Yale School of Management - Claire Hughes Johnson '01

"Yale SOM represented a critical transition in my career. The diversity of background in my classmates and collaborative nature of the learning environment, in the classroom and in work groups, enabled me to discover and build on my core strengths as a leader and business person. Many of those classmates are important parts of my life to this day."

As vice president of global online sales at Google, Claire Johnson is responsible for a global team which acquires and provides sales and client services to thousands of advertisers, agencies, and advertising partners. Representing approximately one-third of Google's revenue, online sales partners with small and medium businesses to select the best of Google's online advertising solutions to grow the advertisers' sales, customer base, and business overall. The range of online advertising solutions include text and display advertising, TV, and mobile.

Since joining Google early in 2004, Claire has managed sales and operations teams on both the consumer and business product sides, including Gmail and Google Apps, and she led the formation of the consumer operations team that today supports hundreds of millions of active users of more than 30 consumer products.

Prior to joining Google, Claire worked in management consulting where she provided marketing and customer strategy to large media companies, including DirecTV, The New York Times and Dow Jones. Claire's career began in Massachusetts state politics, working for the Attorney General and also on gubernatorial and local state campaigns.

Claire earned a bachelor's degree from Brown University with Honors, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She lives in Menlo Park, CA with her husband and two young children.