Google's diversity chief started her crusade young

For Nancy Lee, Google's director of diversity and inclusion, the inclusionary fire was lit when she was 16 working at a restaurant chain specializing in hosting birthday parties for kids. Later she earned a law degree at the University of California at Berkeley, which led to a job with a San Francisco firm specializing in employment law. While embraced by colleagues for her skills and work ethic, Lee nonetheless had hurdles to vault.

Lee joined Google's legal team in 2006 and two years later moved to people operations, the search engine's name for human resources. For the past few years, she has focused specifically on improving the company's diversity numbers, which like most of the tech world skew predominantly white and male.