YouSaid · the spoken record

Ruth Porat

lines on the record: 30
first: 2024-02-15
most recent: 2024-02-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“My dad was pretty remarkable. You know, the tail end of that story about his journey from no high school education to a PhD in a career at Stanford is he said education is your passport for freedom. And so the only point he impressed on us over and over was really focus on education, keep opening doors, and take risks. If he didn't take the risks he took to get himself out of Austria, to teach himself physics, he wouldn't have made it. And he was so grateful to get to the United States. So if there's anything else, it was the life that he never expected he would have and then to have a family.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did. My mom actually, when I was a young kid, said she was a psychologist, and she said, what's really important for women is have your own identity and a career outside of the”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I kind of merge things because there's nothing more joyful to me than going on hikes with my kids or bike rides with my kids. And so it's a lot of that.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, other than look, I think that one of the most important lessons I learned early in my career as a woman in banking, there weren't many of us. It wasn't the easiest environment. There were a lot of men I've now gently decided to call blockheads. But they were worse than blockheads. And they made it difficult. And you learn to be resilient. The one thing is I was going to outlast them, and that would be the joy that came from it. Unfortunately, there were obviously a lot of extraordinary men at Morgan Stanley. There weren't enough senior women in the day, and there are more now. And so I learned to chart my career. I went to people who would take a risk on me, and I said, what's my highest and best use? And they opened doors that I didn't know existed. And to me, that's the most important.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a really personal thing. And when I was first diagnosed, I didn't want to talk about it. I was at a bank, one of few women. You know, I was bald and it's like, it's not what you want to talk about. But I got to the point where I realized in this day and age, if you get the right care, actually these diseases are manageable. And the scariest part is not knowing. And so to me, it was important to actually make it clear this is manageable. You can get through it and to actually be a resource for people.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's both adaptation and mitigation. So around climate change, we have a whole other set of efforts going on. So for example, one of the major sources of emissions is what you see right out the window here start stop from cars. We have something called Project Green Light, which streamlines that so you don't have the start stops. We have something else that looks at planes, major source of carbon footprint, contrails, what many of us think are the beautiful white plumes off the back. You can adjust flight patterns and reduce carbon footprint. So the short answer is yes. And it's happening today. It's not a hope for science fiction thing.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Million people a year affected by flooding, but with AI, we can predict and are. With seven days' notice where the water flows will be to get people out of harm's way. So this is not science fiction. This is here today.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of the medical profession has the ability to leverage the insight that AI will give you through scans reviewing a million scans. We're doing the same in other forms of cancer. We're doing it with something called diabetic retinopathy. Blindness caused through diabetes, which can be prevented if diagnosed early enough. And so I think that when you look at the impact event, this is what motivates our engineers. We're seeing in healthcare, we're seeing in education. We're seeing it with food scarcity. You can improve crop yields by looking at pest issues in farming. We're looking at so many different ways that AI can make a difference on the most profound issues. One last one because you asked, am I excited about it? Yes, it's better than even finance. Climate change. SOS crisis alerts. Extraordinary. We've seen the impact of fires and flooding 250 million.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So to give you a couple of examples, I think that one of the extraordinary places for all of us, and we've heard a lot about it here over lunch, is healthcare. And part of the reason is it's the ability with AI to aggregate so much data that you can actually have a level of diagnosis that is better than what specialists can do. So one example, breast cancer. Back in 2015, Google had a breakthrough in detection, early detection of metastatic breast cancer. One in seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. I was one of those. I've had breast cancer twice. So when I heard about this, I did the only rational thing. I called my oncologist at Memorial Sun Kettering, and I said, is this really as important as I hope? And he said, unequivocally, because only with AI can we democratize healthcare. It's the only way that oncologists everywhere, radiologists everywhere,”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to believe it's more exciting. I mean, we are living in the most extraordinary time with AI. Bill Gates just said that. Completely agree. Engineers who've been at Google since inception are saying that this is the most exciting time in computer science in our lifetime, which always strikes me as profound because Google's done okay. And what's extraordinary about it really goes to building on this decade of innovative work in AI. And so where are we now? What we're doing is we're addressing some of the most profound social challenges with AI in ways that are transformative.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we've been infusing product at Google with AI for more than a decade. In fact, billions of people today are benefiting from”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do, as you would imagine. So look, we're continuing to invest in the business. There's a lot of extraordinary upside in the business. And then we do make investments and acquisitions, so do all of our peers. There's a lot that's exciting going on in the world. And so we're looking across the board, starts within the business, then it goes to investments and acquisitions, then obviously return of capital through a not inconsequential share repurchase program.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no substitute for hard work because hard work actually gets you smarter enough the learning curve faster. So most certainly that's one of them. I think the other I've already said, chart your career, work for somebody who's going to take a risk on you and give you runway, but very importantly we each need to do that for someone. So at one point when I was asked to run technology equity capital markets on the equity trading floor, a senior partner called me into his office and he said, I will be your air cover. all the guys that Morgan's telling you is these military terms there. A lot of military guys, but it was a good one. I will be your air cover. I think you will soar, but if you stumble, I'm here to be your air cover. I think everyone needs air cover and I think we all need to be air cover. And the other is keep learning and keep growing. And when you're plateauing, my line was, what's my highest and best use? And don't do it on a specific timeline, but keep evolving. And if you go to the right,”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so safe that the most fascinating part is within about 15 seconds people are bored because it's so safe they're like they realize you know what this is”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I welcome everybody to come to San Francisco because you can actually hail a Waymo in San Francisco, hop in it and get where you want to go and it's pretty remarkable”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gmail is not an inconsequential billions of users. Google Brain came out of that. It's our core part of our AI business. And then we've continued to evolve it. So it moved over to become X Waymo came out of it. So there's quite a bit and quite a bit of features and applications.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was actually a little more structured than that. The goal was if you had some great engineering idea and you wanted to launch a new product, you could do it in one of two ways. You could leave. Or you could be told, you know what, 20% of your time, why don't you go experiment with this and see if you can grow it? So rather than having great ideas constantly leaving the view as let's nurture the talent, let's give people these growth opportunities. Let's give it a go. And so that's what the 20% time was.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Larry and Sergei had a vision about kind of the next iteration. And there were a lot of different things that they were investing in, the whole spirit of which is you want to make sure you're investing for long term, investing for the future. And in the earliest days, what they did is they created something called X. It was the moonshot factory within Google, Google X. And it gave birth to things like Gmail. It was really relevant for all of the type of innovation that came out of Google. And by 2015, their view was we want to be able to avoid distraction on Google. Let Google do what it's going to do and create another set of businesses that the founders could focus on and really nurture growth outside of it. And so the word, as you would know better than anyone, is alphabets. And so you put the two together, and that was the goal.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are a couple of stories around this, so one of the stories that I think is true and fun is that one of the early venture checks actually wrote it that way, so they went with it.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what it was. And then it went to image search, voice search, and now multimodal search. If I want your tie, I can take a picture of your tie, and then I can just lens it and I can find a place to buy your tie. So this whole evolution of search just keeps extending the runway for search. So it's very different, obviously, today than it was.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually remember those days because I was one of the people who said, why do we need? It was actually the eighth search engine. Why do you need the eighth search engine? And I was at Morgan Stanley at the time in 1998 running banking and our research analyst, Mary Meeker, an iconic analyst, pulled her team together and said, you know what, let's do a test. Let's look at all the search engines. Let's do queries and see speed and relevance of response. And I think she may have started with that eighth search engine question as well, but it quickly rose to the top. And that has been the ethos all along. We still to this day have more than 100 product innovations every quarter. The whole idea is continue challenging ourselves about how to make the product better, more relevant, faster. And what's extraordinary sitting where we are today is how search has evolved. So back then it was 10 blue links. Whoever's old enough in this room to remember 10 blue links.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Term that I've used constantly with my teams. He said in his lab at Stanford, if a physicist could not define a quark in under 30 seconds, they didn't know what they were talking about. And so I use the quark test all the time. If somebody's rambling on and on and they can't get to the point, they probably don't know what they're talking about. They fail the quark test. My finance team knows this quart test. And at Google, I'm working with amazing computer scientists, so they never fail the quark test. They can explain things really clearly, which shoots you up the learning curve.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was pretty fun. There were plenty of times where I would sit around in meetings and literally I would be Googling terms. And at one meeting, Larry Page actually caught me Googling terms and he kind of pointed that out to other people in the room, which was a little embarrassing, but I figured there were some things that I could do that they couldn't do. And so it was a learning curve. And my dad always, he taught me at a young age.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So 2015, Morgan Stanley was in a really good spot. I happened to be with Bill Campbell, an iconic leader in Silicon Valley. He's been written about as the trillion dollar coach, coached Steve Jobs, Larry, Sergei, Sundar, Eric. So it's a privilege to sit with him. And at the time, I said, you know, I'm ready for the next chapter, but the one thing I'm not going to do is be CFO again. We spent two hours in his living room. And at the end, he said, okay, I heard you clearly, not CFO. And I said, exactly. And he said, okay, so I've got the best idea for you, CFO of Google. And of course, I immediately said, well, I hadn't thought of that one. It's interesting.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So no, it was hard, but we did this whole series of different teams and it worked. MUFG came in, they were an incredible partner. The government came in. We became a Fed regulated bank. But there were some very scary times and a lot of important lessons.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were days I did not. It was bad. So I was running financial institutions banking at the time, and probably the most meaningful part of my career was when Hank Paulson called and said, I need advice, I need some bankers here. And so I went and led a team that worked on Fannie Freddie and then AIG. And those were very, very challenging days. And coming out of it, we did Fanny Freddie, and then we did AIG, put them into conservatorship. And I got some Morgan Stanley, John Mac was CEO at the time. And he said, okay, you're in charge of liquidity. Figure out liquidity. And of course, days before what very much was running out of liquidity, there was no way to get liquidity. In fact, one day we were trying to figure out what to do when I was on the trading floor. And I'm like, can we maybe sell the chairs? There were Herman Miller chairs. I thought that might be a solution. That was supposed to be funny, but it was actually really scary at the time.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, kind of right time, right place. Like when I was the CFO of Morgan Stanley, I started in that position January 1st, 2010 when James Gorman took over as CEO. I think he's an all-star CEO. Absolutely amazing. Great partner. And when we started, it was 2010. So after the financial crisis, but Morgan Stanley was still very challenged. Moody's was going to downgrade the bank. At one point, it was kind of shaky. And I think that he and we together, the team, led this extraordinary kind of recovery. And it got to the point in 2015 where I was ready for the next chapter. And then I got this call. Google, it seemed okay.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I loved Wharton, so I'm not going to give you that. You know, I thought I was going to end up being, first of all, I got married. My husband was a lawyer on Wall Street, so I was commuting. But I thought that I would go into consulting, and then I took this amazing mergers accounting class, kind of geeky, and decided I was going to go into mergers and acquisitions, so ended up on the East Coast.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father actually was a Holocaust refugee. So my father escaped from Vienna right after Kristallnacht and made it to Palestine. He had no high school education. He ended up enrolling in the British Army, fought in the Bala Belaiman, and in the army, taught himself physics because he figured if he survived, he needed something that somebody valued. After the war, that actually that worked, that plan worked, he ended up getting to England, where I was born. And then eventually got to the United States, he was sponsored by Senator Kennedy. So he spent his whole career at Harvard and then at Stanford. So I mostly grew up in California.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've actually been coming here since I ran tech banking at Morgan Stanley back in the 90s and was hunting for fees. And so I think it's sort of become one-stop shopping. You make the trip and then you get to see people from Asia and Africa, Middle East, Europe. So it's just that one-stop shop.”
2024-02-15 · The David Rubenstein Show · Ruth Porat · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source