of give the students an idea of,
okay, a typical day was?
You know in an early startup.
- Unpredictable (laughs).
- [Arnold] Unpredictable.
- Completely unpredictable.
Exciting and fun and tons of energy.
You know, when I started,
I met with everybody in the company,
which you can do when the organization
- Yeah.
- is that size.
I think I met everybody
up until about 100 people.
And then it was just
getting difficult to manage.
No real rules, because everything is
you know you're so,
- You're a startup, so.
- Right, yeah.
You're, one minute you're talking about
the pedagogy, the next
minute you're talking about
some legal contract.
Then you're like talking about,
how do we build a business model?
Wait a minute, this employee has an issue
with this other employee.
Like, it's just everything all at once
and I found that you couldn't
really prepare for a day.
The other thing that was interesting is
because of the academic background,
we did everything in Google Docs
and everything was like a lot of pages,
because everyone in the
company was so smart
and so passionate about education.
To someone like me,
who was an engineer,
I'm like, "I went into engineering,
"so I wouldn't have to do English.
"And all of a sudden I'm
reading these long papers."
(laughing)
Every day.
But it was a very collaborative,
mission driven environment.
And it was super exciting.
Like, I think back to those days,
with great fondness.
- [Arnold] How would you
describe the company culture
that you, you know, you
strived to build there?
- Yeah, it was very much about
collaboration, because,
when you think about what
we were trying to do,
we were working with
universities on one hand
and then also, with learners worldwide.
And so, everything we were
doing was dependent on
these ecosystems working well together
and providing value,
to the learners, that they
felt, they perceived value.
And to the universities,
so they would continue engaging.
So it required a lot of
cross-functional collaboration
within Coursera in the early days.
And then we also struggled with,
how do you bring a business
mindset into something like this
that feels very mission-driven?
A lot of employees actually,
initially, had a very difficult time,
trying to think about what
a sustainable path was.
And,
- Versus kind of
just being a non-profit
and making all this free,
it's how do you make money?
- Right and so
how do you in order to
do good in the world,
we had to do well.
So that we could have the money to fund
where we needed to go.
But it was a cultural
shift for a lot of people,
once you get, we got to a larger stage.
And then another one was,
in the early days,
there's no process.
And so when you start to
put things into place,
like, after awhile, people wanna know
that they have a career path here.
So how do you start putting,
- The growing pains as you,
- Yes.
- [Arnold] As you're going through.
- And doing process in a way
that doesn't feel like it.
Like it serves some purpose, which is,
you wanna provide a fair environment
for people to develop.
You want to,
- [Arnold] Like the first
time you have to roll out
the performance review process.
- Yeah.
And yes and have development conversations
and deal with compensation adjustments
and like the people stuff, to me,
and I'm not trained on that.
I've like learned how to do it,
just by doing it.
But it's always way more complicated,
than figuring out, "Okay, how
do we iterate on this product?
"Or deal with some of the compute issues?"
- [Arnold] One thing I've kind of noted
when we've talked with
a lot of entrepreneurs,
that most students, for example,
don't know is that,
almost every start up,
goes within six months or even six weeks
of running out of cash.
This includes companies
like Amazon, Nike, Netflix.
Did Coursera have struggles like that,
where, there are tough decisions to make,
or kind of forks in the road that,
when you look back,
were much easier in hindsight,
but at the time, were agonizing?
- We managed our cash well.
- Okay.
- And had plenty of
investments, so we were fine
from a cash runway perspective.
But the monetization part of
the culture was a big shift.
So we, the struggles were really more of
how do we partner with,
you know, how do you
partner within universities
and still kind of influence
the type of content
that you wanna get,
so that it delivers
the right type of value
for the learner.
- Right.
Because at the time,
wouldn't universities have viewed that,
you guys as competitors?
- Yes and no.
Like the jury was still
out on all of that.
So, in many ways, they just gave us
whatever content they
had, rather than thinking,
"Oh, here's this emerging
field of data science.
"And we have this unique skill set.
"We're gonna really do a class well
"and do it on data science."
So what we ended up having to do,
was shift it from taking
whatever content came to us
to thinking about
what's happening in the industry?
What do companies want?
So doing the interviews
with companies saying,
"You know, how are you
trying up skill, or re-skill
"employees where you're
finding knowledge gaps?"
And then developing an
entire content strategy.
While also capturing some
of the best practices
and pedagogy that we could
share with the university,
so we were making requests of,
"Here's the type of content we need
"and here are some of the best practices
"that we need to see in the content
"as it comes under our platform."
- [Arnold] And so in a lot of your roles,
you've been in the operations.
I was curious, how you
either manage yourself
into that role, or how
that kind of came about.
Because, you know, Chief of Staff
is really an operations role.
Then at Kleiner and then at Coursera
and even now, at DeepMind.
- They've all been a little bit different.
So we can talk about that.
But, in that general
management skill set basically,
and one of the things I
think I really developed
at my time at Purdue too,
was kind of that as I mentioned,
liking a lot of the classes,
- Yep.
- but not necessarily
going deep into one specific area.
So, I found that,
the engineering training has
taught me how to ask questions
and how to be curious.
I wanna know how things
work and why things work.
And I've just been able to apply that
in a lot of different scenarios.
So it's something,
and I like getting things done.
I like being able to say,
"Okay, what do we need to do?"
And then like, "What's the
best way to get there?"
- [Arnold] So like a little bit
of the engineer optimization
side of things.
Okay.
So, go ahead and keep.
I didn't mean to interrupt.
- Oh no, no.
I was, yeah so I think,
so I've kind of found my
and I found that along the way,
I actually like working with people.
So that helped too.
So having both the technical background.
Liking working with people
and wanting to try to get things done.
Was really kind of the
right combination for me.
But each of the roles have
been slightly different.
So for example,
at Coursera,
I didn't have engineering in my scope
as Chief Operating Officer,
but I do have it in my scope at DeepMind.
- [Arnold] Okay but and
how have you gone about developing
these managerial skills,
because again, as an engineer,
you wouldn't, like you said earlier,
you would've thought that
you would've gotten an MBA,
but most of all, this is sort
of an on the job training,
or just picking things up as you go.
- There were a few things.
I think joining a large
company that ran well
and that invested in employees.
So I think that's one of the benefits
of going to a large company,
is you get to see,
what are decision making processes?
How do people have meetings?
What works, what doesn't?
What's it look like to have a good agenda,
to take action?
So you learn some of those really good
day-to-day activities in a larger company.
Then the other thing is,
that they'll invest in you,
they usually have some type of
learning and development program.
So I feel like Intel,
especially going through
the rotation program,
invested so much in my
leadership development,
that it made the on the
job training better,
because it wasn't just me,
it was also a lot of other employees,
so I learned from really good managers.
Also, I had really bad managers,
and learned what didn't resonate with me
and what didn't get me motivated.
And so I think sometimes,
in those, when you're
in a large organization,
you just naturally have that.
In a small organization,
you wear a lot of different hats.
And some people get addicted to that,
you know, one minute
you're the finance person,
the legal person, the head of engineering,
the head of product and customer support.
And so you can learn the
similar set of skills,
but it's a different path.
- [Arnold] Did you have
specific role models or mentors,
throughout your career?
Can you talk a little
bit about that again,
even starting back from engineering where,
when we were in school,
you probably would've been
the only girl in the class
kind of situation to,
going through and now being
you know in the senior level
as a female, in STEM?
- It's throughout my career,
I've always had amazing mentors.
I got used to, as I mentioned earlier,
like, when a class or something
doesn't go as you want,
and you don't wanna go through that again.
Like, I learned to ask for help
and ask questions a lot.
And so I think naturally,
what happened at Intel,
several senior managers were like,
"Oh here's someone who actually
wants to hear my opinion
"and wants my advice and takes it
"and then comes back and
tells me how she used it."
So I regularly,
I remember, in one role I had,
there was this new
technology coming out, USB.
So I went and like kind of
shared some of the information
and trained some of my peers,
who were much more senior than me,
but they weren't as like paying attention
to some of the more, the
emerging technologies.
And they really appreciated it.
And they saw that I was
sharing information with them.
And so, what I found was,
I just started having almost
a personal board of advisers
and it happened accidentally
and then over the years,
I've been much more deliberate.
So, I think about what are
the problems I wanna solve?
I am not shy about asking for mentorship.
And one of the ways that I do that is,
I'd say something like, "Arnold,
"I really admire how you
were, developed your career
"such that you could
do your role right now.
"I'm interested in learning specifically
"how did you develop your skills,
"to be head of operations
and be a managing director.
"Can I spend two hours with you
"over the next six months to learn more?"
And so I time bounded it.
I've been very specific with my requests.
I've told you what I'm
looking for from you
and it makes it harder for
you to say no to me, right?
- Right.
(laughing)
- So I think just naturally,
I had some of that at Intel.
And then, some of the mentors,
I live off my mentors' one-liners.
Craig Barrett, who, was the Intel CEO,
told me once, "Path finders end up with
"more arrows in their
back, then in their front."
Because you know, if you're trailblazing,
and people are always
telling you what's wrong
when you're trail blazing.
"Path finders end up with
more arrows in their back
"than in their front.
"So stop occasionally.
"So I can pull them out.
"So you can run faster."
And so I like always knew he had my back.
And so that was kind of a
management thing I took on.
When I was in venture capital,
Bill Campbell, who is a famous coach,
who has worked with
Silicon Valley executives,
made a comment to me about,
"Your title makes you a manager,
"but your people make you a leader."
So he was very much into
you have to be able to influence people,
if you really want to lead them.
And then another one was,
"There's a difference
between a team of all stars
"and an all star team."
So bringing that team
collaboration into play.
So I've had,
I feel very fortunate because,
I've picked,
I've been around a lot of amazing leaders
and some of their one line snippets
have really influenced
how I approach leadership.
- [Arnold] Okay, we're
running a little bit on time,
so what I wanted to make
sure was that the audience
got a chance to ask questions
and we're actually at a
good transition point,
because I'll leave the DeepMind questions,
because you'll be talking about that
in your later session.
So we have mics that are,
that can be passed around.
So if you have any questions,
just please raise your hand
and then our runners can come by.
- Hi my name's Marick
and I'm a senior studying
industrial engineering
and my question is,
just to try elaborate more on a topic
you discussed earlier, which was,
almost like impact investing,
when you talked about green
tech and things like that.
So, what are your thoughts on doing good
through a business, versus
doing good in business,
so you can generate profits
with what you then do good separately?
- There are a lot of different approaches
and people need,
entrepreneurs need to find
what motivates and inspires them.
I'm a fan of some of the
work that's happening
with BCore.
I don't know if you're familiar with that.
A friend of mine was
one of the co-founders.
And it basically is,
bakes into the letters of incorporation
how companies can
how they plan a double bottom line.
So they have social impact
and they have profits.
Like, or (mumbles) is a
great example of that.
Etsy.
I also think on some of the fields like,
green tech or some of the life sciences,
these are really long,
by the time you develop a product
find product market fit,
remove the cost out of it
because a lot of these
can be capital intensive.
It just takes time.
So you need to find the
right kind of investor
who's doing that kind
of long term thinking
and who understands the value there.
I was just with former
Vice President Al Gore,
has a firm, an investment firm,
called Generation Management,
where they do a lot of
this type of investing
and have done really well.
And it's impressive if you've got
and at Kleiner, we had
a green growth fund,
that was really kind of looking at also
once market risk,
or technical risk was reduced
and you had proven out
some of the market risk,
could you put some dollars to
just accelerate the growth.
So I think there's a
lot of firms out there
that are doing this and it's
just a matter of finding
the right one for you.
- [Arnold] Question in back.
- [Max] Hi, my name is Max.
So, I wanted to ask,
as AI starts to impact
a bigger and bigger part of
our life in the business,
do you think there will
be an unemployment problem
because of that,
or will it all kind of
average out by itself?
- I think as in every field,
there is technology changes have always
required some adjustments.
So for example,
I mean even automation of manufacturing
and the kind of work that
the people are doing.
I remember when we were
bringing internet into places
that didn't have the internet before
and everyone's like, "Okay
we're gonna put teachers
"out of business.
"They're gonna lose their jobs."
In fact, as the teachers
developed tech skills,
they went on to do other things
and the initial, so we actually
had the opposite problem
was the technology actually
created more of a need.
And so I think,
but I do remember this conversation a lot
around the internet build
out in the late '90s
and early 2000s,
which isn't that long ago
and the impact that technology
has had in these areas.
On AI specifically,
I think it is,
incumbent on those of us working on AI,
to be responsible in how we think about
the downstream implications.
And where and how this gets used.
I mean already AI is having
a positive impact in manufacturing,
taking on some of the
more complicated work
that may be hazardous for a human to do.
So I like to think of it as,
the technology as a tool.
That solves a problem
that we needed to solve,
versus as a replacement.
- [Arnold] Question over here on my left.
- Hi thank you for coming.
My name's Andrew Gonzales
and I'm a data scientist
but also a vascular surgeon.
So I know that in the deep learning space,
a lot of our innovations
come from academia.
I was wondering if you had
any thoughts for people
who cannot necessarily
take the plunge immediately
to go and just go out and be
an entrepreneur and do it,
and still have the function
within academic environment.
Because as much as I like doing things
that are innovative,
I have to operate at some point and time
and sometimes, the College
of Medicine for instance,
is not super great about
part time and what not.
And I was wondering how you
think in the next coming years,
the relationship between
academia and industry
are gonna evolve to have people
doing both at the same time.
- I don't know if I'm
the best person position
to comment on that.
Arnold might, but I'll share
some thoughts with you.
One is that,
I think if you're interested
in entrepreneurship,
there's also opportunities to
join boards or be advisers.
And it's a great way to
be engaged in the process and learn.
And so that when the
time is right for you,
you can move forward a bit faster.
I also think that,
I actually started a non-profit,
that's my entrepreneurial activity
and I did it with a co-founder
who was absolutely committed.
So we agreed as part of the,
as we co-founded this,
what my role would be as Chair
and so, it's a little bit
different than a company
in developing a product, but,
there are different models
that you can make things work,
if you're depending on what
you really want out of it.
Do you have anything to add?
- Only like, you're kind of
one of the comments you made earlier,
was that, when you're at a
large company like Intel,
you actually saw yourself
as an intrapreneur.
So using those types of skills, of hey,
you can still be a big company.
You can still innovate
and maybe in today's world,
a lot of people kind
of incubate their ideas
at big companies and then at some point,
they may spin out, only
to get acquired back.
That's actually very
common at like Google,
for example.
- [Andrew] Thank you.
- Other questions?
There's one in the.
- Hi, thank you very much for coming.
My name is Caleb.
I'm curious because you mentioned how
important it was to you
and the benefits you got
from working at Intel, a big company,
that invested in their employees.
And now in Silicon
Valley there's definitely
some companies that have like
super high turn over rates.
Where people just kind of
come work for a little bit
and then move on and there's none of that
active development in employees.
Do you think that sort
of culture is healthy
and if not, what do you think
should be done about it?
Thank you.
- It's an excellent question.
So for those of you who don't know,
I don't know what the latest data is,
but there was a point in Silicon Valley
in the startups, where,
the average turnover was
about 25 to 30% a year.
Which if you imagine for a small startup
where you need,
you're bringing people
in and training them
and even if you're trying to be thoughtful
in the interview process,
it's still a lot of turnover.
There's an interesting
book by Reid Hoffman,
who was the founder of LinkedIn, called?
- [Arnold] Something Yourself, like,
- No, Network, the Other Network.
It talks about a tour of duty.
And if you look that up, you'll find it.
But, basically, you go
into either a company,
or within a company, you might have
a couple of tours of duty.
So what are you trying to
really get out of that?
What are you contributing?
And what are you getting out of it?
And there's a lot of
elements in that book,
or you can look on Slide Chair,
that are really interesting for people
that are in that type of environment.
I don't think it's particularly healthy.
Because, it's really
hard to run a business
with that type of turnover
and you start, a lot of times,
people around you are competing
for who's paying the most,
or what's the biggest job title.
So all of a sudden,
you've got this job title
that maybe is inflated
and you're not necessarily having
the right skills to go with it.
So I think what I'm interested in
is I don't know what the
longer term impact will be.
It's been interesting
having DeepMind in London.
So we have very low attrition.
We go through a very
thoughtful interview process
and I think the type of work we're doing
is very long term, so
we tend to get people
who kind of come in and stay long term.
I also think being
outside of Silicon Valley
in some ways has helped,
because, when people join,
there's an element of commitment,
whereas, I think in Silicon Valley,
looking back on my time there,
it's like you kind of get caught up with,
"Oh so and so moved companies.
"Maybe I need to move companies."
Or, "Oh the cohort I
started with two years ago
"is thinking about what's next?
"Maybe I should, I don't
wanna be left behind."
So sometimes there is this
artificial movement, I think,
that gets created.
Do you have anything else?
- No I totally agree
because it also ends up being a little bit
of the arms race of are
people joining startups
for the mission, or just for the dollar
and the highest pay and the best next?
And so it goes to, if
you can recruit people
who are on the same
mission driven as yourself,
then they're less likely to turnover.
Other questions?
There's one in the back.
- Hi, Lila.
John Cortes.
I was your classmate back in EE '93.
(laughing)
Question,
- I was worried
you were gonna actually
say something about
what I was really like as a student,
or something.
- No you,
(laughing)
hit the nail on the head,
from what I remember.
What's been your biggest,
I wanna say opportunity that
you've had in your career
and then how did you overcome that,
or biggest challenge maybe?
- Biggest challenge in my career.
I actually think some of
it is getting labeled.
Right?
In some ways,
you know I mentioned like,
"Okay I'm a generalist."
But then some people are like,
"Generalist?
"You know what value does that add to me?
"Like I need somebody to do this."
"But wait a minute, I'm
really not a generalist,
"I really can do all of these things."
I think sometimes we
short hand it and maybe
cut ourselves short, for what we're
really able to contribute.
I also think to some extent,
I've been in several times in my career
where I've been really unhappy
and I've just kind of
tried to push through it
and I think there's this
balance of figuring out
what you really want out of your career
and having the guts to say,
"It's time to move on."
One of the things I've learned is,
you know, kind of back to the failure,
like not wanting to fail, but just saying,
"Okay, is now the right time for me
"to think about what's best
for my career, myself?"
So I would say that's another one
and the third thing I'll say is,
whenever you're dealing
with people issues,
it's very, sometimes easier,
to not confront them.
And what happens is, it builds up.
And all of a sudden,
the small thing turns into this big issue,
that now feels very high stakes.
And that could be giving people feedback.
I had this one point, where somebody,
I felt like someone wasn't
treating me with respect.
And so what I had learned
by that point in my career,
was go and have the conversation early
and do it a way that
wasn't passing judgment.
So I went to his office.
And I said something
like, "When you do this,
"it makes me feel like, you don't,
"you don't respect me.
"And I wanna have a
conversation about this."
And what I did was,
I had to bring that awareness in
and I'm happy I did it early,
because it was a complete
misunderstanding.
But I think I learned that the hard way,
because, in the past,
I think,
John Doerr has a great saying,
"Ideas are easy.
"Execution is everything.
"And it takes a team to win."
And the people part of everything
is always the most
complicate, unpredictable,
so if you can kind of lean into the times
that are uncomfortable
and resolve them quicker,
I think I could have.
Does that, does that answer the question.
Great.
- [Arnold] How do you balance the
like the things, "I'm not happy."
And the sort of the,
"I need to persevere
through this tough part",
versus, "I'm bailing and
I'm kind of jumping ship."
- I think when you, to me,
for me personally, it
comes down to values.
And I've learned this later in my career.
When you know what your
personal values are,
and you're clear about it.
Then you start to figure out how is that
with the group of people
you're working around,
because values don't really change.
I think when there's a
fundamental difference there,
it's probably worth changing.
When you're spending more time
focusing on what you're not doing,
versus what you are doing,
like I'm a firm believer of
playing off of your strengths.
Your resume, your CV's
always going to have gaps.
But if you're always saying,
"What do I need to do
"to fill that gap?"
I think you stop, you
kind of lose sight of
what value you really had.
- [Arnold] I think we have time for
one or two more questions.
There's one up front.
- Is there a female
who has a question too?
I wanna get some diversity in here.
Come on ladies.
No, okay (laughs).
You can ask a question too.
(laughing)
- Yeah, wait for the mic.
- [Woman] Sorry I didn't see your hand.
- Hi, so I was sort of wondering,
what is your personal drive?
What sort of like pushes you
to wanna improve, to move forward
and how did you originally find that
and come up with that?
- I'm a child of immigrants.
And so I think a lot of it was
kind of that culture that
was passed down to me
and that I grew up in.
I also have a sister
who has cerebral palsy
and has two masters degrees and
graduated second in her class.
So, I'm like, I had to persevere
because I looked around me
and said, "Everyone else is."
So I think I felt kind of that obligation.
And there is nothing like
a little bit of struggle
and then to succeed and to get
some type of accomplishment
and to know what it took.
And so I think that also is a
little bit of the adrenaline.
- [Arnold] Other question?
There we go.
(mumbling)
- Hello, my name is Deborah.
And basically the question is for people
for students now that are looking for job.
I'm a PhD student.
I'm in the phase that
I'm starting to seriously
applying and forming the
vision and the career
as you said, what are
your values and how to
approach it and so, the question is,
if you have any key advice for,
especially women,
starting in the same area,
how to, not only how
to perform interviews,
but, our mindset.
How to go after looking for jobs
that actually are gonna be intended
with my own personal and technical values.
- I think one of the
things that's important
in interviewing is to remember that,
they're interviewing you,
but you're also interviewing them.
The worst thing you
can do in an interview,
is go in and be someone that you're not.
Because let's say you get the job.
Great, you got the job.
But now, they've interviewed someone
they're expecting someone else to show up.
They're not expecting you to show up.
And what happens if you're
going in as yourself
and you don't get the job?
Great, maybe that wouldn't have been
a good fit for you anyway.
So what was it that you want?
So I think, going into an
interview with that mindset
and saying, "What are the
questions that I'm going to ask,
"that are really going
to get to the heart of,
"is this the organization
that I wanna be a part of?"
And that may be even things like,
checking out their website.
Realizing what their values are
and asking them a question about it
and maybe about their mission
and asking about how they
balance their mission
with their profitability,
for example, to the earlier question.
So do your homework,
but go in with a mindset of,
you are interviewing them as well.
I spent about 50 hours
interviewing with DeepMind.
And I did that, because,
I didn't, I was only
going to move to London
and work in artificial
general intelligence,
if I felt good about the people, the team,
the values, the vision and I
felt I could make a difference.
And I was at a point in my life where,
that element of diligence,
was really critical.
And, it worked for them, it worked for me.
The onboarding was completely smooth, so.
It's the first time I
had ever done something
so extensive, but it
felt like the right thing
and it felt like what I needed.
- All right, well this hour has gone by
incredibly fast.
Just a couple announcements that
we'll have a short half hour break.
There are refreshments
and water and some cookies
on the side.
Lila will be around.
Then at,
- [Man] 5:30.
- Six o'clock, she'll
be giving her lecture on
artificial intelligence.
- And if I could, one of the things
I've been super impressed with on campus,
is the amount of activities
that are really set up
for students these days,
between all the entrepreneurial support,
the work that you can do on vertical,
integrated projects.
- Yeah.
- I can't believe
that was the right acronym.
It is the type of
mentorship that you have.
Realize it's above and
beyond the course load
and yet at the same time,
it's extraordinary to me,
the type of opportunities
that Purdue engineers
now have available to them.
So I'd really encourage,
oh and international too.
Really encourage you to go check it out
if you don't know about it.
I think it's unusual to have
this type of variety and
opportunity at a university.
So take advantage of it.
Thank you.
- All right,
thank you, Lila.
(clapping)
