Stephen Gillett begins tenure as Verily CEO

The following memo was shared with all Verily employees on Jan 3, Stephen Gillett's first day as CEO:

Happy New Year to you all and I hope everyone had a restful holiday with family and friends. I am honored to become the CEO of Verily today, and wanted to share a few thoughts as we kick off the new year.

As many of you know, I joined the company nearly three years ago after coming over from Google in an advisory role to Verily. In the summer of 2020, the world was a very different place  - we were early in the COVID-19 pandemic, determining how Verily could pivot and make contributions while navigating how the pandemic impacted our daily lives.

As I saw how our teams collaborated and innovated, I was struck by the collective passion to make a difference, and was impressed by the accomplished health, science and tech expertise working together in service of a mission that required excellence in all three domains. The opportunity to work with and learn from so many of you is something for which I am extremely grateful.

Now, after these past few years in my role as COO and President, I believe more than ever that we have an incredible opportunity to take Verily to new heights in its next chapter and as a force in precision health. We have a compelling combination of capabilities and innovation know-how at the intersection of health and technology, and great potential to use these assets to improve healthcare. The way we win in precision health is by bringing research and care closer together, and the way we do that is by becoming a leader in health technology, leveraging our growing expertise in AI/ML, data science, privacy and security.

You’ll be hearing more about this soon when we share the refinements to our strategy and operating model, which will build on our momentum and strengths, and double down on how we operationalize our purpose to bring more impact to individuals’ lives.

I know you are all eager to hear more about our plans, and I thank you for the patience you have shown as we have completed the work and diligence around our path forward. We will follow up soon with more information.

Thank you for your support and shared belief in our purpose,
Stephen