Alumni Spotlight: Sara Tangdall Works for Google

I graduated with my MA degree in English from UNO in May of 2013. I now work for Google as a Responsible Innovation Program Manager where I formalize processes around Google's AI Principles and help with ethical reviews of AI technologies and related areas of interest. The skills I learned at UNO definitely laid the foundation for my work in AI ethics.

Ethics as a whole is ambiguous and AI ethics is no exception. Learning critical thinking skills in graduate school taught me how to look at situations from varying viewpoints and pushed me to be okay with ambiguity; those skills currently help me wade through mental messes and complex situations at work. Studying English also trained me to not shy away from attempting to answer big questions. Making AI ethical--what does that even mean and how do we get there? I'm not quite sure, but I know it involves reading, researching, having an open mind, learning from my peers, and engaging in difficult discussions, all skills I learned in graduate school.

During my time as a graduate student, I also learned how to manage data because I did a large-scale discourse analysis funded by the Graduate Research and Creative Activity grant (GRACA). Even though we don't traditionally think of English majors as working with data, I would argue that we do--we're just working with different kinds of data. Sorting through data, looking for patterns, and engaging in both qualitative and quantitate analyses around language was a vital skill I picked up in graduate school. It also taught me how to create order out of chaos, which, as a program manager, is my bread and butter.

And perhaps the most obvious skill I learned in graduate school is how to churn out quality content in a short period of time. This skill has saved me more times than I care to admit.

Never in a million years did I think I'd work at Google (I've never taken a computer course in my life and neural nets still freak me out!), but my time at UNO as a graduate student in the English department taught me skills that are helping me work with others to solve some of the world's stickiest problems.

Feel free to connect with Sara on LinkedIn.