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Pushing Boundaries

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 07:00:00 +0000

Pushing Boundaries Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/01/2020 - 00:00

Kenna Bruner

Bhavna Chhabra (CompSci’95) grew up in New Delhi, India, in a house without electricity or running water, expected by her parents to marry a man they chose. She didn’t know how to turn on a computer or type. Today, she’s the new site director for Google Boulder, overseeing a 1,300-person operation. It’s a big job, but one she’s ready for: On her journey toward independence, Chhabra rejected the life pre-planned for her and found courage and opportunity. Now, she hopes to empower young women to do the same.

After earning a scholarship to study in the United States in the early 1990s, Chhabra convinced her parents to let her leave home. They agreed on the condition that after Chhabra finished college she would return to India for an arranged marriage. Her father told her if her future husband allowed, she might be able to get a job, but that decision would be up to him.

“That was where I was when I came to the U.S.,” she said.

“I’m passionate about trying to deprogram the implicit and explicit messaging sent to young women. I want them to know they don’t have to look like a cookie-cutter male programmer to succeed.”

To search for universities, Chhabra went to the American Embassy in New Delhi, where books listed U.S. colleges and universities. Her criteria for picking a university were pictures of pretty campuses with happy, smiling students. Her list of potential universities included Boston University, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, Stanford and MIT.

Although Chhabra’s interest was chemistry, her father wanted her to study computers, telling her that computer science was the “new, best thing.” Despite not ever having seen a computer and no access to a computer, Chhabra followed her father’s urging. She chose Boston University to study computer science.

Among the few items Chhabra brought from India were sweaters borrowed from a cousin, T-shirts she bought based on what she saw in American movies and a pair of gloves that were “useless in the cold.”

Because her worldview came from watching American TV shows, such as Different Strokes, Silver Spoons and TJ Hooker, the reality of transitioning to college life was overwhelming. She wasn’t prepared for the culture shock of being a first-generation college student and one of few women in the computer science department. After five days of feeling miserable and alone, she called her parents, who encouraged her to try another university.

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ was next on her list. To her relief, her experience at CU matched the pictures in the embassy books.

“I had completely different and friendly interactions at CU,” Chhabra said. “The way I was welcomed to the university, it was like I found a home.”

"I didn't know how to type. I didn't know how to turn on a computer. I wasn't good at math."

Refuting Tradition

In computer programming classes, she had to work twice as hard to keep up with the other students.

“Things that students in my class took for granted were hard for me,” she said. “I didn’t know how to type. I didn’t know how to turn on a computer. I wasn’t good at math.”

One of her classes was an operating systems course taught by CU professor Mike Schwartz. Seeing her potential, Schwartz — now a Google software engineer working on cloud storage — became her mentor. He asked her to be his research assistant for a government-funded internet project.

“Professor Schwartz saw something in me,” she said. “I was the kid who sat in the front of the class feverishly taking notes, because I had to catch up. When I talked about the arranged marriage, he would say, ‘Is that really what you want? Because you can be more.’ But I didn’t believe it.”

In a life-changing moment for Chhabra, Schwartz showed her an article about an Indian woman Arati Prabhakar, the first woman to head the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder. Schwartz told her that could one day be her.

“I wouldn’t have invited her to join the research project if I didn’t think she was one of the better students in the class,” Schwartz said. “I wanted her to know she had options, to not assume that she did not because someone had told her that, and to not let that stop her from moving forward.”

After an internship working for a local company building computers, Chhabra got a job in Denver as a software programmer at Quark Software. She decided she would not live a life directed by her parents — she would stay in Colorado.

In September 2019, 26 years after coming to Boulder, Bhavna Chhabra became Google site director.

At her CU graduation in 1995, her parents came to the U.S. to take her back to India. Chhabra told them she had a job with a company that would sponsor her visa, and she wasn’t going back to India to marry. Chhabra’s parents were taken aback: She was straying from her Indian community’s tradition.

"While it was initially tough for my parents to accept that I was staying in the U.S.,” said Chhabra, “in time they came to understand, accept and support my decision.”

American Career

Through the 1990s as Chhabra’s career took off, she was told repeatedly that she wouldn’t be taken seriously if she dressed too femininely with earrings, makeup or skirts. To get a promotion, people advised her to wear hoodies and jeans to look like a programmer. Even when she moved up to higher positions, it wasn’t unusual for someone to ask her to fetch coffee for meetings.

“Having gone through all this, I’m passionate about trying to deprogram the implicit and explicit messaging sent to young women,” she said. “I want them to know they don’t have to look like a cookie-cutter male programmer to succeed. I aspire to give junior women what I didn’t have — a role model.”

For 18 years, she served as a senior engineer and then senior director at Qualcomm. She moved on to Google Boulder in January of 2016, where she was director of Google Payments.

In September 2019, 26 years after coming to Boulder, she became Google site director. In addition to overseeing all operations, she represents Google in the community and ensures her more than 1,300 employees are healthy, happy and working on a robust slate of projects — all while maintaining a collaborative culture.

“I’m approaching this from a place of humility, because this is good,” said Chhabra, 48, who is married and has three children. “It’s healthy. It’s vibrant. … There’s a strong sense of community here, so obviously it’s not broken. There’s a term we use at Google when we’re trying to do something really innovative and we’re excited about it. We say we’re uncomfortably excited. That is how I feel, which means I’m pushing myself.

“As someone who found a home in Boulder, I’ve grown up here and raised a family here,” she said. “This place is my home, and now I’m in a position to help Google engage more with the Boulder community. It’s full circle.”

Photos by Glenn Asakawa

Before CU, Bhavna Chhabra didn't know how to turn on a computer or type. Today she's site director for Google Boulder.

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@Last: How Google Came to Boulder

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 20:00:00 +0000

@Last: How Google Came to Boulder Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/01/2018 - 13:00

Eric Gershon

It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when there was no Google in Boulder.

No 700-employee (and growing) workforce.

No multi-building campus at Pearl and 30th Streets with aspens in the lobby, indoor fire pit and lovingly restored 1961 camper for meetings.

No chatter about how the world’s most famous search engine would figure in the life and rhythms of this small, iconic city.

For Brad Schell (ArchEngr’82), the pre-Google days were a happy blur: In the 1980s and ’90s, he and partners were building companies from scratch. One of them, it turned out, would prove to be a Google magnet: In 2006, the tech giant acquired @Last Software, establishing a Boulder beachhead that has evolved into a major U.S. office. Google moved into its new, $131 million Boulder site in December.

Some @Last engineers ran into some Google engineers at a trade show...

Today, Google is both a marquee local employer and — along with outposts of Twitter and Microsoft — a powerful symbol of Boulder’s flourishing tech industry.

“There’s a lot of people in this town that go for it,” said Schell, who at 57 sports thick ringlets of blond hair worthy of a cinema surfing champ. “You get excited about something and you want to see if you can bring it to life.”

Like the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s, the Google era has also been exciting for Schell, who moved to town in 1978 as a CU freshman from Steamboat Springs, one of five Schell siblings to attend ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

After working for Google for about a year, he embarked on a series of adventures — boat-building school in Maine, Spanish lessons in Guatemala, a tour of Baja by camper, kite surfing in the Pacific Northwest and an array of business endeavors in tech, real estate and wind energy. Most mornings you can find him at Boxcar Coffee Roasters on Pearl, an animated and friendly eminence grise of the Boulder tech scene.

From time to time, he drops by Google’s new offices, where many members of the former @Last crew still work, including site director Scott Green — the top Googler in Boulder.

“We still talk about how damn much fun it was,” Schell said.

The short version of the @Last-Google story goes like this:

Keen to work for himself, Schell in 1989 co-founded CadZooks, a small Boulder software firm that vastly simplified the production of complex construction drawings, largely automating what once required intense labor by skilled draftsmen able to think in 3D. After California-based Autodesk acquired CadZooks in 1996, Schell stayed on for a while, then turned toward new possibilities.

When Joe Esch, a software developer he knew, suggested starting a new company in 1999, Schell shared some notes and sketches he’d made over the years for easy-to-use 3D modeling software. Esch liked them, and they founded @Last in an office at 10th and Pearl in Boulder.

Scott Green, left, Google’s Boulder site director, with Brad Schell, at Google in January.

Their core product, SketchUp, was intended for anybody who wanted to design in 3D, Schell said — “a 10-year-old or the highest-profile architect in the world.” In a burst of brain work Schell called “the best six weeks of our professional life,” the @Last founders created a prototype and lined up investors. Though initially of interest to professional designers — architects, landscape architects, engineers — SketchUp had a simple interface that captured “the spirit of drawing,” Schell said, making it possible for amateurs to use it. For redoing the family kitchen say, or designing a woodworking project or making a castle for history class.

By 2005, @Last had two small offices overseas and about 50 employees in a new space behind the Starbucks on Pearl.

Around that time, some @Last engineers ran into some Google engineers at a trade show. They discovered a mutual admiration and kept in touch. Wouldn’t it be cool, they all thought, if people could use SketchUp to insert 3D creations into Google Earth?

In Brief:

1982: Brad Schell (ArchEngr) graduates from ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

1989: He co-founds CadZooks, a Boulder firm that makes software for 3D construction planning.

1999: Schell co-founds @Last Software. The Boulder firm produces software for “anybody who want[s] to design in 3D.”

2006: Google acquires @Last, planting a flag in Boulder.

2014: Google announces it will build a multi-building campus at 30th and Pearl Streets for up to 1,500 workers.

2017: Google moves in.

One day in 2005, Schell recalled, someone at @Last’s offices said to him, “Schell, do you know there’s a guy from Google in the conference room? You ought to go in and meet him.”

He did, and the encounter led to a subsequent tête-à-tête at Trident Booksellers and talk of a partnership.

Months later, Schell’s cell phone rang as he passed through a Boulder alleyway. It was another Google executive: “Would you entertain an acquisition?”

By early 2006, the deal was done.

Over a three-day weekend, Google remodeled @Last’s offices, installing, among other things, an eye-popping snack bar.

“All of us are fairly food-motivated,” Schell said of the former @Last crew, marveling, more than a decade later, over the “extreme makeover.”

“Somebody said to me, ‘Schell, can we eat this stuff?’”

Google continued to iterate and improve SketchUp, ultimately selling it to Trimble, a California-based producer of positioning tools, in 2012. Trimble’s SketchUp team remains in Boulder, as do many original @Last employees — some at Google, others at start-ups of their own.

“There are hundreds of absolutely fascinating, inspiring stories from this town,” Schell said.

Of @Last’s story, he’ll say this: “Let’s admit it — it is fun that we had a part in Google being here.”

Photos by Glenn Asakawa

It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when there was no Google in Boulder.

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