Meet Google DeepMind’s chief AI exec—she started out detasseling corn in Indiana for around $1 an hour at 14: ‘I grew up in really humble beginnings’

Google DeepMind’s Lila Ibrahim had no formal background in AI or research when she became the company’s first-ever chief operating officer in 2018. Her résumé did, however, include detasseling corn in Indiana as a 14-year-old for “$1-something” an hour—a punishing summer job that left her sweaty, cut up, and sure she wanted a different future.

“I grew up in really humble beginnings,” Ibrahim exclusively told Fortune, while adding that her parents were both immigrants, juggling careers in a new country with raising three children, including one with cerebral palsy. “It was happy but challenging in many ways financially.” 

“So I worked in the cornfields of Indiana, literally pulling off tassels, coming home, cuts and sores and sweating. It was really hard labor,” she recalled, adding that she quickly ruled out a career in agriculture. “But I had this strong work ethic.” 

That work ethic saw her swap the Indiana cornfields for a Purdue lab, where she worked on fruit fly DNA as a research assistant while still studying in high school. It then........

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