As Google’s vice president of global partnerships, Bonita Stewart is no stranger to juggling numerous relationships across a variety of industries, from the automotive field to finance, entertainment, and media.
But when it comes to the principles that have helped shape her more than 12-year tenure at Google, Stewart’s advice sounds fairly simple.
When asked what guidance she would give her 25-year-old self today, Stewart said, “Go see for yourself.”
Since joining the company in 2006, Stewart has risen in the ranks to oversee Google’s global partnerships, a job that entails managing relationships with major publishers across Google’s news, search, mobile, broadcast, and commerce products. That includes taking a leadership role in the Google News Initiative, the company’s organization dedicated to helping news publishers succeed online.
Her work has earned her recognition outside Google as well — she was named one of Ad Age’s “Women to Watch” in 2011 and made Crain’s New York Business’ “Most Powerful Women” list in 2017.
Whether it’s visiting colleagues in other countries, traveling to other parts of the world to get a glimpse of how different markets operate, or going to a partner’s office, getting firsthand experience with the people and industries you’re working with is important, Stewart said.
“I am constantly looking for ways to immerse myself,” she said. “I’m always looking for opportunities to go see for myself.”
At the time of our interview, Stewart had just returned from a trip with her leadership team to London to better understand the work being done by their coworkers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
But there’s one trip from 2016 that she said stood out as being particularly insightful. That April, she traveled to India and learned more about the country’s mobile-first ecosystem, which was relevant to the work Google was doing with its Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative at the time.
“I was able to take that back and talk about that with our publishers so that they could understand that in a mobile-first environment speed is important,” Stewart said.
Commonly referred to as AMP, Accelerated Mobile Pages is the open-source project Google launched in 2016 to help publishers create mobile-friendly articles that load quickly. If you’ve ever Googled a newsworthy topic on your smartphone, you’ve probably seen AMP news stories appear near the top of search results.
To demonstrate the impact that the insight about the importance of speed had on her work, Stewart pointed to a 2016 Google case study on how its AMP initiative improved The Washington Post’s returning-user rate.
Immersing yourself in the work you’re doing is important for success — but so is having the flexibility and willingness to try new things, Stewart said.
“Be fearless,” she said. “Because there are some skills you might have to throw yourself in to actually learn something.”
from Declare News https://ift.tt/2OwsnEU
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