Biostatistics: Science by the Numbers
Google Search for "Work-Life Balance"
At the Intersection of Need, Science and Market
How Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow
Brain Studies Yield Clues to Desire and Motivation
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©2007
Google Search for "Work-Life Balance"
Google didn't become Google overnight; its journey from small niche start-up to public online empire was incremental. From its beginnings in 1998 as a no-frills search engine with a unique twist — returning the most relevant results by analyzing the links on Web pages — the company gradually developed its own new products and services and acquired those of other companies until it became arguably the world's widest-known e-brand, with a current market capitalization of $156 billion.
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Angela T. Lee '89 |
Similarly, Angela T. Lee '89 took her time trying on different roles as she found her way to what she calls her dream job. Lee is an international product manager at Google, and has been responsible for introducing the company's most recognizable products and services in dozens of countries around the globe. Along the way there were career changes and industry changes and life changes, all of which, Lee says, were instrumental in leading her to where she is now.
"You can't take one big step to land at your ultimate vision," she says. "You have to change yourself little by little."
That final vision began half a world away, in Japan, where Lee was raised by her Chinese parents. She developed an affinity for mathematics and science, and came to the United States to attend Bryn Mawr as a physics major. A summer job in the microfabrication lab at the University of Pennsylvania led to a career insight that she calls "a life-changing moment."
"I still remember the excitement I had when I saw my first transistor work," Lee recalls. "It was an amazing thrill. I said, 'This is it. I'm going to be an electrical engineer.'"
Lee had been accepted into the College's 3-2 Program in Engineering and Applied Science, a partnership with the California Institute of Technology. After three years at Bryn Mawr she studied for two years at CalTech, and graduated with a bachelor's in physics from the College and a bachelor's in electrical engineering from Caltech. Lee earned a master's at the University of California, Berkeley, and accepted a position at Applied Materials in Santa Clara, Calif., to engineer flat-panel displays.
From Mom to Dot-Com
When she became pregnant with her first child, Lee shifted from engineering to marketing at Applied Materials, to avoid exposure to chemicals used in the manufacturing process. When her daughter turned two, she put her career on hold for a year-and-a-half to become a stay-at-home mother.
"I found out that I loved being a mom, but not so much that I wanted to stay home all the time," Lee says. "I have high respect for stay-at-home moms, but I personally felt I was not getting everything done that I wanted. "
Living in Silicon Valley at the start of the Internet boom, Lee decided to join a dot-com firm. She found it difficult to get a job without experience in the field until a friend who had launched an online start-up brought her on board in a marketing capacity. The company went under in six months, but now that Lee had a foot in the industry's door she soon landed at another start-up, this time doing product management. That company's bubble also burst, and she joined another start-up, an online business-to-business venture.
Her new job had an international dimension that Lee had coveted; she was helping the company enter the British, French and Japanese markets. Once again funding dried up, but no matter — Lee had, finally, after all of those smaller steps, found the job that came closest to her ultimate career vision.
Dream Job
"It took three hops to get where I wanted to get," she says. "By then I was ready to identify the company I wanted to work for. That's how I found Google. If I had tried to knock on Google's door straight from my job at Applied Materials, there's no way Google would have talked to me."
Google hired Lee in 2001 as its first international product manager. Over the last six years she has played a pivotal role in bringing the company's ever-expanding suite of online products and services to a multitude of international audiences — in Japan as well as China, France, Brazil, and more than 40 other countries.
"International software is not just about translating words," Lee says. "It's about understanding how people in different countries think and work. They have their own workflow and business logic, and that varies from country to country. It's very important for businesses entering foreign markets to understand these variations, if they are to succeed."
Two years ago Lee, with her husband and two daughters, relocated to Japan to launch Google's product management team there. She returned to California this summer and is taking a leave of absence to recharge her batteries and decide how best to balance career and family demands. Ideally she hopes to find a way both to remain at Google and to spend more time with her children, who are approaching ages that typically feature "changes and challenging times."
"I'm going to take a step back and think about what I want to do with my life," she says, then quickly emphasizes, "And I don't limit that to my career. It's my life."
Tom Durso writes about science, health care and business for a variety of publications, including the Philadelphia Business Journal and Family Business magazine.