\tKey Takeaways<\/p>\n
Lila Ibrahim is Google DeepMind\u2019s first chief AI readiness officer.<\/p>\n
Her career began in an Indiana cornfield, not an AI lab.<\/p>\n
She entered DeepMind without formal AI training but managed to earn a C-suite AI role.<\/p>\n
Lila Ibrahim\u2019s route to the top of Google DeepMind<\/a> started at the age of 14, when she spent summers detasseling corn in Indiana for \u201c$1-something\u201d an hour. It was a grueling job that left her sweating, scraped up and certain that she wanted another kind of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up in really humble beginnings,\u201d Ibrahim recently told Fortune<\/a>. Her immigrant parents<\/a> were building careers in a new country while raising three children, including one with cerebral palsy. It was a loving home, she said, but money was tight, and life was complicated.<\/p>\n Working in the cornfields was \u201creally hard labor,\u201d she recalled. One thing set her apart, though, and would continue to differentiate her for the rest of her career: \u201cI had this strong work ethic,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Agriculture wasn\u2019t her future, but that relentless work ethic<\/a> would go on to define her career.\u00a0<\/p>\n That drive soon carried Ibrahim from the fields into a Purdue University lab, where she worked on fruit-fly DNA while still in high school. She obtained a bachelor\u2019s degree from Purdue, majoring in electrical engineering<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n From there came nearly two decades at Intel<\/a>, spanning roles in Santa Clara, California, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. By the time she departed in 2010, she was chief of staff to Intel\u2019s CEO<\/a>, helping oversee an organization of 85,000 people<\/a> while raising newborn twins.<\/p>\n She later served as chief operating officer and president of the educational platform Coursera<\/a>, before joining Google\u2019s AI research lab, DeepMind, as its first chief operating officer in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n Becoming DeepMind\u2019s first chief AI readiness officer<\/p>\n When Ibrahim joined DeepMind<\/a>, she lacked experience in AI or research<\/a>. Despite her unique profile, she was promoted to become the company\u2019s first chief AI readiness officer this year. The role focuses on preparing institutions and society for AI\u2019s effects.<\/p>\n Ibrahim is used to being a \u201cfirst\u201d everything. \u201cI had to get really comfortable very early on in my life that I was just an outsider,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ibrahim\u2019s instincts as a leader came from watching two immigrants<\/a>, her parents, build a life from scratch, each carrying different forms of bravery.<\/p>\n Her Lebanese father lost both parents as a young child before eventually making his way to the United States. He became an engineer and worked on early heart pacemakers and car-safe technology.<\/p>\n Ibrahim\u2019s Palestinian mother had ambitions that stretched beyond the limits of the life expected of her at home. Ibrahim describes her as \u201ctoo ambitious<\/a>\u201d to stay put for long. In the Midwest, she became one of the few mothers Ibrahim knew with a career that took her on regular business trips.<\/p>\n Looking back, Ibrahim sees those choices as the foundation<\/a> of her own worldview. \u201cWhen I look back now, they shaped so much of who I am today,\u201d she said. \u201cDespite having dark hair, English as a second language and growing up in the Midwest of the United States, I was taught that opportunity is everywhere, and you are not defined by anything other than your own curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n \tKey Takeaways<\/p>\n Lila Ibrahim is Google DeepMind\u2019s first chief AI readiness officer.<\/p>\n Her career began in an Indiana cornfield, not an AI lab.<\/p>\n She entered DeepMind without formal AI training but managed to earn a C-suite AI role.<\/p>\n Lila Ibrahim\u2019s route to the top of Google DeepMind<\/a> started at the age of 14, when she spent summers detasseling corn in Indiana for \u201c$1-something\u201d an hour. It was a grueling job that left her sweating, scraped up and certain that she wanted another kind of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up in really humble beginnings,\u201d Ibrahim recently told Fortune<\/a>. Her immigrant parents<\/a> were building careers in a new country while raising three children, including one with cerebral palsy. It was a loving home, she said, but money was tight, and life was complicated.<\/p>\n Working in the cornfields was \u201creally hard labor,\u201d she recalled. One thing set her apart, though, and would continue to differentiate her for the rest of her career: \u201cI had this strong work ethic,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Takeaways Lila Ibrahim is Google DeepMind\u2019s first chief AI readiness officer. Her career began in an Indiana…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[25,5044,6573,132,7543,685,174,29603,134],"class_list":["post-142696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-google","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-deepmind","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-google","tag-google-deepmind","tag-leadership","tag-marketing","tag-news-and-trends","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}