Radhika Malpani
Lecturer, Stanford University; Associate Adjunct Professor, UC Santa Cruz; Founder, Google Images; Former Senior Engineering Director, Google
Radhika is a seasoned philanthropist, board member, and climate tech investor with a distinguished career in the technology sector spanning over three decades. Having held senior executive positions at renowned organizations like Google, Radhika has now shifted her focus to combating climate change.
At Google, Radhika was a Senior Engineering Director and was responsible, over a period of about 20 years, for initiating and scaling up several critical products. Starting with leading Google Ads in 2000, Radhika built Google Images, growing it over a period of about 7.5 years to over 1B queries/day and ~70% market share. In addition to starting Google Local Search, she also led Google Travel Search to help users better plan their leisure trips.
With a deep-seated interest in leveraging technology for social good, Radhika left Google in mid-2019 to focus full-time on helping mission-driven startups scale. Radhika now serves on multiple boards, including Educate!, Simprints, and Island Conservation. She also advises startup founders, drawing upon her extensive experience in building and scaling successful products and organizations. Her expertise enables founders to navigate critical strategic considerations.
Radhika’s experience working in the social sector has propelled her towards a dedicated focus on climate change. She spent a year at Stanford as a fellow in Stanford’s Distinguished Career Institute, deepening her focus. She is a lecturer at The Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford, where she co-teaches entrepreneurship focused on climate change, and an associate adjunct professor at UC Santa Cruz. Radhika’s primary areas of interest lie at the intersection of oceans and climate change.
