Google thrilled to have Zimbabwean as Senior Vice President

James Mayinka is a Zimbabwean national and corporate executive who was recently appointed by Google as its Senior Vice President.

Manyika's new role comes with huge responsibilities, as he is tasked with shaping and sharing Google's views on how technology affects societies.

He will be reporting directly to Sundar Pichai, Google's Chief Executive Officer.

Last week, Google pleasantly surprised everyone by announcing a new executive position and naming an African man as its occupant. Now, just in case you missed that news, let's bring you up to speed —James Manyika is the man we are talking about.

He is Google's newly appointed Senior Vice President of Technology and Society.

Google is excited to hire him.

In a press statement made available by the tech giant, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai, expressed just how thrilled he was to have Mr Manyika join the company.

"I'm thrilled that James Manyika will be joining Google's leadership team. He's spent decades working at the intersection of technology and society and has advised a number of businesses, academic institutions and governments along the way," Pichai said.

Business Insider Africa Africa understands that the new Senior Vice President will be reporting directly to Pichai who also doubles as the CEO of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company.

What does Manyika's job entail?

Do note that Mr Manyika's new role comes with huge responsibilities. As you should know, there has been a lot of debates around tech's impact on societies across the globe. And as a major industry player, these debates mostly resolves around the role of Google, thus impacting it directly.

While the company has already done a lot to address these concerns, Manyika's appointment is expected to go along way towards helping Google do more in this regard.

So, as Google's Senior Vice President of Technology and Society, his primary responsibility would be to shape and share Google's views on how technology affects societies. Specifically, he will help shape Google's views on issues such as the future of work, artificial intelligence, sustainability, focusing on how all of these affect societies, their economies and the planet as a whole.

Well, the first thing to know about James Mayinka is that he is a Zimbabwean national. Information available on his LinkedIn profile show that he obtained his first degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Zimbabwe.

He then proceeded to the University of Oxford where he obtained a number of postgraduate degrees, including a doctorate in AI and Robotics.

In terms of corporate experience, he has nearly 30 years' worth. Between 1994 and 2022, he worked at McKinsey & Company where he was promoted to quite a number of high profile positions, including Chairman/Director of McKinsey Global Institute.

Mr Manyika also sits on the boards of many other organisations, including the Aspen Institute, Khan Academy, MacArthur Foundation, William and Flora Hewlette Foundation, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard  Council on Foreign Relations among others.