Thinking About Corporate Communications? Google Jon!
by Vivien Savath '06 and Andy Wright '06
If you want to find out about something, ask Google. If you want to
find out about Google, ask Jon Murchinson. Jon Murchinson ’91 is a Senior
Manager in the Corporate Communications Department of the leading internet
search engine, based out of Mountain View, CA. His responsibilities
include handling media relations for founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin as
well as CEO Eric Schmidt, and answering major media inquiries into the
company’s finance, business, legal, and policy issues.
Murchinson’s earliest brush with communications and public relations, what
would become his future career, occurred on a leave term during his junior year
at Dartmouth College. With funding from the Rockefeller Center,
Murchinson secured an internship in Washington, D.C., in Senator Edward
Kennedy’s Press Office. “Paul Donovan ’77 was Senator Kennedy’s Press
Secretary at the time,” says Murchinson. “He was kind enough to offer me
the opportunity to intern for him during my leave term.”
Of his years at Dartmouth, Murchinson fondly remembers his time as a brother
at Phi Delta Alpha fraternity. “I made some of my best friends in the house; I
think Greek life was very important to my time in Hanover.” He also cites his
term abroad in Granada on a Spanish LSA and his participation on the lacrosse
team as both fun and formative experiences. Fifteen years later, he
remembers the great many options that Dartmouth offered, and the passion with
which students participated in them.
Upon graduation as a history major, Murchinson moved to New York doing
fundraising for Dartmouth’s $425 million capital campaign. After two
years, however, he relocated to Washington, D.C., to join the Clinton
Administration where he was a spokesman for the Treasury Department.
After a few years, he was promoted to the White House to serve as one of
President Clinton’s press secretaries. “As a history major, [working in
the Clinton Administration] was a really exciting thing for me to do, to be in
a place where history was being made on a daily basis.” The experience
gave him enormous respect for public service, which he believes “is about
preserving and hopefully improving what we have in our society to the benefit
of all citizens.”
Murchinson has worked in the IT industry for five years now, including the
last as a spokesman for Google. He moved back to the Bay Area in 2005 due
to his wife’s growing consulting business. Google, then only in its sixth
year, attracted Murchinson with its intellectual curiosity and its academic
feel. “It’s a very flat place, it’s the kind of place where if you have
an idea you want to pursue you definitely can, there’s not a hierarchy that
thwarts the pursuit of innovation on the behalf of users.” One of
Google’s biggest assets is that it is exceedingly user oriented. The
engineers creating the technology are also users themselves, so the products
are always adapting to what is best for the consumer.
“Someone once told me, the best things to do the first five years out of
school are not necessarily to find the job that you love, but figuring out the
things you don’t like to do. After you’ve narrowed your focus you can
concentrate on finding a career that brings you a sense of enjoyment and
fulfillment that represents more than just a paycheck you’re collecting.”
For Murchinson, the innovations are one of the most exciting aspects of
working at Google, where he hopes to continue working for years to come.
Murchinson also extols the benefits of the Bay Area (“I couldn’t think of a
better place to live”). In addition to the vibrant culture and outdoors
activities, the Bay Area has a strong Dartmouth presence. “I definitely
still feel very connected to Dartmouth even though I’m across the
country. I think it’s the type of community that one is always a part of;
you never leave. And it’s certainly of great benefit throughout your
life.”
|
