Greg Grimm

Director - Global Manufacturing Partner Management, Google

Simply put, Greg Grimm is one of the Googlers who makes Google go. Without his leadership and expertise, internet search and key services might have slowed to a crawl over the past few years — particularly in light of global supply chain challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Director of Global Manufacturing Partner Management at Google, Grimm leads a commercial and operations team that manufactures thousands of high performance compute and storage servers and network switches every week to keep up with growing demand in the company’s data centers around the world.

Grimm earned his degree in electrical engineering from KU in 1985 and later earned a master’s in business administration from the University of Denver. From his days at KU through his current role with Google, Grimm has exhibited an entrepreneurial spirit grounded in excellent technical skills with a tenacious approach to addressing challenges large and small.

While at KU in the early 1980s, Grimm displayed the entrepreneurial spirit and engineering savvy that remain the hallmarks of his career. He co-founded a software company focused on providing hotel and destination search capabilities at tourist information centers in Kansas. While this business ultimately failed, it developed the “never say die” engineering approach that has propelled him throughout his career.

Grimm began his career in aerospace and defense as a systems engineer, developing advanced night attack technologies for F-16s. He then shifted to the semiconductor industry where he worked as an ASIC design and verification engineer, field application engineer and eventually in technical sales.

Early in his career, outside his regular job, he started a cellular business in the very early days of the technology. He co-developed and manufactured portable bags that allowed cellular phone users to be mobile before affordable battery technology had been developed for hand-held cellular phones. And long before the Internet of Things came to the forefront, Grimm co-developed a platform that would allow for remote control of systems using paging technology and SMS.

Throughout his career — which includes management roles at Celestica, Cisco Systems and his current role Google — his signature engineering contribution is supply chain management and achieving manufacturing scale. He constantly strives to advance engineering manufacturing improvements to increase productivity and efficiency, lower costs, reduce time to market and improve the sustainability associated with manufacturing operations.

His expertise in areas of data center technologies, global electronics, logistics supply chains and manufacturing partner management have helped Grimm emerge as a thought leader in realizing data center hardware and supply chain solutions. His contributions have enabled many Fortune 100 original equipment manufacturers, such as Cisco, to realize rapid growth, reduce costs via outsourcing and build resiliency in their supply chains in support of their strategies.

At Google, Grimm’s global manufacturing knowledge, leadership and expertise provide significant, daily contributions that ensure the company’s services — such as Search, Maps, Photo, Gmail, YouTube and many other free applications — continue to function smoothly with required capacity. These services are critical to and enhance the lives of billions of people every day. Grimm has also played a key role in the critical, large scale deployment of machine learning infrastructure at Google as AI takes a dramatic increase in corporate and public consumption and aims to disrupt many technologies and services.

Grimm’s vision and strong leadership were recently on full display when he guided his teams through the arduous, multi-year work of planning and successfully installing manufacturing capacity while managing multi-country pandemic risk and industry-wide component shortages. His oversight and direction greatly increased the reliability and resiliency of the equipment supply chain.

Grimm’s lifetime of successful, multi-billion-dollar manufacturing accomplishments for companies that deliver valuable products and services to customers around the world speaks for itself. But beyond his professional accomplishments and engineering savvy, it’s his ability to connect with his team and lead from a position of empathy, integrity and hands-on participation that sets him apart.

Grimm is known for delivering what others could not, with world-class manufacturing competency and skills. What really differentiates Grimm, however, is his leadership and its lasting impact. His approach makes people better and models behaviors that get emulated even after he leaves an organization. He has always prioritized staff development and mentoring, along with a strong commitment to a state-of-the-art, safe and productive working environment for all the employees at his manufacturing facilities.

Grimm has served on the School of Engineering advisory board since 2015. He was recognized with Google’s Feats of Engineering award for his contribution toward an automated machine learning manufacturing production line in 2020.

Greg and his wife Karen, who earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science from KU in 1985, enjoy their log home in the mountains of northern Colorado when time permits. Their daughters Alexis (B.S. ME) and Kelsey (B.S. Ed) are KU Grads.