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Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Clem Wright '05
Clem Wright ‘05 grew up in South Londonderry, a self-described “‘Over the Mountain’ kid.” After graduating in 2005, Clem went on to Harvard to earn a degree in English, and after college, he worked at a malaria non-profit in Sierra Leone before moving to San Francisco to work for Google. We sat down with Clem to talk about his work, his trajectory, and some of his favorite BBA moments that led him to where he is today.
Clem Wright ‘05 grew up in South Londonderry, a self-described “‘Over the Mountain’ kid.” He was one of four children who would go on to graduate from Burr and Burton Academy. After graduating in 2005, Clem went on to Harvard to earn a degree in English. After college, Clem worked at a malaria non-profit in Sierra Leone, then moved to San Francisco to work for Google. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Kathleen Chen, who writes for television.
His professional life has been guided by the belief that you can learn to do just about anything if you give yourself the chance. Working his way up from Google customer support to his current position as a Product Manager at Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project, Clem has kept purpose and possibility at his center. He said when he graduated from Harvard and found his work at Google, “I didn’t even know this kind of job existed.” Travel, reflection, and asking for what he wants have helped Clem find that purpose and possibility in his work and life.
We sat down with Clem to talk about his work, his trajectory, and some of his favorite BBA moments that led him to where he is today.
1. Can you describe Waymo and what you do for them? And, how does it feel to ride in a self-driving car?
I'm now working as a Product Manager at Waymo, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project. We build technology that allows vehicles to drive autonomously, and we currently operate a ride-hailing service near Phoenix, Arizona that serves hundreds of rides per week without a human behind the wheel. I work on the rider experience, ensuring everyone gets where they're going smoothly and safely. Around the world, over a million people die from traffic accidents every year, and we want to stop that. My day-to-day job working with researchers, designers, and engineers is filled with interesting challenges, and when that gets hard or boring or stressful (which of course it does, like any job) it's nice to remember that I really care about the mission of the company: making it safe and easy for people to get where they're going.
[Riding in a self-driving car] is pretty amazing. It’s interesting how it feels. It’s very exciting at first, then quickly boring in a good way. You enter the car, and you press start - there is a screen showing you what the car is thinking and seeing. You can see that it detects everything around you, for example cars, pedestrians, and crosswalks, which gives you the confidence that it knows what it’s doing. After a short period of watching the road, people often look at their phones, or chat with their kids, or take a nap––they trust our driving, so riding in a robot can even be boring, in a good way.
2. How did growing up in Vermont translate to life in LA?
Dang––it's different! L.A. is fun and weird and big and loud and about 72 and sunny all the time. I love the funny, creative people and the fact that I can walk a block to a park every day and play pickup soccer with people from a dozen different countries. Life's about trying new things, and LA is chock full of them, so I'm up for the adventure. But I also miss Vermont and breathing clean air and seeing stars and jumping in rivers and hearing not-cars at night, and I get the occasional swell of what you might call urban claustrophobia, a vibe of what-am-I-doing-in-this-massive-desert-parking-lot-they-call-a-city. I'm super proud to be from Vermont and go bonkers whenever I meet someone in LA who has been to Vermont.
3. How did your time at BBA shape your career path?
At BBA, my favorite classes were English and Creative Writing. I loved reading books and writing songs and poems. I edited Between Ranges, the literary magazine, met regularly with the Writer's Forum (we called it Write Club), and started this weird arts publication called the Junior Liberator. Which may all sound really different than working at Waymo with a bunch of designers sketching interfaces and software engineers checking in code. But I think BBA really helped me 1) communicate clearly in my writing and speech, which is the most important part of my job, and 2) embrace my creative side, which is crucial for thinking up new ideas for our riders.
I did the plays every year with my friend Willy Appelman ’05, and I got into songwriting with Jamie Hand ‘04. I also did soccer, nordic skiing, and lacrosse, and made incredible friends who I still talk with all the time. It was cool to be able to both play sports and do the arts––I felt like I could be lots of things. I didn’t feel like I was put in a box in any way.
Apart from schoolwork, I think the incredibly supportive faculty, coaches, and other staff at BBA gave me a really strong foundation––it was important just to feel like I had people in my corner who cared about me and thought I could succeed. The first year of college kicked my butt emotionally and intellectually––it took me a while to find my crew of friends and I felt like everyone was way smarter than me. Having some Bulldogs at my back was big.
4. How has travel and time away from work allowed you to pivot and find your next adventure?
To be completely honest, I had no idea what I was going to do for a job when I graduated college––I thought the career options for an English major were pretty limited. But I spent the summer after graduation working at a malaria non-profit in Sierra Leone, and that was such an out-of-my-comfort-zone experience; it made me feel like I could try lots of new things.
I came back to Cambridge, crashed on my friends' couch, busked on the street, and got a part-time gig collecting DNA spit samples for one of my old psychology professors. A bunch of people I knew were applying to be management consultants, so I tried for that and completely bombed––I almost passed out from anxiety during one interview.
One day (probably while eating day-old Starbucks sandwiches that my roommate brought back from his job), I saw an entry-level job opening in customer support at Google. I didn't have any background in tech, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I'd always liked Google products, and the idea of helping to build and improve them, even in a small way, was really exciting and futuristic. Google's mission to “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” seemed like a bold goal and a positive legacy to be a part of. My interviews were near Halloween, and three of my four interviewers were wearing crazy Halloween costumes, so I thought it couldn't be half bad. Almost 12 years later, I'm still there, so I guess something must have clicked.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing though. About five years ago, I took a three month break from Google to try to figure out where I was going with my career. At that time, I felt a bit like … is this who I am? I originally thought I was going to write or be a teacher, and here I was in tech. I had this early-life crisis wondering if this is who I wanted to be. I needed to take a step back and see what was missing. I thought a lot about autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Do I have the autonomy to do what I want? Have I mastered the skills that I need to be good at this? Do I feel like I’m working toward the right purpose? Through that process, I realized I wanted to work at Waymo on self-driving cars, and now I’m doing something that I feel good about. Until my next big crisis of confidence, of course.
5. What advice do you have for the Class of 2022 as they head away from the Belltower?
"If you don't ask, they can't say yes." If you don’t ask out that crush, or try to join that club, or apply for that job, you’re not even giving people a chance to say “Yes” to you. Yeah, they might say “No”, but then what have you lost by asking? Nothing. The fear of people saying “No” feels a lot crappier and lasts a lot longer than just hearing "No" and getting on with your life. Someone doesn’t want you in their club/company/team? Tough break for them, because you rock. On to the next one. Lezzgo.
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