Patrick Pichette (born 1962) is a Canadian business executive and venture capitalist who was the senior vice president and the

chief financial officer A chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization who is assigned the primary responsibility for making decisions for the company for projects and its finances; i.a.: financial planning, management of financial risks, ...

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 ...

from 2008 until 2015. He then became a

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

fund manager, and is a director for several companies and a foundation."Former Google CFO Patrick Pichette just joined the world of venture capital"
Connie Loizos, April 11, 2018, '' TechCrunch''

Early life and education

Pichette was born in 1962 and raised in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, Quebec. He holds a

Bachelor of Business Administration A Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) is an undergraduate degree in business administration awarded by colleges and universities after completion of four years and typically 120 credits of undergraduate study in the fundamentals of busine ...

degree from Université du Québec à Montréal (1987) and a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

degree in

philosophy, politics and economics Philosophy, politics and economics, or politics, philosophy and economics (PPE), is an interdisciplinary undergraduate or postgraduate academic degree, degree which combines study from three disciplines. The first institution to offer degrees in P ...

from Pembroke College of the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

. He received a Rhodes Scholarship.

Career

Pichette began his career in 1989 as an associate at McKinsey & Company in Toronto. In 1994, he left to become vice president and

(CFO) of Toronto-based Call-Net Enterprises, but rejoined McKinsey in 1996 after Call-Net's acquisition by Rogers Communications. He joined BCE Inc. in 2001 as an executive vice president. From 2002 to 2003, he had a brief stint as Bell Canada's CFO, before transitioning to the role of president of operations which he held from 2004 to 2008. He was senior vice president and CFO of Google Inc. from 2008 until 2015. In April 2011, it was announced that Pichette would also be taking over

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ' ...

responsibilities within Google from vice president Laszlo Bock, and BizOps from Shona Brown. In 2013, Pichette accepted a position on the board of directors for Bombardier Inc., a position he held until 2017. In March 2015, he announced he would retire to travel the world. He was succeeded as CFO by Ruth Porat. In June 2015, he received the National Order of Québec. In April 2018, he joined Inovia Capital, a

firm with offices in

, Toronto, San Francisco and London."INovia Sngas CFOs from Google and Blackberry to Lead Growth Fund"
''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...

'', April 11, 2018 After becoming a general partner at Inovia Capital, Pichette is splitting his time between the firm's offices in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, Canada and Silicon Valley. In 2019, Pichette became a lead founding member of UK's Creative Destruction Lab at Oxford. In 2021, Pichette was appointed as a board member of indoor cycling app company Zwift. Pichette was appointed independent board chair of Twitter, Inc. on June 2, 2020. He served as lead independent director from 2018–2022. After Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter in October 2022, Musk fired the entire board of directors, including Pichette, leaving Musk as the sole board member. Pichette serves on the Board of Directors as chair of the board at Montreal-based company Lightspeed. He joined in October 2018 and took the position of Lead Independent Chair in February 2022. He served chair of the board of directors at the Trudeau Foundation from November 2018 until March 2021. Pichette is a board advisor to the start-up Arctoris.

Personal life

Pichette lives in London, and is married to Tamar Pichette, with whom he has three children. He and his wife Tamar are involved in philanthropic projects including a conservation and research project with Nature Conservancy of Canada in protecting Kenauk, a 65,000 acre territory between Montreal and Ottawa. They are active partners in a project with Himalayan Cataract Project, building an eye hospital in Ethiopia.

References

External links

Biography at Inovia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pichette, Patrick Alumni of Pembroke College, Oxford Canadian Rhodes Scholars Google employees Université du Québec à Montréal alumni Living people McKinsey & Company people Chief financial officers Knights of the National Order of Quebec 1962 births Directors of Twitter, Inc.