My life experiences and my training are a good match for what we needed to do here, but no, I would not want this to happen ever again.

I went to the search bar and I searched on coronavirus. And what popped up were the old coronavirus sites from CDC that led me to reaching out to the search team and saying,

how can we help the CDC know that they need to get a new page because this is not SARS or MERS or any of the other coronavirus that affect the world. We need to push this information front and center.

What technology companies have gotten quite good at is forecasting. This is how the world might look into the future. And to marrying up the data integrity and scientific expertise of, say, the public health infrastructure with the methodologic and data expertise of the world.

The technology sector has been pretty exciting throughout the pandemic. In places like the U.S., we have access to highly effective vaccines.

We are on a great pathway to getting back to some sense of normalcy by this summer.

You look at India because it's such a stark reminder that it's a global pandemic and as the world goes, all of us go.

That's Dr. Karen Desalvo, Chief Health Officer at Google. Throughout the pandemic, she's been on the front lines of disseminating health information to Googlers, to medical professionals, and to all of us all around the world.

I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group, and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response.

I wanted to talk to Karen because Google is arguably the world's most powerful public health platform. And even as vaccinations expand across the United States, questions about health safety remain as murky as ever.

So, how comfortable should we all be in resuming activities as individuals and as businesses? Karen's answers are both clinical and personal.

She hasn't been out to eat at a restaurant in over a year she admits, but she stresses that we each need to make our own risk assessments, and that's just as true for businesses.

One thing COVID is clearly demonstrated, she says, is the positive impact that technology can have in improving public health today and into the future. Her message is one of opportunity, caution, and hope.

We'll start the show in a moment afterward from our premier brand partner, Capital One Business.

We had a first year analyst Marcus, who came into sort of our organization program. He was really passionate about the intersection of technology and ESG.

That's Gene Lee. She leads card services and strategy at Capital One, and she's talking about Marcus, a first year analyst with a passion for environmental social governance.

Gene could tell Marcus was a future rock star, but one day he came to her with a problem.

He was going to be moving to Boston with his fiance, and Capital One at that point didn't have a major footprint in Boston.

Gene didn't want to lose Marcus, but she couldn't offer him a job in Boston, so she made a surprising call to a friend at a startup in the Boston area.

So I remember connecting them, and it was like the perfect role fit for Marcus at that point in his life.

That's right. Gene helped one of her best employees find a job at another organization. How could she let such a great hire go just like that? We'll find out later in the show.

I'm Bob Safian, I'm here with Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Chief Health Officer at Google. Dr. DeSalvo is joining us from her home in Menlo Park, California, as I asked my questions from my home in Brooklyn, New York.

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