I’m Garen CheckleyHi, welcome to my basic website. You can reach me at: • Email: GarenCheckley@gmail.com • Twitter: @garencheckley • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garen-checkley-4ab65612/ My Interests include Climate, Software, Emerging Markets, Reading, Learning HindiClimateThe past year I’ve been learning more about climate change. I’ve gone deep on • Home electrification & consumer behavior change • The grid And I’ve written • Even replacing your old windows is subject to stifling red tape in San Francisco (The San Francisco Chronicle Opinion) • There’s a Crucial Climate Case to Make for 82,000 New Homes in San Francisco (The Frisc) • Orchestrating the Electric Home (Climate Capital Insights) I’m also a member-elected Executive Committee member of the San Francisco Sierra Club Board. SoftwareI’ve worked for >10 years at Google building new products and working on a few large-scale incremental products. Roles include: • Lead PM/Manager: leading new products & managing PMs (current) • Google Pay US Growth • Google Pay Brazil (Pix) • Product Manager: leading 300M+ user product (Files by Google) • Product design strategy: intersection of product design x biz strategy • Design lead: leading 7+ UX team making YouTube Go (500M users) • UX Engineer: on YouTube recommendations & music • Operations: creating search quality tools & processes I formally and informally mentor a few folks, so please email if you’d like to chat, especially if you’re interested in product or software from an “untraditional background”. Emerging MarketsMy focus the past 8 years has been in Google’s “Next Billion” initiative, which means: 1. Making new apps / products 2. For emerging markets like India and Nigeria As part of this, I: • lived in India for 1.5 years • enjoyed on-the-ground research / fieldwork in India, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand • PM’d Files by Google, a “Next Billion Users” focused Android app with 300M+ users • Lead an unannounced 0→1 new product • Co-authored a whitepaper: Toward Gender Equity Online: Research with the Next Billion Users (Google 2019) • Co-authored a peer reviewed publication (winner best paper): “Privacy is not for me, it’s for those rich women”: Performative Privacy Practices on Mobile Phones by Women in South Asia (SOUPS 2018) Hindi & IndiaI'm *trying* to learn Hindi. ReadingI love reading, both fiction and non-fiction. I also love talking about books! Non-fiction books I appreciate include: • How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates • Design Driven Innovation by Roberto Verganti (garenNotes) • Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (garenNotes) • Range by David Epstein (garenNotes) • Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt (garenNotes) • Factfullness by Anna Rosling Ronnlund, Hans Rosling, and Ola Rosling (garenNotes) • Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (garenNotes) • Portfolios of the Poor by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, Orlanda Ruthven (garenNotes) • White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (garenNotes) • The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt (garenNotes) • Mismatch by Kat Holmes (garenNotes) • Made to Stick by by Chip and Dan Heath (garenNotes) • Systems Thinking for Social Change by David Stroh (garenNotes) • Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt (garenNotes) • Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett (garenNotes) • Don’t Think Like an Elephant by George Lakoff (garenNotes) • Orientalism by Edward Said (garenNotes) • Scarcity by Mullainathan and Shafir (garenNotes) • The Next Billion Users by Payal Arora (garenNotes) • The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow (garenNotes) • The Prosperity Paradox by Christensen, Ojomo, Dillon (garenNotes) • Execution by Lawrence Bossidy, Ram Charan (garenNotes) • Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore (garenNotes) • Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers (garenNotes) • India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha • A Never Before World by Rama Bijapurkar • The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley • Measure What Matters by John Doerr • A Village Goes Mobile by Sirpa Tenhunen • The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf • How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell • High Output Management by Andrew Grove • The Wright Brothers by David McCullough • The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen • Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo • Zero to One by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters • Overcrowded by Roberto Verganti • Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Articles, for good measure! • Planet Money 1000 by NPR (garenNotes) • The End of Average by Todd Rose (garenNotes) • Curb Cuts (and the Curb Cut Effect) by 99 Percent Invisible • On Average by 99 Percent Invisible • Incremental and Radical Innovation by Don Norman and Roberto Verganti • Why Books Don’t Work by Andy Matuschak |