Talks at Google

Shaz Kahng has been a scientist, a consulting partner, an e-commerce expert, an executive at Nike, and a brand & marketing strategist. She eventually became the CEO of multiple companies in the apparel, retail, footwear, sports, and technology sectors. Frustrated by the lack of successful, inspirational female business leaders in fiction, Shaz wrote and published a novel about women succeeding with smarts, scruples, and style. In this Talk, Shaz discusses her book The Closer, the first book in the Ceiling Smasher series. This series focuses on positive & powerful female leaders, fictionalizing Shaz’ decades of top business experience and sharing a thrilling story about the first female CEO in the sports industry. Kahng’s experience working in male-dominated boardrooms enabled her to provide a behind the scenes look at what it really takes for a woman and a person of color to shatter the glass ceiling. Moderated by Nadia Gil. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Volcanologist and natural hazards expert Jess Phoenix has dedicated her life to scientific exploration. Her career path—hard-earned in the still male-dominated world of science—has shoved her headlong into deep sea submersibles, congressional races, glittering cocktail parties at Manhattan’s elite Explorers Club, and innumerable pairs of Caterpillar work boots. It has also inspired her to devote her life to making science more inclusive and accessible. As part of her mission to learn as much as possible about how the Earth works, Jess has done science in many remote and dangerous environments. Her work has taken her to the mountains and jungles of South America, rural Mexico, the Hawaiian islands, the Australian Outback, the expanses of the American west, and remote parts of Africa. Jess is a strong advocate for "boots on the ground" science, believing that seeing things up close is the best way to understand them comprehensively. Jess’ book, Ms. Adventure, skillfully blends personal memoir, daring adventure, and scientific exploration, following her adventures from jungles to glaciers, university classrooms to television studios, and even to the side of the world’s largest volcano, where she fixes a tire with a ballpoint pen, bubblegum, and duct tape. Moderated by Lauren Harrell. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

In honor of World Wildlife Day, wildlife veterinarian Dr. Gabby Wild visited Google to discuss her latest book, National Geographic Kids’ "Wild Vet Adventures: Saving Animals Around The World". Dr. Wild travels the continents to meet some of Earth's most incredible creatures, including regal lions, playful pandas, fearsome Gila monsters, and creepy tarantulas. She teaches young readers about animal anatomy and behaviors, diets, families, the dangers they face in the wild, the special human-animal relationship, and the challenges that arise when they share a habitat. Dr. Wild has traveled all over the world to save animals. Kids often recognize Dr. Wild as the veterinarian from the online game Animal Jam Classic, where she answers questions from children about wild animals. When Dr. Wild is not traveling to save animals, she is an emergency room doctor and veterinary surgeon at The Animal Surgical Center on Long Island. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Linguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound “black.” In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, linguist John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation (or STI) rather than a maker of them. In the book “What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?“, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere, but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. These contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production. Originally published in December of 2017. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

When Damon Tweedy began medical school, he envisioned a bright future where his segregated, working-class background would become largely irrelevant. Instead, he found that he had joined a new world where race was front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon met a professor who bluntly questioned whether he belonged in medical school, a moment that crystallized the challenges he would face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture, the common refrain for numerous diseases repeated as “More common in blacks than in whites.” Tweedy’s book, Black Man in a White Coat, examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common amongst black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care. Originally published in September of 2015. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Stephanie Hicks, PhD is a Lecturer at the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan and completed her master’s degree and PhD in Educational Policy Studies – Social Foundations at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Stephanie sat down with Google to unpack what it means to be Black in America and discusses the catalysts, realizations and misperceptions of the Black experience through the lens of her own personal experiences and her studies on intergroup dialogue and DEI policy.  In celebration of Black History Month, members of the Black Googler Network created a film that explores their past experiences as it pertains to their initial realizations of being Black. This project was inspired from the 2017 CNN feature of, The First Time I Realized I Was Black, and the 1903 book by W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Audience members of the live talk just finished watching this incredibly powerful film that showcases some poignant experiences that Black people in America face on a daily basis. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video. Moderated by Brady Bennett.

Belva Davis is a history-maker, an award-winning journalist, and a pioneering feminist. She has traveled the world reporting on politics, terrorism, racial and gender issues, and the role of art and culture in increasing human understanding. From her hardscrabble beginnings in the Deep South during the Great Depression, she broke into journalism and made the move from segregated newspaper and radio work, becoming the first black woman hired as a commercial television news reporter on the West Coast. She has anchored at three major network affiliates CBS, NBC, and PBS. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.