On 16th October, we were incredibly fortunate to welcome Alex Gawley, former Director of Google and ethical investor, as guest speaker at the 42 Club. Despite this being the penultimate evening of the half term, a large group of students from across the year groups joined at school and online to hear from Alex about his fascinating and inspiring career.
Alex began by talking through his career path: from a Masters in Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, to a financial analyst in the City, to joining Google. A move to California saw him become a Director of Product Management for Gmail and Google Calendar, before founding and leading Google’s technical innovation lab, Area 120.
Alex offered fascinating insights into the creativity and innovation that drives the tech industry. Everyone at Google has to spend 20% of their time developing their own ideas and projects (in reality, this is done on top of their ‘day job’, hence the 120). In Area 120, employees could work exclusively on their projects for six months to see if they would lead to anything. Ideas included a 3D screen for Google Meet and a slightly less successful magnetic earpiece which sent vibrations directly to the eardrum (it proved tricky to remove after a day of wearing!). Alex’s advice was that it’s easy to think about the ways an idea could go wrong, but you don’t know the ways it could go right until you try.
Entertaining anecdotes from life inside a major tech company followed, from segway races down the office corridors (and on one occasion through a partition wall!), to office-wide Halloween costumes. It was apparently particularly distracting trying to deliver a serious presentation with the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, dressed up as Batman and Robin! It was clear that diversity and individuality is valued at Google, with a ‘wear what you’re comfortable in’ dress code being widely interpreted, from shorts and t-shirts to three-piece suits.
In 2019, Alex left Google and set up Zero Carbon Capital, a groundbreaking ethical venture capital fund that invests in businesses developing technical solutions to climate change. He saw this as an opportunity to provide crucial funding to eco-friendly innovation whilst also making a profit for investors. It was incredibly interesting to hear about current developments in green technology, including eco-friendly cement production (currently one of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide) and a new tidal energy turbine inspired by the design of a dolphin’s tail fin.
It was an absolute privilege to hear from someone with such a high level of experience in the tech industry, finance and green innovation. Thank you, Alex Gawley, for taking the time to speak to us.
The talk is available to watch below.
