AI innovation for Google Cloud

Tapped by senior leadership to lead GCP console’s innovation lab, I was given a mandate to define what AI-native cloud administration should look like before the market defined it for us. Four large-scale, horizontal programs came out of that mandate — a new dashboarding system, an experimental refactoring tool built with Google DeepMind, the console’s first generative UI proof of concept, and a risk framework for ethical AI.

The mandate

An innovation lab inside a 300-product console

Cloud administration is the least forgiving place to put AI. The users are highly specialized, the consequences of a wrong action are expensive, and trust is earned once and lost permanently. The lab existed to work several years ahead of the roadmap: to find the places where AI genuinely changes an operator’s day, and to prove them out with real design, research and working software rather than slideware.

How I worked

• —Partnered directly with senior executives on long-range AI vision, then translated that vision into programs with owners, research plans and launch criteria.
• —Ran each program hands-on as design and research lead — not as a reviewer — while growing the practitioners around me.
• —Held every concept to the same bar: it must make a specialized user faster or safer, and it must be explainable to the person it acts on behalf of.

The work

AI code refactoring

Product, design and research lead for an experimental AI refactoring tool, built in direct partnership with Principal Engineers and Google DeepMind. I owned the end-to-end product strategy and design for what became a market differentiator. Beta releases have earned significant customer partnership.

Cloud Hub

Design and research lead for the 0–1 definition, design and launch of GCP’s first AI-ready dashboarding system — a single place for operators to understand the health, cost and posture of everything they run. The program spanned 194 cross-functional partners across nine teams, and its launch earned the Customer Empathy Award, presented by Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.

AI NATIVE & GENERATIVE UI

Design and research lead for the team that built Cloud Console’s first generative UI proof of concept: interfaces assembled in response to a user’s intent rather than drawn in advance, tested against the question of whether operators would trust a screen they had never seen before.

Ethical AI

Founder and hands-on lead for GCP’s AI risk framework and design system for ethical AI use and trust building — the guidelines, patterns and multi-agent reference app that teams use to ship AI features people can hold accountable. My public writing on AI Trust & Agency has reached over 170,000 readers.

The impact

• —194 cross-functional partners across nine teams aligned on a single 0–1 launch, delivered as Cloud Hub in 2025.
• —170,000+ readers reached by the AI Trust & Agency writing that grew out of the ethical AI program.
• —Customer Empathy Award, presented personally by the CEO of Google Cloud.