Google Public Sector names new board of directors

JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images

Dave Goldfein, retired general and former Air Force chief of staff, will serve as the board’s chairman, alongside professionals with backgrounds in defense and intelligence, technology, education, health care and state and local government.

Eleven months after Google bet big on its ability to serve government customers with a new division—Google Public Sector—the new, independent subsidiary on Wednesday announced its board of directors.

Retired General Dave Goldfein, a longtime pilot and former Air Force chief of staff, will serve as chairman of a board that includes six external directors and five internal directors.

External board members include former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who currently serves on the board of the Foundation for America’s Public Lands; Dr. Dawn Meyerriecks, a longtime government and industry technologist who headed the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate for seven years; Retired Army General Raymond Anthony Thomas III, who most recently served as the 11th Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command; Dr. Nadja West, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who helped lead the Defense Department’s response to the Ebola crisis in 2014; and Dr. Heather Wilson, who served as secretary of the U.S. Air Force from 2017 to 2019 and oversaw its science and technology strategy.

Google Public Sector CEO Karen Dahut joins Will Grannis, CTO of Google Cloud; Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud; Kevin Mandia, CEO of Mandiant; and Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer at Google and Alphabet, to round out the board as internal directors.  

“Since taking on the role of CEO for Google Public Sector, I’ve heard directly from government and education customers the need for more choice in cloud vendors who can support their missions, and protect the health, safety and security of citizens,” Dahut said in a statement. “With our board of directors, Google Public Sector is well positioned to play a critical role in applying cloud technology to solve these and many other complex problems for our nation.”

Dahut told Nextgov the board will be critical for both Google Public Sector’s independence from Alphabet Inc., and its ability to focus wholly on helping public sector customers meet missions across the national security and defense, federal civilian, state and local, health care and education spaces.

Board members will weigh in on leadership and financial decisions, potential mergers and acquisitions, debt structure and perform other traditional functions, but Goldfein said they’ll also have significant input on matters of policy, such as how the company applies artificial intelligence principles to the market moving forward.

“What will be somewhat unique for this board is to find the right balance between connection to the parent company (Alphabet Inc.), but yet the appropriate level of independence,” Goldfein told Nextgov. “With an individual board just focused on GPS and the public sector, that’s where we’re going to find those rules and relationships.”

Google Public Sector enters a highly competitive government market with many well-established players, but Dahut isn’t phased by the competition or shy about the company’s chances at winning new business. Dahut expects Google Public Sector to provide world class technology to a wide swath of government customers. But partnerships—especially with integrators—will be key for its business.

“We are a partner-first company,” Dahut said. “We do not want to compete with integrators, we want them to lead the way, and we believe in the power of both.”

While Dahut said her company may be “third to the market” in the government cloud space where Amazon Web Services and Microsoft have been dominant players, it hasn’t exactly been idle, securing coveted awards on the Pentagon’s $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract in December and on the CIA’s multi-billion dollar C2E contract. Dahut said the company’s cloud offering to secure the government’s secret classified data is “in accreditation,” which—if approved—would open the company to more government work.

“We welcome the challenge, and most of the people we’re hiring welcome the challenge,” Dahut said. “I think our government customers want choice,and they want an innovation partner. They want to be able to choose what cloud service provider they use depending on the app or workload they are trying to automate. I think we have a great opportunity to be prominent in that space.”

Dahut also believes her company’s ability to embed AI capabilities into its products may be a differentiator for government customers hoping to apply modern technologies to their missions. 250,000 active-duty enlisted U.S. Army personnel are now able to use Google Workspace, which has AI built into it to, for example, finish sentences and emails and other tasks.

“We happen to believe that our calling card as a company is really to be able to bring the best of breed cloud technology with AI and machine learning built in,” Dahut said. “It’s going to be an opportunity to really transform mission and transform business.”

Goldfein said he’s been pleased with how the company has thus far addressed AI’s paramount potential with ethical and other concerns posed by the technology.

“There are these two parallel discussions going on with AI, one is on the application, the other one is on ethics and morality moving forward,” Goldfein said. “I’ve been really proud of what I’ve heard and seen inside Google in terms of ensuring both of those discussions continue. And that there is a lot of discussion about how we apply AI and these principles are going to be a real focus of the board going forward as we help Karen and her team do the right things and do them in the right way.”

NEXT STORY: VA seeks cyber operations help

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.