Jennifer McGrath Fitzpatrick is an American engineer. One of the first female engineers at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, she is currently the senior vice president for Google Core Systems & Experiences.

Education

Fitzpatrick graduated from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1999. She earned a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

in symbolic systems, and a master's degree in Computer Science. She began using Google as a student, and joined the company's Summer Intern Program in 1999. She was one of four interns.

Career

One of Google's first 30 employees, Fitzpatrick was hired by Google's founders following her internship. Fitzpatrick was one of Google's inaugural intern class in 1999 while studying at Standford University. She reported to

Marissa Mayer Marissa Ann Mayer (; born May 30, 1975) is an American business executive and investor who served as President (corporate title), president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017, when it was sold to Verizon. She was a long-tim ...

, who became her mentor. After her internship, she became one of Google's earliest female engineers.To improve gender diversity at Google, Fitzpatrick and Mayer insisted that at least one female executive interview every job candidate. Fitzpatrick has led software development for products and teams including

AdWords Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords, is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, and videos to web users. It can place ads in the res ...

Google News Google News is a news aggregator service developed by Google. It presents a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News is available as an app on Android, iOS, and the Web. Google ...

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...

, Product Search, corporate engineering and the Google Search Appliance, and co-founded Google's

user experience User experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person's perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Improving user experience is important to most companies, designers, a ...

, focusing on improving visibility across multiple products. She holds a US design patent for the iconic graphical user interface of the

Google search engine Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the World Wide Web, Web by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze an ...

home page. In 2014, she became the Vice President for Geo, leading Google Maps and Local. Under her leadership, Google Maps expanded beyond navigation, integrating real-time traffic, business info, and Street View improvements. She aimed to make Maps more than just a driving tool, focusing on daily-use cases such as finding restaurants and businesses.

References

Stanford University alumni 21st-century American women engineers 21st-century American engineers 1976 births Living people Google employees 21st-century American businesspeople {{US-engineer-stub