Kazoo (Kazuo) Sone

After obtaining Ph.D. degree from Caltech, I worked for a Wall Street firm from 2007 to 2011 in their proprietary trading desk developing and executing statistical arbitrage strategies. I joined Google in 2011 as a Software Engineer in Search Ads in NYC and transferred to Research in 2015 where I developed a foundational technology to automatically generate text ads from multimodal advertiser web page contents using Machine Learning. This project got an attention from a Director in Search Ads organization and our team was "bought" into Ads in 2017, and we had multiple successful launches to help advertisers powered by Machine Learning. One of these products is a highly successful Responsive Search Ads (RSA). In 2021, I found an opportunity to join Counter-Abuse Technology team in Core to focus on the application of ML to protect our users and promote public safety. I became a people manager in 2017 and started engaging as g2g career coach in 2020, and I have been mentoring and guiding many engineers in my own team as well as across Google.

I enjoy coaching and mentoring. I have internal coaching sessions for any Googlers who want to talk to me every other week (usually booked few months ahead). I also teach sessions about career development. Finally I lead DEI efforts within our org of 300+ people to create more inclusive culture