Rich Fernandez
On today's episode of the Return on Intelligence podcast, we're talking to my friend and former colleague Sarah Devereaux, formerly from Google. Sarah has a 15 year history at Google in which she worked many, many functions in the learning space, from instructional design to running Google's peer to peer employee learning programs, to executive development and the Google School for leaders.
Rich Fernandez
In this episode, she shares insights from all of those different areas working at Google, as well as her life beyond Google in particular focusing on women's leadership and some of the ways that women leaders can flourish and thrive in work and in life. Hello everybody, and welcome to Return on Intelligence, our podcast for all things learning, development and professional growth and personal growth.
Rich Fernandez
I am super thrilled today to, invite and host my friend and former colleague because we used to work together at Google. Sarah Devereaux. and, it's been a while since we've been at Google together, but, I met Sarah back then, and I think, Sarah, you running the peer to peer learning network at Google, as well as previously having run the instructional design team as part of the people development function.
Rich Fernandez
But everybody here is, really in for a treat because you have a very broad background. if I could just talk a little bit about your experience, in, in instructional design, peer to peer networks of learning, employee learning and employee learning. you had a job that I also held at some point at Google, which was, leading executive development programs.
Rich Fernandez
you were a strategic leader, for the Google, a school of leaders, which was, again, senior development for the senior leaders at Google, and other strategic initiatives, including performance management. altogether about ten years at Google. and then having moved on now to some other adventures, working through, sort of VC backed startup environment and now on to White Pine Leadership Collective, in addition to from other projects that we can talk about today.
Rich Fernandez
White Pine Leadership Collective being, a learning and growth platform for women leaders, so they can lead fulfilling and enriching lives. Incredible and interesting body of work. So, Sarah, welcome to Return on Intelligence. So happy to have you here.
Sarah Devereaux
Oh, thanks so much, Rich. Got it. Gosh, it seems like a million years ago, that we were riding the roller coaster, if I remember.
Rich Fernandez
Wow.
Sarah Devereaux
California. Yes. I like.
Rich Fernandez
That. Right. So we were in an off site. We all. I got to ride these roller coasters, and I remember that was a lot of fun. Yeah. kind of like a metaphor for for life at Google. And tech I think beyond that, in, in working life in general.
Sarah Devereaux
It just kept spending and spinning. Didn't it.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah. It's balance. Terrifying moments. Not sure whether they're tough, terrifying or thrilling. Lots to learn. So lots of metaphors to draw from there for sure. So let's, tell us first of all, where you're joining us from and then what you're working on these days.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. well, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm joining you from often beautiful high and today, very rainy and wet. hey, Ann Arbor, Michigan. so my husband and I are both from Michigan. we moved out to California. I, in 2011, took a very brief stop in Colorado, and we've been back home.
Sarah Devereaux
outside of Ann Arbor for the last two years. And that kind of leads into one of the things that I'm working on. So we have, a 20 acre farm, that we are working on building and cultivating and hopefully, turning into an actual business. and then I also, do leadership coaching and as strategic advisory for people and culture teams.
Sarah Devereaux
So helping folks to kind of build sustainable and healthy practices, for effective teams as well as maybe unwind some practices, that aren't super sustainable, or healthy. and then, yeah, White Pine Leadership Collective is my third business, and so focused on helping women leaders to live and work at their best because why not?
Sarah Devereaux
We do way too much. and we have so much of our energy, invested in our jobs. We need to make sure that they're building our energy and not depleting our energy.
Rich Fernandez
Amazing. So farming, vegetables, animals and helping people farm their lives. I guess it sounds like.
Sarah Devereaux
You have learned about leadership, and about self-awareness and about, just self-improvement through farming, has been, honestly, like, pretty bananas. It's been really crazy how much we've been able to grow ourselves, like, just as people, by tryinG2Grow things in the dirt.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah. I thought, oh, wow. That's amazing. Yeah. it seems like, an endless amount of things, that we can learn about ourselves and, how to just lead fulfilling lives and lead with impact. I think one of the things that I wanted to ask you about, and that might be of interest to our listeners, is that if we go back to the work you did Google, because you were there for the better part of, I'd say pretty much a full decade, if I remember correctly.
Rich Fernandez
Right. 15 years. Oh, my gosh.
Sarah Devereaux
I couldn't believe it. Right. That's it. I was like, that can't be right. It was it was just shy of 15 years, but.
Rich Fernandez
Right.
Sarah Devereaux
But yeah. That's right. I left right before my 15th anniversary.
Rich Fernandez
Right. Right. Because now I'm remembering. Right. Because you had also before I got to work with you there. and I, when I met Sarah at Google, I was a writing executive development. but before that, you had a career in sales training, if I remember correctly. And AdWords, helping people with, like, those functionalities from a upskilling perspective as well.
Rich Fernandez
So. Right.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah, I, I started as a customer support rep. I, I answered emails, I was a triple chatter, and I you see, answer the phone and say thank you for calling AdWords. This is Sarah. How can I help you? and then I moved into training literally, because there were too many new hires. And the person who was running the Ann Arbor office at the time was like, you seem nice and smart and like, you know what you're doing.
Sarah Devereaux
Would you like to be a trainer? and I, I never, I never really saw myself, like, sort of in, training or educational capacity. I always considered myself a salesperson. but then I just completely fell in love with it. And after the three month special assignment was over, I basically went into his office, and I'm like, I literally don't care.
Sarah Devereaux
What do you have me do? and I don't care how much you pay me. Please let me keep doing this job. Like, I just I absolutely loved it.
Rich Fernandez
Okay, so you kind of fell in love with training, development, that whole endeavor. And I guess that trajectory you're on.
Sarah Devereaux
It's kind of kept going.
Rich Fernandez
So you did some instructional design work and then led the team in that, in Google's, learning and development function is called people. That was called people development. And so you were leading the team in instructional design. And then the interesting was then to move to this G2G or Googler to Googler or employee network.
Rich Fernandez
Learning network. so first of all, people might not be familiar with everything. What all that means, right? What does that mean? A peer to peer employee network of learning. What is a Googler or Googler to Googlers? So just to walk us through what that model is.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah, absolutely. I, I love talking about G2G. I always say that it was honestly the crowning jewel, in my career at Google. so the the G2G program was a volunteer network. of folks like, across the globe who were literally dedicating their time, to help grow, develop and teach and mentor, their peers.
Sarah Devereaux
So at the time, when I transitioned from, from sales training, into leading G2G, it was a couple hundred folks. And that might sound like a lot, but wait for it. I'll tell you what. We're where we got, where we got to, but a couple hundred folks, that were primarily focused on sales training.
Sarah Devereaux
and primarily focused on new hire, upskilling. And we we took it and we decided that we wanted to create a machine that really could allow every Googler across all global offices to have access to learning and development, being an and the Ann Arbor office. I really didn't understand that there was a lot of learning and development like happening in different parts of Google.
Sarah Devereaux
I figured it was just education reimbursement, it was new hire orientation, and that was kind of all there was. Right? Because the satellite offices really didn't have a whole lot of opportunity. So G2G, the whole purpose was we believe that learning at Google is a right, not a privilege. We believe that you should be able to develop yourselves no matter what location you're sitting in, and we can do it.
Sarah Devereaux
if we harness how phenomenal all all of these people are who are already here, the knowledge of regular every day, right? Googlers, they were so smart and so well-intentioned. So we basically we scaled up to about 11,000 people, globally. we were represented in obviously virtually, but also in about 108 offices, across the globe. I think there were only like 112 like, so there were there were only a few offices where we didn't have G2G representation.
Sarah Devereaux
and at the time that I left Google, over 85% of all training that happened at Google, whether it was 1 to 1, whether it was, virtual, whether it was AI and instructor led, whether it was live instructor led e-learning. 85% of all learning that happened at Google happened through G2G. Like that's how Google did learning.
Sarah Devereaux
And during the pandemic. That's how it all continued. was through the G2G program.
Rich Fernandez
So I'm sure people listening to this are first of all, perhaps astounded as I am. I didn't actually realize it was that scope of the very thing that I run today. I say, Why Google? I say, why was, I think perhaps one of the biggest. We'll talk about that in a second. The biggest components of, the curriculum that was being taught.
Rich Fernandez
But, before we get to that, one of the things you said was a volunteer network of Googlers so Googlers is a Google employee, G2G is Googler to Googler Googlers teaching Googlers as a volunteer network for learning and development. So when you say, can you define the term volunteer? This wasn't her day job, right? This they weren't like 11,000 learning and development trainers who are interviewing this.
Rich Fernandez
So tell us about that volunteer workforce if you will. What motivated them? What enabled them. How did they get the er cover the buy in from their managers to do it? What outcomes didn't see why and how did this all happen?
Sarah Devereaux
Oh yeah. Okay. So this is, this is a, winding and circuitous path.
Rich Fernandez
We have time..
Sarah Devereaux
You can go on here, right? so I'll start with I'll start with, the composition, of the G2G, network overall. So no, to your point, these folks were not full time learning and development, you know, facilitators, instruction, all designers, mentors, coaches. These were software engineers, and, customer support representatives and direct sales account managers, and VP's, you know, within marketing and and engineering, we had folks all the way from some of the lowest levels at Google, all the way up to SVP.
Sarah Devereaux
Is there reported directly into Sundar, who were participating, in the G2G program as volunteers. And for some of them, they were doing it at a really small percentage, like 3 or 5%. Right? For others, they were doing it more in a 20 or 30% capacity. So it all depended on what kind of support they could get from their leaders, from their organization, from their managers.
Sarah Devereaux
And also what they were willing to do as part of their, allocation, part of their official capacity. So here's my manager willing to set aside time, for me to work on this. Or am I just so passionate about this that I'm willing to do it in addition to my 100%, full time role? And when she did, she first started the ladder was more of the norm.
Sarah Devereaux
So people were volunteering for this thing, and they didn't have approval. They didn't have set aside capacity. they were doing it on top of everything else. I remember I used to schedule I used to schedule meetings, with the G2G, communities around the world at like 8 or 9 or 10 p.m., eastern, because so many of the folks that were volunteering in our West Coast offices had to meet after work, because they weren't allowed, to be doing it during work.
Sarah Devereaux
So it wasn't always like this rosy fairy tale. we got to a point, however, where we were able to show through some pretty robust data and, and analytics, that not only did people love doing this, but they were providing a huge amount of value to the organization, and we were able to put dollar signs behind it.
Sarah Devereaux
and we were able to show that if you participate in G2G, like it is a statistically significant fact. there is a relationship between G2G participation and higher performance, and also higher engagement, better retention, and promotion. And if you're a manager who's participating in G2G, then your scores in terms of your employees and your team's happiness and your team's effectiveness, those also went up.
Sarah Devereaux
So there was kind of this misconception out there that if you participated in G2G, that that was going to take away from your core role, that it was going to take time away, it was going to take focus away. And what we proved by working with the people analytics team was that it didn't. It enhanced your core role.
Sarah Devereaux
You're a better performer. You're a better asset to the company. If you're allowed to participate in this program.
Rich Fernandez
That's amazing. That and, that that's just the within. What's in it for me? Question for the person, their manager and the organization, all of those three different levels. It sounds like, and then it sounds so good, it's almost hard to believe. Why didn't people why don't people do this more? You think?
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. So I think that gets down to the motivation piece as well, which I want to touch on. But one of the things that we ran into that was really problematic, like right from the beginning. So I, you know, there was this huge reorg, you know, you remember from your your days at Google for anyone who hasn't worked at Google or hasn't heard this before, there's this joke, you know, it's kind of like Michigan weather.
Sarah Devereaux
If you don't like your team or you don't like your manager, just wait a hot minute, like it'll change. I, I went through 17 reorgs in in 14.5 years. and I was part of a reorg and they were like, what do you want to do? Like we've, we've you're no longer going to manage the instructional design team.
Sarah Devereaux
I had just gotten everybody move in and everybody was shaking. And then it was great. And they're like, what do you want to do now? I said, I don't know. Oh, I wasn't expecting this. What do you want me to do now. Like well you can go be an HR VP where you can go be a, OD practitioner.
Sarah Devereaux
Organizational development. you'd be good at that. I'm like, yeah, all right. And then they were like, or you could run this program that's kind of failing right now. Like, we've got this G2G thing and it's fine, but it's really stagnant. It's not expanding. So I was like, all right, cool, I'll go do that. and energy practitioner like roles I had done before, I was like, alright you know, I kind of I don't want to do something I've done before.
Sarah Devereaux
I want to do something different. so I got into the G2G thing and the first thing I noticed, first thing was that we were trying to control these people. Like, there was so much, like, quality assurance and, like, hoops that you had to jump through in order to be accepted into the program. and you had to meet all of these criteria and all of these requirements to teach a two hour presentation skills course.
Sarah Devereaux
Okay, let's put this in perspective. You you had to be at Google for at least two years because apparently you would could have never presented like never kind of go never.
Rich Fernandez
Couldn’t have before Google.
Sarah Devereaux
You had to be at Google for at least two years. You had to have, strongly exceeding expectations on your performance review for at least three cycles. you had to,
Rich Fernandez
So the top 10% of the workforce you had to be the top 10% of a very highly skilled workforce. Yeah, okay.
Sarah Devereaux
You had to have explicit manager approval. You had to participate for at least 20%, of your you had to have 20% capacity available. and at the time, you had to go through a three day upskilling facilitator training that was only offered in Mountain View. But we're not going to give you any budget to travel here unless your manager approves it.
Sarah Devereaux
So it was just the amount of requirements was was really was really ludicrous. And and a lot of it was because, you know, the sponsors of the G2G program wanted all of these assurances that people were going to do a great job. They were like, well, we need to make sure that we have quality assurance. We need to make sure that we're making it hard to get in here.
Sarah Devereaux
We want people to know that they need to take this seriously in order for them to participate. There was even, a portion in G2G's history where you were only allowed to participate if you had a HRP nomination. So not only did you have to do all this other stuff, but your VP needed to know you. I had no idea who my RVP was in 2008.
Sarah Devereaux
You know, we were still the Wild West in 2008, so we had to be nominated and they didn't take volunteers. So you were like completely removing the magic. The magic is.
Rich Fernandez
That the all right. Because of why? Probably because it's a what they call a senior strategy, which is a cover your assets strategy, associate strategy.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and this a very roundabout way of me saying like leadership, mistrust and fear is why this thing was not go. We had basically shown people that we did not trust them.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah. Okay. So then what happened. So all these barriers, all of this like fear from leaders covering their assets, trying to make sure they're not right, doing the wrong thing. Yeah. You know like performative whatever we want to call it. Right. This common stuff that happens in organizations because you got this crazy thing you're going to ask our employee needs to teach volunteer outside of their role.
Rich Fernandez
So how did we get it going? And this is a question perhaps that's broader for the audience to like, how might you get something like this going? How did you get it going.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. So two so similar question two different answers. So the the first one how I did it is not necessarily how I would recommend doing it. So at the time I had a VP who was not supportive, but I had an SVP who was supportive. So Laszlo Bock love did she, did she and he, he got on Good Morning America and he was like, there are two things at Google that are the ugliest of all the Google things, and it's TGIF and G2G like he he loved the program.
Sarah Devereaux
but I had a VP who didn't and and I had to, you know, go through her and her leadership team. And she was very command and control. she was very like, we can't just trust them. We have to direct them. We have to make sure that we are calling the shots. So I kind of played that game globally, like for the offices that people were paying attention to.
Sarah Devereaux
But at the time, India, Google was so under-resourced that there were plenty of offices that they were paying attention to. So nobody was really looking at Buenos Aires. Nobody was really paying attention to Chicago. Chicago was really small back then. Nobody was really paying attention to our Belgium office. or, Toronto. and so and Toronto was really close to Michigan and I knew a lot of people.
Sarah Devereaux
So basically I played the game the way I was being told to play the game, and I executed the way I was being told to execute in the offices that I was the people were paying attention to at the leadership level. And then these other offices where nobody was watching. I, I ran pilots and I ran them for a year.
Sarah Devereaux
And then I compared the numbers, from the pilot locations with the numbers from the locations that they wanted more of this command to control structure. And the data just didn't lie. It showed people were more effective. They were happier. we were spending less money, on on learning and development because we had this amazing course, and this amazing program of people that were offering this stuff.
Sarah Devereaux
And, it also showed, that, that the quality, the ratings that people were giving, to their full time trainers and also to the vendors that were coming in to facilitate, were lower in a lot of cases than they were giving to, to G2G facilitators.
Rich Fernandez
So the data didn't lie. But did you get in trouble? Like how did this play?
Sarah Devereaux
Well. So I'm so I'm pretty I'm pretty sure that that's one of the two promotions that I can point to that I lost.
Rich Fernandez
When you lost good timing there. I thought you were going to say that.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. For being, you know, for, you can you can cut this if needed. My grandfather, when I was little, I always used to call me a disturber, like, in a good way. and and for being a disturber, for being, you know, being a little bit too bold, perhaps. that's one of my two promotions that I'm pretty sure I lost for pissing somebody off.
Rich Fernandez
All right, but they asked for forgiveness rather than permission.
Sarah Devereaux
I did.
Rich Fernandez
And from experiments compared them to kind of like the status quo. And the experiments seem to really suggest that this is a really, impactful way to go.
Sarah Devereaux
And it was months of data. It was a year.
Rich Fernandez
A year later. yeah. yeah. So where did where what happened next? Where did you go from there?
Sarah Devereaux
So from there it just exploded. So we had at that point we had scaled up to about 800, facilitators globally in the first year. from in the second year, we went past 2500, so we went from 800 to 2500 facilitators in the second year. and then between year two and four, we hit 7000, and just, just kept going.
Sarah Devereaux
So when I left Google, in in 2021, ten years, I've G2G it went from a few hundred, when we started in 2011, to over 11,000, in 2021. But I don't recommend necessarily taking that to folks. What I would recommend is, is really trying to leverage your champions and help get a leader on board, that understands why command and control, and why systems of control instead of systems of trust, are not as effective.
Sarah Devereaux
and get a leader on your side who can really help to advocate with that wider executive audience. Honestly, if I'd been a higher level and if I'd been a little more senior and influential when I took over this program, because I was so like a lower level manager when they handed me this thing, if I had been a little more confident in my own ability to leverage Laszlo support, I think I would have I would have tried to use that connection more skillfully than I did.
Rich Fernandez
Got it. Okay, so some good tips in there though, like, you know, get, get find a champion and advocate, work on cultivating that relationship as well. let the data speak sort of the truth of the impact that is actually happening. which might be a weighing, maneuver around politics. Of course, the data don't lie. And in your case, the data was showing, as you said, tremendous impacts at all levels for the individual, the organization for ROI and everything.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. Well, and I and I think, I mean, one of the things I've rolled G2G out in numerous organizations, after since leaving Google with some of my clients. And one of the things that I've, that I've noticed is that for clients where, leadership is resistant, if you can at least run a pilot, like, try to run it for a handful of courses, or try to run it for, a particular, you know, function or department, within the organization.
Sarah Devereaux
and there's a lot of information available. I wrote about it. I'm on Google's rework site. Laszlo included it, in his book Work Rules. there are a lot of resources out there. you can, of course, bring in an external expert. but there's a lot out there that's just available on how to implement this program internally.
Sarah Devereaux
And how to get the support that you need to do it.
Rich Fernandez
Right. The peer to peer learning. Yeah. Network. Exactly. And then what were the characteristics. And and here it's a leading question. And of course it's going to lead to some work that we've worked on together. Because SIY search inside yourself also we had creative skills for innovation. These were, I think, the two biggest, most sort of compelling, network topics that were being taught.
Rich Fernandez
What do you think made that the case and why did people gravitate towards these things so much?
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. Oh great question. So yeah, search inside yourself and and creative skills for innovation which was Google's design thinking and innovation course. they went they were neck and neck. It was like SIY was number one and then CSI was number one. And then like, you all would go back and forth in terms of, the, the number of facilitators and then just the sheer volume of programing you deliver and then and then SIY did pull away.
Sarah Devereaux
So I think CSI, top down and kind of the 200 range. And SIY had over 450 facilitators globally. And I think the reason that people gravitated so much to these programs was the impact that they were able to create with them. They saw the tangible results of being a bit of a better innovator. Right? Being better at design thinking and systems thinking and being able to think more creatively.
Sarah Devereaux
They saw the impact of the mindfulness and the self-awareness. practices that she was bringing to folks. I remember when we started talking about including SIY in the G2G program, and we were going to start creating, you know, the, the, job description and like, figure out what the interview process looked like in the application process.
Sarah Devereaux
We had we had wait lists to attend SIY classes that were over 200 people long. People were waiting years to get kind of content. And the folks who had gone through the program, you know, I went through the program before it became a G2G, a G2G lead offering. It was so clear when you finished the curriculum how, like, life changing it was.
Sarah Devereaux
It wasn't just career and work changing. It was life changing. And I think, like, as as a graduate of SIY, you just wanted to figure out how you could get it to more people because, like, work and the world and everything is going to be so much better if we can just get this to more people. And so SIY exploded, I think because of the impact and just kind of the benefit that it was able to create.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah, yeah. Something we aspire to today, just in full disclosure, I run SIY Global. I did not ask. I didn’t have her say all of those things. but SIY is this is this program that, had that success at Google and now beyond Google? so really cool to hear about that. And the design thinking, of course, the creative skills for innovation being things that really piqued people's interest and then drove that level of peer engagement, across the nation.
Rich Fernandez
So, so tell us about then, you know, after that, you worked at executive, you ran executive developer programs, which is something I was familiar with as well. And then you were working at the Google School for leaders. any what are some of the key learnings from, from that time and that those experience.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. Great question. So I think, you know, after I got back from my first maternity leave, and I was still leading G2G. And I think I had like this sort of realization that they didn't really need me anymore. I was I was looking at what my interim lead had done, and I was like, wow, you guys like, this is awesome.
Sarah Devereaux
Like, you did such an amazing job. Do you want to keep doing this job? and she was like, yes, I do. I like this has been great. I've had such a great time. I'm like, you know, I did this for five years and it's probably time for me to do something else. now, in full disclosure, I had also started thinking about what my life after Google was going to look like.
Sarah Devereaux
And one of the things that I had a lot of ambition around, was helping leaders and helping female leaders in particular. And so, moving on to executive development, I had kind of two goals in mind. You know, one, I wanted to help change Google's culture, or continue to evolve Google's culture from the top down. I'd been doing a lot of culture work from the bottom up for the first ten years of my career.
Sarah Devereaux
I wanted to see, what kind of levers I could pull and what kind of influence and goodness, I could provide from the top down from the other direction. and then I also wanted to really understand what it was like to work and mentor, and develop at the executive level. It wasn't something that I'd had a lot of experience with.
Sarah Devereaux
I'd kind of run the gamut. I'd been on learning evaluation, I'd been on analytics, I'd been on instructional design and facilitation and community and peer to peer. and, you know, open enrollment courses and e-learning. I'd kind of done everything except for executive development. So moved into that. And I think the the few things that I learned, one, I learned a ton, just about, you know, that level of instructional design and experiential design, and the content around, like, systems thinking and complexity theory, and, and model development theory, and self-aware ness and situational awareness and like, just all these phenomenal leadership concepts that were things that I was really familiar
Sarah Devereaux
with when I started the job. But but the the thing that really stands out to me, was just how lonely, a lot of these leaders were, and how tired, and how discouraged, and they were really phenomenal human beings who had incredible intentions. And in a lot of cases, they had been given the biggest jobs of their careers and of their lives, and they had no idea what to do with them.
Sarah Devereaux
and they just didn't know how to ask for help. They didn't know what skills they should really be cultivating. They were trying to do things that worked for them at a senior manager level, as a director or a senior director, as a VP. And the level of exhaustion, and isolation, was not something that I expected to find.
Sarah Devereaux
I thought these people were all just going to be like top of their game and like, what could we possibly teach them? and the amount of need, that existed for support, at that level surprised me and also inspired me, to continue to cultivate the next chapter in my career around serving that need.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, they say leadership is a lifestyle choice. there is so many demand. There are so many demands, so much complexity to navigate the stressors. some people thrive in that environment, but it's not without its cost. And so how do you get support for the leadership tax, if you will? the company along with that lifestyle choice.
Rich Fernandez
And so, you, were it executive development then worked on strategic initiatives for the Google School for leaders and then eventually move beyond Google. So tell us about that transition. I know you also went through, sort of VC back start up and, and now also really focusing on perhaps your work with White Pine Leadership Collective.
Rich Fernandez
So people with trace that that arc for us. That'd be great.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. Sure thing. so I ended up I ended up stepping out of, executive development programs, and, and working on strategic initiatives. And then also, I was on the task force that redesign Google's entire, performance management system. and just really transparently, I, was we were working on having our second baby, and, the job, was really demanding and really stressful.
Sarah Devereaux
And I had a miscarriage, and it was very painful, both emotionally and physically. and my husband and I made the decision that in order for us to, you know, be successful, in having, and expanding our family, that I was going to step back, from management and leadership, into an individual contributor role, at least in the short term.
Sarah Devereaux
So I moved into the performance management, revamp effort. and that was absolutely fascinating. I had never worked on something that was truly Google wide before and was sponsored by the CEO and the C-suite that literally touched the lives of every single Googler. so that was incredible. and then when I got back from my second maternity leave, we were we were successful.
Sarah Devereaux
We have two kids. Awesome little girls. when I got back from my second maternity leave, first day back at the office, they fired me. so I was part of, the, one of the very early pandemic layoffs. so I was laid off with about 60 other people, across people operations. within, I guess it was October.
Sarah Devereaux
I think it was October. Yeah. October, of 2020. and then, oddly enough, I like, you know, walked into this breakfast that I had scheduled with this friend of mine who wrote a book. and he's in Denver and I'm in Boulder, and I'm like. And he goes, hey, when you get back from Matt, leave. Let's make sure we get together for a meal.
Sarah Devereaux
So we had previously had this breakfast scheduled the week after they laid me off. and so I walk in and I'm like, Erin, you're not going to believe this. They fired me. And I'm like, honestly, I'm not all that surprised. I'm just a little surprised at the timing. but I have no idea what I'm going to do next.
Sarah Devereaux
And so he was starting up this venture backed, venture backed Pre-revenue SaaS startup, focused on working agreements and participatory governance and consent based decision making. And he was like, oh my God, come work for me. I'm like, okay, what am I going to do? He goes, I don't know. He goes, just come work for me. and then we'll figure it out later.
Sarah Devereaux
So I ended up working 50% for him, at this, organization called Murmur. and it was incredible. So, Erin Dignan, is the, was the person that that hired me. Good friend of mine. We're having, breakfast next month, actually. but, yeah, he hired me a murmur, and, I learned a ton about, go to market and building, a software solution from the ground up.
Sarah Devereaux
and about, venture backed, venture backed, or projects, venture backed startups, which I had no exposure to before. and it was absolutely fascinating. And after about two years, I wasn't really learning anymore. I had been doing, you know, my leadership and my, learning and development work, you know, in the other 50%.
Sarah Devereaux
So I was working part time for Murmur, part time for myself, and I was realizing that my energy, was really much more so in that leadership and learning and development space. So, I thanked everyone, for all the fish. and I left, in January of 2023. but yeah, it was, I mean, it was a great move and it was a great transition.
Sarah Devereaux
But, you know, leaving Google after 15 years was, was hard, like, even though I was ready, like, my shelf life, like I had expired, like a solid four years earlier.
Rich Fernandez
But thank you for all the fish. Love the reference. so probably you got gathered. I know you gathered a lot of fish at Google through your experience, murmur. Which leads you to today. and, it really, from what I know of White Pine Leadership Collective, you're integrating a lot of those lessons specifically for women leaders to live in rich lives.
Rich Fernandez
But one and I let you tell it, and share just a little bit about the work there in the time that we have left.
Sarah Devereaux
Yeah. yeah. So White Pine Leadership Collective, is, is one of three businesses that I have. So, we have our farm, which we have incorporated into, a full business. So Cana Hill Farm, for our Hannah Lilies, we do some flower farming. I have 1500 rhizomes. to get into the ground, next week.
Sarah Devereaux
So that'll be a fun and dirty job. and then I also do, Third coast coaching, where I do leadership coaching. as well as strategic advisory for people and culture teams. But then, yeah, the White Pine leadership Collective thing was really born out of this really just serendipitous connection between me and two other, former Googler women.
Sarah Devereaux
we didn't even know each other inside of Google terribly. Well, Nikki Patterson, she and I had at least heard of each other. We kind of worked on similar teams, but we weren't really connected very much. We'd maybe spoken, you know, a handful of times in 15 years. And then Stacey Kolingowski, she actually joined, the Ann Arbor team, right as I was leaving and, and heading to California.
Sarah Devereaux
So she and I never overlapped at all. and Stacey was leaving Google, and everybody kept saying, oh, Sarah, have you talked to Stacey K steaks leaving Google? I had like five conversations with people that kept telling me, oh, you really should reach out to see, okay, did you hear? I'm like, Who is Stacey K? I have never heard of this woman and everybody thinks I know her.
Sarah Devereaux
And at the same time, people were saying the same thing to her. Hey, if you're looking for advice on starting up your coaching business or you're looking for advice and just life after Google, talk to Sarah Devereaux. Have you reached out to Sarah Devereaux? And Stacey had no idea who I was either, so our emails, like, crossed, in the same week, reaching out to each other, we sat down at the coffee shop.
Sarah Devereaux
Sarah Devereaux
I was a little assertive. I was a little greedy. and maybe I should tone it down a little bit. So. So we've realized that we had this common passion to do something, to help women that fit this, this profile. And we both knew Nikki Patterson. we had both. Stacey had actually worked with her, you know, a bit more than I had.
Sarah Devereaux
And we had both connected with Nikki just recently. So we all got together and three months later we had a curriculum. for a two and a half day women's leadership and transformation workshop, which were running our second cohort, in just a couple of days. And we also had a business. So we decided to form White Pine Leadership Collective.
Sarah Devereaux
and we do these open enrollment workshops. we do one day events, and in various locations so far, primarily in the Midwest. But we're looking at, we're looking at Salt Lake City and, and Phenix, and maybe heading down to New Mexico. I in addition to, kind of the, Detroit and Chicago and Indianapolis area, and then we also do, individual and team coaching, as well as running, custom workshops focused on women in leadership, and, and working and living at your best, for, for our corporate clients.
Rich Fernandez
Amazing, wonderful. Well, it is such a joy to hear. And hopefully, you know, the participants here listening today also were able to just hear in your arc an amazing journey, as a learning leader and facilitating the learning of others, helping the others be their best. So I can't thank you enough, my friend, for, joining this conversation.
Rich Fernandez
It's really great to reconnect with you. wishing you all the best. And anyone who is listening, you'll be able to find information about Sarah's work. You know, our work as well at see, in the links that will be part of this podcast as well as, one absorb dot com. So, thanks for being with us today.
Rich Fernandez
And, for everyone, who was on this learning journey, as we all are, love to say, onward. So thanks again.
Sarah Devereaux
I, I, I really appreciate you having me. And I really appreciate the work that you all are doing. and I see why global. I think that I'm sure we'll find a reason to do something together in the future.
Rich Fernandez
Yes, I imagine so. Yeah. Highly likely. All right. Thanks, man. My friend. Thanks, everyone. Have a good day.
