Her Story
About Nicole
I'm a global agency lead at Google, where I've been for over 13 years. I support one large global agency holding company, leading the total search workstream and helping identify areas of opportunity for clients from a product adoption perspective. Search is really changing right now with LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini - people used to bid on keywords, and now they're typing long-form paragraphs with questions that they're expecting Google or other platforms to answer. So I'm really helping clients navigate that transition, working with the agency to make sure it's not just a drop in traffic, but helping them answer the questions and build the content that makes them discoverable in this new world. My product focus is search, paid search, and SEM from a Google perspective. Before this role, I spent 7 years on the Tech B2B team, first as an account manager covering day-to-day work for large enterprise SaaS customers across search, display, and video, then as an account executive focusing on bigger, longer-term sales and leading relationships with CMOs. I also spent time as a search specialist in specialty retail during COVID, which was an amazing time to work on Google Search because we were launching products in real time like buy online, pick up in store. Before Google, I worked at Ogilvy at NEO, their digital arm, in paid search for a little over 2 years.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Nicole
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I'd say don't doubt yourself. I think being confident in what you bring to the table, the reason to be in the room, have a seat, not taking up space to take up space, or speaking to speak. I think listening is an underrated skill, and speaking when it's meaningful, but really that confidence in your right to be there. Oftentimes I will be either the youngest in the room, which is surprising in my 40s still, but in this agency world, it can be being one of the only women in the room. It's really all about knowing what you bring to the table, being confident in what you bring to the table, and ignoring any imposter syndrome. Like, if you do the work, you have to believe that you have the right to be in the room, the right to speak up. And again, taking the time to speak in a way that is meaningful, is really important.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I would say the transition from individual contributor to leader at Google is a challenge. But also there's tons of opportunities to lead, to mentor. They have job shadow programs, you can hire for what's called a 20% project, where different members of the team can sort of work on another part of the Google business in at 20% capacity. I think mobility everywhere is not what it used to be. Another challenge is the world, right? So working on a global client, different markets are facing different external challenges, like tariffs and war, and so navigating that from a business perspective when you're not in the market, but you're meant to be the centralization source is certainly a unique challenge.
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