I realized I wanted to be in Silicon Valley, in the heart of tech, and being at Tuck really set me up very well to do that.

Sprague Brodie T’14 works in the heart of Silicon Valley at the sprawling Mountain View, California, campus of tech giant Google. And yes, everything you’ve heard about working at Google is true—chefs whip up three gourmet meals a day, napping stations are available for midday snoozes, you can bring along your dog or workout in the on-site gyms, and Wi-Fi-equipped Google busses pick up staffers for their commute to work.

Brodie, who joined Google as a manager of Google Cloud Online Sales Strategy in the summer of 2017, says all of those perks are great—“I’m still in a little shock,” she admits about the amenities—but that’s not what she loves most about her job. “The more important thing I’ve found is Google takes a really proactive focus on creating culture, thinking about career paths, and making sure their employees are well taken care of,” she says.

She’s always been interested in technology, but she took a meandering journey to land in the industry’s epicenter. A Massachusetts native, Brodie attended Georgetown University for undergrad, majoring in science technology and international affairs and graduating in 2009. Afterward, she joined Deloitte Consulting in Washington, D.C., where she worked in their federal government consulting practice for three years before deciding to attend to business school at Tuck.

“I knew I eventually wanted to move more toward the tech industry, working for fast-moving, dynamic companies,” she says. “But I didn’t have the full business skillset that I needed. For me, I chose Tuck to learn how to think about strategy and financial analysis and to combine that with my software development skills.”

She joined the Technology Club as soon as she arrived at Tuck and became the co-head of the organization, and she quickly started learning that the connections to the tech industry run deep within Tuck alumni. “Despite being in rural New Hampshire, there was this really strong network that I was able to tap into with recruiting and interviewing and having tech companies come to campus,” she says. “I realized I wanted to be in Silicon Valley, in the heart of tech, and being at Tuck really set me up very well to do that.”

During her time at Tuck, she did an internship with Amazon, in Seattle, where fellow Tuckies provided instrumental mentorship. After graduating from Tuck in 2014, she moved across the country to San Francisco to work for Deloitte Digital as a senior technology consultant helping advise tech companies. But soon, she realized she wanted to be working on the other side, for the tech companies themselves. She scored a gig as a manager of Technology Planning and Analysis at Netflix, which hired her because of her background in financial planning and strategic analysis to support their engineering teams. “I learned a lot from my role at Netflix applying the core business and financial analysis skills I picked up at Tuck,” she says.

After a year at Netflix, a fellow Tuck classmate who was working at Google referred her to a job at Google Cloud. “At Google, I was looking for a role in a growing business unit,” she says. “The Cloud is growing very quickly within Google. They’re more of an underdog and are trying to be scrappy. The technology is super strong, but I help make sure the business side matches up with their strong technology. Anytime you’re in the learning phase of a company, that’s exciting to me.”

She hasn’t been at Google for long, but she says she sees herself staying and growing within the company. “I love living in San Francisco,” she says. “You get exposed to a lot of what’s happening in the tech world through osmosis here.”

Or maybe it’s those three free, gourmet meals a day.