She detasseled corn for $1 an hour at 14. Now she’s Google DeepMind’s chief AI exec—and says being an immigrant’s daughter made her a natural ‘first’
· Fortune
Google DeepMind’s Lila Ibrahim had no formal background in AI or research when she became the company’s first-ever chief operating officer in 2018. Her résumé did, however, include detasseling corn in Indiana as a 14-year-old for “$1-something” an hour—a punishing summer job that left her sweaty, cut up, and sure she wanted a different future.
“I grew up in really humble beginnings,” Ibrahim exclusively told Fortune, while adding that her parents were both immigrants, juggling careers in a new country with raising three children, including one with cerebral palsy. “It was happy but challenging in many ways financially.”
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“So I worked in the cornfields of Indiana, literally pulling off tassels, coming home, cuts and sores and sweating. It was really hard labor,” she recalled, adding that she quickly ruled out a career in agriculture. “But I had this strong work ethic.”
That work ethic saw her swap the Indiana cornfields for a Purdue lab, where she worked on fruit fly DNA as a research assistant while still studying in high school. It then carried her through two decades of climbing Intel’s ranks, with stints in Santa Clara, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Before she left Intel in 2010, she was the chief of staff in charge of 85,000 people, and had just had twins.
Today, she is one of the most senior executives left standing at Google DeepMind, in the middle of one of the biggest shakeups in the company’s history. Its co-founder CEO, Demis Hassabis has just stepped down to a more advisory role amidst delayed models, a wave of high-profile departures, and reports of low morale. Through all of it, Ibrahim has stayed put, tasked with helping the world get ready for AI.
Being the ‘outsider’ growing up made her comfortable being the outsider at work
In 2017, Lila Ibrahim spent more than 50 hours interviewing for Google DeepMind’s first-ever chief operating officer. She was then promoted earlier this year to another first role for the company: chief AI readiness officer.
But for Ibrahim, being a “first” wasn’t anything new. “I had to get really comfortable very early on in my life that I was just an outsider,” Ibrahim explained.
Her Lebanese father lost both parents as a young child before moving to the U.S., meanwhile, she described her Palestinian mother as “too ambitious” to stay in her home country—she was also one of the few moms Ibrahim knew who had a job and regularly took business trips. Meanwhile, her father worked as an engineer on early heart pacemakers and car-safety technology.
“When I look back now, they shaped so much of who I am today,” Ibrahim added.
Not only were they unusual for having broken so far from where they started—immigrating alone, building careers, and raising a family in a country neither had grown up in—Ibrahim couldn’t help but stand out in every room she was in growing up, too. As a first-generation Arab American, and later one of the only women in her electrical-engineering classes, she learned early to get comfortable being different.
“Despite 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,” Ibrahim said. “And that’s what started off my career.”
That willingness to bet on the less obvious opportunity has defined Ibrahim’s career. It saw her leave a long run at Intel for venture capital and then edtech—and, in 2018, relocate her family from Silicon Valley to London to become the first COO of an AI research lab, despite having no formal background in AI.
“I always felt like I saw opportunity where others didn’t, and I saw solutions in places where others didn’t,” she added. “I naturally, because of being an outsider, a non-traditional, a non-conformist in a sense, when there were openings and opportunities, I was the first to raise my hand.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com