Dean’s Speaker Series: Ana Corrales, COO of Google Consumer Hardware, on having a ‘Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C’

Stella Kotik

Ana Corrales, chief operating officer of Google Consumer Hardware, understands the effort and conviction it takes to build a true career of substance.

“I will just say that when you look at anyone in the industry, or anybody who you might admire, if you look at their LinkedIn, or you look at a bio that somebody wrote, and it seems seamless,” she said at a recent Dean’s Speaker Series, in conversation with Chidera Osuji and Cecilia Beltranena, both MBA 26. “It’s not. I think everybody shows up with messy hair, sweat, blood, and tears. If they’ve done something that’s really worth it, they’ve worked very hard to get there.”

Watch the video of the event:

Raised in Costa Rica by a mother who was a biologist and a father who was an engineer, Corrales said she never questioned whether she belonged in STEM fields. But after moving to the United States for college, she realized that in engineering and tech, she was often the only woman in the room—and almost always the only Latina. That reality, she said, pushed her to lean into her own style of leadership and make her own voice heard.

“I think you have to have that conviction and you have to be able to be confident in what you’re saying,” she said. “You’re a good team player, but you do want to get your ideas out there.”

Her career has spanned early-stage startups to global corporations, including senior positions in global engineering operations at Hewlett Packard, supply chain and services leadership at Cisco, and as cofounder of solar energy startup, SunModular, which she sold in 2010. After serving as chief financial officer and chief operating officer at Nest, she became COO of Google, where she now oversees hardware development and global operations.

Her breadth of industry experience prepared her for what she said has been a chaotic decade so far.

“It used to be that you had a plan A. Maybe you had a baby plan B,” she said. “And I’ve got to tell you, we end up with plan Cs quite a bit right now just because of the macro-environment.”

But innovation in areas like sustainability at Google can help mitigate that uncertainty, she said, noting efforts like reducing plastics in packaging or improving the repairability of products as examples.

Corrales also shared broader advice to students on taking the time to learn how different disciplines function inside a company—and how important it is to have an understanding of engineering, sales, or marketing.

“I didn’t meet a marketing person or a salesperson until I was 30,” she said. “I totally thought that the hard thing is to build the product. And how hard is it to do those (other) things? It turns out that it’s super hard. I really had little appreciation for it until I was 30….So spend some amount of time trying to learn it because it’s very, very humbling.

Mentorship is also critical to career success, she said, encouraging students to seek out colleagues whose work overlaps with theirs, and learn from them.

“If you have a project assignment, you want to talk to people who’ve already walked those shoes,” she said. Ask questions like “How do I set up my C corp? Where do I do this? How do I get funding? How do I do this project? How do I get this team to do something that maybe they don’t want to do, and they’re skeptical of doing and maybe is not the biggest priority?” she said. “When you find that commonality, then that’s where these people are helping you. They’re in the project with you.”

Throughout her career, she said her own approach to work has evolved, especially when it comes to slowing down and creating what she calls “white space”—long stretches of time to step back, think, and let ideas surface.

“Careers and people are never finished. You’re always learning. You’re always getting better,” she said. “There’s always going to be a productive struggle to get to any destination.”