CHELSEA SEABRON: The Google.org fellowship
is a program where we match Google employees
with non-profits for up to six months of full-time work,
all pro bono, to help those organizations advance
their mission.
One of my favorite things about the Google.org fellowship
is the actual journey that happens.
Six months is a long time, but it's a short time.
But over the course of that, there's
amazing transformation that happens
when Google employees bring their skills
into a new context, when non-profits learn, hey,
this is one new approach that we can learn from tech.
There's a sweet spot of magic that
happens when both worlds come together
to advance something together.
And really that journey is best spoken to
by those that are participating themselves.
ALEXIS ARTIS: Being African American and from the greater
Detroit, Michigan, area, I watched the COVID-19 pandemic
unfold in my very own backyard.
Detroit quickly became an epicenter,
disproportionately targeting my community.
I was left feeling extremely helpless
as I watched close friends fight this virus
and lose family members simultaneously.
It felt a bit unfair.
How could I work for such a powerful company by day
and be consoling my friends by night?
On top of this really weird dynamic,
the biggest question remains.
Why is my community being impacted so disproportionately?
Where is the data and the information
that will help combat these disparities that exist?
When I found out that Google was allocating resources
towards fighting this issue, I knew
I had to be a part of the solution.
And that is why I joined this fellowship.
My role in the team is a product marketing manager.
What this means is that I oversee the marketing
and communication efforts for this fellowship.
I develop out the overall marketing strategy
based on the marketing needs from Satcher Health Leadership
Institute.
I work cross-functionally with the wider team
to execute on these initiatives.
COLIN JACKSON: My role on the team is product manager.
I make decisions about what we're building,
and I help to keep the team focused
on the core goal of this project, which
is policy change.
I listen to the stakeholders for this project, the Morehouse
and the Satcher Health Leadership
Institute, coworkers.
And I also look at other tools out on the market that
are focused on expressing health inequities in America
to compare them to what we're planning on building
and making sure that we are not duplicating too much effort
and that we're adding something fresh and new
to the health equity policy landscape.
RASMI ELASMAR: I manage the software engineers
on our fellowship teams.
And they're coming from this world
where the software they write is one or two
steps removed from the human outcomes and impact
of their work.
And they're coming to this fellowship program
where the code we write very directly
affects people's lives.
And it's our responsibility to really understand
that connection between the work we do
and the people who are affected by it,
and include them in all steps of the process
so that we know that what we're building together
is what they need.
CHI PHAM: My typical day varies a lot day to day
because I have to work in translating what
the research is saying into designs
and making those designs feasible so
that engineers can build them.
A lot of my day is just talking to all the different groups
of people and making sure that we're all on the same page.
Why are we building what we're building?
How are we going to build it?
And what are we building?
KRISTA KATZENMEYER: We're working really closely
with the product teams, the designing teams, the user
research teams.
And we're building a lot of prototypes
kind of on the fly, really quickly,
which has been a fun change for me
because a lot of the processes on my normal job in Google
Search are a lot slower.
So it's been a lot of fun to have such a fast velocity
with this team that's just really constantly
in communication, really, cross-functionally
between all the different product
areas that we're working on.
So that's been a lot of fun.
LORENZO BOYICE: I would say my favorite part of the fellowship
is working with a team that's very socially aware of what's
going on and have a genuine interest in doing something
about the situation.
And it's very unique that we all come
from different backgrounds, different perspectives,
but we're all aligned to a similar goal,
and that's, like, health equity.
And so that's kind of my favorite part,
is just interacting with this team,
working with people with different skill sets,
with different abilities, learning from each other all
for a greater purpose.
COLIN JACKSON: But something that this fellowship has really
impressed upon me is just how glaring and obvious some
of these disparities can be.
I have been blown away by how normal it
is to see in county after county Black people, Native Hawaiians
and Pacific Islander people, LatinX
people, Native American people, and so many minorities being
affected at rates two times, three times, four times higher
than their percentage of the population.
It's just amazing to me to see how much
work there is left to do.
And it's just a real eye-opener.
And I don't mean that as a depressing statement.
Obviously, it's sad.
It's a sad state of affairs.
But I find it as--
I view it as a challenge as a member of one
of those marginalized groups.
I view it as a personal challenge
to use the privilege that I have to improve the experience
for all people in America and to start
to break down and make a dent in this intractable problem.
RASMI ELASMAR: I think hopefully something
that we've helped the software team realize
is this vision of being able to proactively say
these are the problems and here are the solutions.
And we know these things to be true,
not just from our experiences, but also
from this data and this research that
has now been enabled to shine a light on all these problems
that have long existed in our society
but haven't always been able to be addressed.
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