2022

Add Google Marketing Live to calendar: Google Calendar, other calendars
Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. PT

Google Marketing Live is a highlight for me every year because it’s a time when we get to meet with businesses around the world to exchange ideas. Your perspectives have shaped our roadmap in so many ways. Products like Performance Planner, pickup today in local inventory ads and conversion goals were all developed directly from conversations with marketers who attended this event. Together, we are building products to shape the future of advertising.

Please join us on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. PT for the opening keynote of our annual Google Marketing Live event. The keynote will be livestreamed globally along with a whole suite of on-demand, virtual breakout sessions built to help you achieve your business goals. We hope to bring the industry back together with some in-person programming to complement our global livestream. We’ll confirm official plans closer to the event.

From more ways to keep up with changing consumer trends to better tools to measure marketing performance in a privacy-safe way, we can’t wait to share our newest innovations with you. Save the date and stay plugged in to the ongoing conversation at #GML2022.

Sincerely,
Jerry Dischler

Women around the world have had to change their lives in unpredictable ways. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, political restrictions and global conflict, their resilience has been remarkable. Women have continued to show up for themselves, their families and their communities — and it’s why on this International Women’s Day, and every day, Google is showing up to support them.

When I reflect upon the women who inspired me, I go back to my undergraduate education at Spelman College, a historically Black college for women in Atlanta. It was there I joined a sisterhood of women who looked like me and pushed me to strive for excellence. Today, as a physician and a director within Google Health, I cherish this support system more than ever. Throughout the pandemic, and thanks to technology, we’ve been there for each other through life’s events, big and small — birthdays, loss of parents, encouragement on that Peloton ride, the list goes on. My connection with these women who are now lawyers, engineers, academic professors, executives at Fortune 100 companies, has been a lifeline because we are also mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, life partners and friends. Google artist Thoka Maer, expresses this idea beautifully in our global, animated slideshow Doodle. Her Doodle illustrates the many roles we as women play, how we inspire those around us and how we continue to support each other when life forces us to suddenly adapt.

Supporting others means first supporting oneself, much like airlines tell you to put on your oxygen mask first before helping others. At Google, we’re working to help women prioritize their needs by putting a premium on safety and health, creating equitable opportunities and celebrating their accomplishments. This spirit of inclusivity and support extends to all who identify as women, recognizing the intersections of other identities, backgrounds and personal experiences. Join us as we bring people together from around the world for Google’s International Women’s Day event series, starting today with our virtual Global Summit, followed by regionally focused events throughout the month of March. And read on to learn about all the ways we’re supporting women globally, not just today, but every day.

Helping women lead safer and healthier lives

Today, we’re announcing the open sourcing of code for a new tool that will address online violence targeted at women. Harassment Manager is an open-source tool built by Jigsaw, in collaboration with Twitter, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and human rights organizations. It is designed to help women, public figures such as journalists, activists, politicians and other groups at risk of experiencing online violence manage toxic language directed at them. We hope Harassment Manager, along with other tools like our recent domestic violence hotline feature on Search, will help women engage more safely online, and encourage others in the tech industry to connect women around the world to resources to improve their safety.

We’re also using research to help women better protect their health. Google Health is exploring how to improve breast cancer detection using artificial intelligence and enhance the patient experience for an otherwise nerve wracking mammogram process. And we’ll be revealing new research on maternal health at our second annual health event, The Check Up on March 24. Plus, YouTube’s new Body of Knowledge series is now sharing open and honest conversations about health so women can feel better supported and understood along their personal wellness journeys.

We take the health and wellbeing of the women in our workplace to heart, too. Earlier this year, we expanded our parental leave to at least 18 weeks for all parents and at least 24 weeks for all parents who give birth, and our carer’s leave for seriously ill loved ones doubled to eight weeks. We also offer berevement leave (which covers still birth and miscarriages) and two weeks of ramp back time so when employees return to work after parental leave, they’re able to work half of their normal weekly hours, while still being paid 100% of their salary.

Closing the gender gap for women to build careers and businesses

Focused on building a world where all women can thrive, we’re creating more equitable opportunities in education and tech. For instance, we just announced a Women of Color in Tech scholarship for Black, Latina or Native women pursuing degrees in computer science. In Southeast Asia, our Women Developer Academy is teaching women the professional skills they need to jumpstart their own careers and our Women Techmakers are hosting hundreds of events around the world to bring people together for connection, learning and inspiration. And over the past several years,Google.org has given over $80 million to organizations creating opportunities for women across the world, including $25 million just last year for ourImpact Challenge for Women and Girls.

The need to improve equity for women extends well beyond tech. As recently as 2020, startups led by all-women teams received only 2.3% of funding raised around the world. Google for Startups wants to reduce that gender gap through programs like the first-ever Founders Academy, which taught women-focused health startups across the U.K., Switzerland, Germany and Israel how to build strategies for their work tackling issues like fertility, gynecological cancers and sexual wellness. Google is also providing resources for women who own small businesses to improve their digital skills through Grow with Google’s free on-demand workshops. These resources, along with Google’s online tools, have helped women entrepreneurs like Ashley Rouse, Owner and CEO of Trade Street Jam and Sashee Chandran, Founder and CEO of Tea Drops, reach more customers online to sell more products and grow their businesses.

Finally, our Google Media Understanding for Social Exploration team has been partnering with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to analyze media content with machine learning to identify gender gaps on screen. Their findings will continue to improve Google’s own work, while also helping marketers and the film industry improve representation and portrayals of women.

Celebrating the success of women globally

Part of showing up to support women everywhere is showcasing the progress we’ve made over time. Whether it’s celebrating the success of small-business owners around the world or using AI to uncover the roles and achievements of women in science throughout history, we want to show how the perseverance, passion and strength of women has made society much, much brighter. Our CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, is doing just that by spotlighting Pakistani Canadian creator Kanwal Ahmed on YouTube’s blog, and talking to her about her powerful and inspirational videos that create a safe space for women to connect. Also, check out our Google Arts & Culture Women in Culture hub for inspiring stories of female game changers from various fields and across the globe all year long or tune in all month to Google TV for movie, TV and music recommendations featuring collections, like brave women in unforgettable roles and women who’ve made Oscar history.

International Women’s Day gives us a chance to reflect on the progress that’s been made and we recognize there is still work to be done. Today, we’re hosting a global, virtual summit, open to all our employees, focused on community-building, professional development and celebrating the unique, intersectional aspects of our identities. As women have shown us time and again, they are changemakers, and we’ll continue to support them and show up for them in our workplace and in society.

It matters who reports the news — it’s why the Google News Initiative is so dedicated to diversifying who’s a part of this industry. In honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we spoke with a handful of the incredible female news entrepreneurs we partner with in our various GNI Startups Labs around the world.

Here are five female founders in news you should know about:

Kara Meyberg Guzman, California, USA – CEO/Co-founder of Santa Cruz Local and board member of Tiny News Collective

In 2019, Kara Meyberg Guzman helped launch Santa Cruz Local’s newsroom to help fill a need for deep, accurate news about local government. Prior, Kara Meyberg Guzman was the Santa Cruz Sentinel’s managing editor — the first woman and first person of color to hold the position. A notable move she oversaw was helping to produce 2020 local election guides in English and Spanish to better serve the people in her community. “I’m driven by two questions that I think are related: How do we make local newsrooms sustainable? How do we serve communities that are not normally heard by local media?” Kara says. About 700 Santa Cruz County residents now support Santa Cruz Local with a paid membership. “I feel very lucky to serve the community I love. I have the opportunity and privilege to build a newsroom on our values and principles.”

Micaela Arbio Grattone, Argentina – Co-director of Feminacida

Micaela is a photographer and journalist who co-directs Feminacida, a website focused on news tailored to women she and co-founder Agustina Lanza launched in 2018. “The most challenging thing about being Feminacida’s founder is having created this media from scratch. We didn’t know how to do it, we were only two people,” Micaela says. “Feminacida was born in the corridors of a university and today it reaches people all over the country.”

“We do this work with the strong conviction that we are fighting for equality and to improve people’s lives. The most exciting thing is to see how Feminacida directly impacts people’s notions of current issues.”

Carolina Oms, Brazil – co-founder of AzMina

Carolina, along with co-founders Helena Bertho and Thais Folego, are focused on fighting gender inequality via AzMina, a news site and support network. “In Brazil, women have always been entrepreneurs out of necessity. But they have done it without the network that men do — having to work from home, without access to finance and with more chances of seeing their ventures die for lack of income,” she says.

What drives Carolina is seeing the difference AzMina makes on the daily lives of Brazilian women. “We started with volunteer work and now we employ 20 women full time, have multiple sources of revenue and a solid and innovative business model. All this is really a source of pride. We need women to see this can work and feel inspired to create their own formats.”

Bhanupriya Rao, India – founder of BehanBox

Bhanupriya has been an independent researcher and journalist writing on gender, government and social justice in India. “I have long believed that news excludes women and gender diverse persons, both in the content and the production of it,” she says. Bhanupriya founded BehanBox in 2020 to center the voices and issues of women and gender diverse persons and make them equal participants in India’s democracy. “Our critical in-depth, data-driven and evidence-based reportage, from local to the national level, is shining the spotlight on various forms of inequity and inequality, which is forcing mainstream media and policy-makers to take notice.” The biggest challenge? “Convincing naysayers that reporting on gender issues is newsworthy and needs sustained investment,” she says.

Masuma Ahuja, United Kingdom – founder of Girlhood

In 2021, Masuma, who’d previously worked for CNN and the Washington Post, wrote a book documenting the lives of teenage girls around the world. This became the launching pad for Girlhood, a community-powered site by girls that tells their stories. “This kind of space didn’t exist when I was growing up, and I hope more girls can see themselves reflected in the stories we publish on Girlhood,” Masuma says. “ I think a lot about the power of narratives, and of stories — the stories we tell ourselves, the stories that shape our cultures and communities, the stories that are codified in our textbooks. There is so much space, so much potential and so much need for girls’ voices to be included in all of these spaces!”

The hardest part of her job is that she doesn’t see a lot of models out there. “As a woman of color, as an immigrant who’s building something that’s inherently international and centers girls and as a startup founder in general, I don’t necessarily have a well-trodden path to follow.”

To learn more about the Google News Initiative’s work and our news partners, visit newsinitiative.withgoogle.com.

Like many women working in tech in the Caribbean, Women Techmakers ambassador and Google Developers Group co-organizer for Trinidad and Tobago Maria Divina O’Brien has a full-time day job in addition to two several side projects she spends the rest of her time working on. Her business, Design Change, is a design firm focused on social impact projects to improve Caribbean women’s lives. “I’m using what I’ve learned as an activist to find ways technology can help women and how we can create a community to work on these solutions,” Maria says.

Maria is also the chairwoman of MindWise, a mental health nonprofit focused on digital content creation and curation that Maria co-founded in 2019. MindWise developed FindCareTT.com, a digital directory of mental health services. Maria, a cancer patient, is also working on “Views from the Waiting Room,” a collaborative art project aimed at bringing more attention to women’s health.

When she isn’t working on Design Change, MindWise, or art projects, Maria works for the Corporate Communications Department of the Office of the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago, where she produces digital design and visual assets and consults on broadcasting design projects. “I get to produce content and solutions that directly impact the democracy of the country,” she says. “For example, I worked on a team that problem-solved how to make democratic functions virtual during COVID.”

Maria connected with the Port-of-Spain Google Developers Group in 2019 and became a co-organizer, and went on to become a Women Techmakers (WTM) ambassador. “Last year, we pulled together 12 major diversity communities for the first International Women’s Day Caribbean Tech Summit,” she says. “Women in Tech Caribbean, Caribbean Girls Hack and four WTM chapters from other Caribbean countries participated, and this year, we’re hoping to get someone from each Caribbean country to represent each country’s current challenges.”

In September 2021, Maria launched the Building Sustainable Minds Volunteer Program, a collaboration among MindWise, the Trinidad and Tobago WTM chapter and the University of the West Indies. Maria created a virtual studio where students can create content for a mental health news platform called Open Minds that shares stories about mental health news and the experiences and unique challenges of people in different Caribbean cultures. Maria and her colleagues are training students to do virtual interviews, create design templates and edit their work. All 55 student volunteers plan to continue their work for the rest of the school year.

Today, Maria is working on recruiting more Caribbean WTM ambassadors. “We have four chapters in the English-speaking Caribbean, and my goal is to have 15 by the end of this year,” she says. “There is a really exciting generation of influencers and creators building the next Caribbean, and most of them are women. Let’s take a chance on changing the culture.”

Three years ago, Generation and Google.org joined forces to help jobseekers launch meaningful careers and change their lives. Enabled by $7.5M in grant funding from Google.org, and technical support from a team of Google.org Fellows, Generation has now helped to train and place more than 3,000 people in France, Italy, and Spain into entry-level technology sector professions, including digital customer care, full stack and java development, digital marketing, and robotic process automation.

Opening up access to today’s digital economy

At both Google and Generation, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to participate in today’s increasingly digital economy. Yet groups that are already underserved are still often underrepresented in jobs that require digital skills. Like Google’s Grow with Google initiatives, Generation’s programs seek to open access to education for those who have faced systemic barriers to accessing employment — 54% of learners at Generation are female, and most describe themselves as financially unstable before joining Generation, with 80% of learners unemployed.

Graduates from the Generation programs supported by Google.org have seen life-transforming outcomes, even in the midst of a pandemic labor market. Within six months of program completion, 75% of graduates were already placed in jobs. A year later, the majority of those remained employed.

Seeing the impact of Generation’s work and hearing the stories of Generation graduates is deeply inspiring. Stories like that of David André, who started working after high school without a university degree. He had a series of low wage restaurant and retail jobs, and then spent a period of time unemployed, facing financial and family difficulties.

Around that time, he received an email from the French employment agency, Pôle Emploi, about the Generation Customer Care program. David André decided to apply, and was accepted. He invested himself fully in the program. At the end of the course, Generation connected him with a French startup, Doctolib — an online platform that facilitates virtual medical appointments. Within a few months, he was hired permanently. With his newfound work stability, he has moved into his own place, and has stepped into a sales support role as he continues to advance in his career.

Spotlighting skills on the Employer Portal

To help further accelerate Generation’s mission, Google recently provided additional support in the form of a Google.org Fellowship, where a team of Google data scientists and product managers worked full-time, pro bono alongside Generation for six months, to address the challenge of matching job seekers with employers. When employers are accustomed to focusing on resumes, not candidate skills, it can be difficult for jobseekers from underrepresented communities to get seen. To make it easier for recruiters to find the talent they need from its pool of graduates, Google.org Fellows helped Generation to develop and build a new Employer Portal, now being trialed in both Spain and France.

What differentiates the Portal from other job-matching platforms out there is that employers can search for talent based on the skill-set of the job seekers, which Generation helps validate beforehand. Focusing on the skills that candidates bring to the table, rather than data points like age, gender, and education, help to minimize hiring biases and unlock new talent pools for employers — breaking down barriers to employment for underrepresented populations. We’re looking forward to seeing what the Employer Portal can do to help more jobseekers find employment, and like David André, change their lives.

In January, we announced expanded leave benefits to help Googlers support their families and loved ones, and encourage employees to take time for themselves. We recently spoke with Googler Patricia Torres, who’s using leave benefits to spend more time with her family.

What’s your role at Google?

I’m a Program Manager based in Sydney, leading talent development programs for university students. My team provides scholarship grants to help students pursuing computer science degrees build their technical skills and become leaders in the field.

Tell us about your Google career journey.

I joined Google in 2016 as an Operations Specialist for the Talent and Outreach Programs team. My daughter Natasha was one and a half years old at the time. As a new parent, I felt guilty about leaving her in daycare — she cried every day for seven months straight! During this time, I worked three days a week, which allowed me to take care of my daughter and still get my work done. Once Natasha turned three, I moved to a four-day work week. Since then, I’ve had five different roles at Google.

What’s your typical workday like?

My days center around my family. After checking emails and eating breakfast, my husband Chris and I take turns getting Natasha ready for school. I usually sign off around 5:30 p.m. and have dinner with my family. We have a nightly routine where we share challenges and what we’re grateful for — it’s been an eye-opening experience for all of us! Because of the time differences between Australia and the U.S. and Europe, where the rest of my team is based, I’ll sometimes jump on conference calls in the evening.

How has the pandemic affected the way you work?

COVID-19 has presented challenges for everybody. For me, the hardest part was balancing childcare with work. When my daughter’s school closed for in-person classes, my husband and I became teachers overnight. It was a huge relief when Google extended their Carer’s Leave policy, which provides time off for parents or caregivers to support children or other family members due to COVID. Over the next few months, Chris and I worked half days, taking turns to make sure Natasha finished her schoolwork. On top of that, my mum was sick and in the hospital. Having the flexibility to work from the hospital and spend time with her before she passed was so important to me. Chris and I are both lucky to work for organizations that prioritize our health, well-being and families.

What advice would you give to others about flexible work?

Prioritization is key. Every month, I put together a schedule for my work and home responsibilities. For my job, I schedule back-to-back meetings on set days and times and block out periods to execute my work — communicating these in advance to my manager, team and stakeholders. At home, we plan meals (and who is going to cook) a week in advance, and we figure out who will take Natasha to her many activities.

Thankfully, I’ve had supportive managers throughout the pandemic who have been understanding of the challenges we faced as a family. My managers told me to take the time I needed and offered an even more flexible work week when I returned from Carer’s Leave. Google has been there to support me and it’s made all the difference — helping our family stay happy and healthy in a time that’s been tough for so many people.

Learn more about Patricia’s storyand Google’s benefits.