Product marketing manager at Google by day, and performing spoken poetry by night. We caught up with ACS Cobham and Stanford University alumnus, Tucker Bryant.
Product marketing manager at Google by day, and performing spoken poetry by night. We had a chat with alumnus, Tucker Bryant, about how ACS Cobham inspired his passions.
Tucker Bryant attended ACS Cobham from 1998 to 2012. He went on to study International Relations at the highly regarded Stanford University in the US and has since carved a successful career in product marketing.
Alongside his full-time job at Google, Tucker has been moving in the spoken word and slam poetry spheres for over a decade, and, for the last two years, has begun to serve as a keynote speaker, exploring the connection between poetic thinking and creative leadership to inspire and bring innovative thinking to leaders in large corporate companies.
My time at ACS Cobham opened my eyes to the world of poetry and literature, and I thank my teachers for taking the time to listen and develop my interests.
What subjects did you study in High School?
I took a mix of International Baccalaureate (IB) and Advanced Placement (AP) classes in High School and did a little bit of everything, but mostly enjoyed humanities subjects.
English and French were definitely my favourite classes. I cannot thank my French teacher, Helene Balin, and my English teachers, Jennifer Bowley and Jonathan Miller, enough — they totally nurtured my passion for language and love for writing and performance.
I have great memories in those classes of just really experiencing literature for the first time and falling in love with it. That bug stuck with me, in part because of how good they were at sharing their passion for language. Those relationships definitely made a big impact on my future and my pursuit of poetry.
Academically, there were just so many eureka moments that came up in those English and French classes too. Being sent off to read Crime & Punishment, A Doll’s House, or any book really from Grade 8-12 felt like pulling back the layers of this impossibly huge universe that existed in the books we were studying. That was really enjoyable.
How did your time at ACS Cobham prepare you for the demands of university life at Stanford and then a career in marketing?
Taking AP and IB classes academically makes a big difference when you get to university; especially in the IB, having that experience of working on big, long-term projects is really valuable. Also, the experience you have in the AP of having to progress quickly through a lot of material but still pick it all up, is a good introduction to the pace of university life that made it easier to get a running start upon arriving.
On a cultural level, I think it is really unique that ACS Cobham has small enough classes, and teachers who are involved enough with their students, for you to be able to develop stronger relationships with professional educators who can give you a little bit more insight into yourself as a student — above what you would just get through your grades.
I feel like I was able to learn a lot about my strengths and weaknesses from teachers who knew me well, and in a way that gave me a good sense of what to work on, not only as a student but as a person as well.
Thinking about how my school years have influenced my career, ACS Cobham allowed me the freedom to think broadly across a range of subjects and often bring those varied levels of analysis into a single cohesive project, whether that was in English or History.
I was frequently tasked with taking a problem or a question that is very broad, and differentiating between important and unimportant evidence, and then answering that problem with a unique solution.
I think this is somewhat similar to what you do in marketing: your question could be anything from ‘how do you compare to competitors?’ to ‘how do we serve our customers better?’ and there are obviously a variety of ways in which to answer those questions. That process of knowing how to recognise and use relevant information is a key skill that I gained from High School which comes up in my work today.
How has your international education shaped you as a person?
Spending time around people who have come from lots of different places certainly gave me something resembling what I gather others refer to as a “global perspective.” This is a unique privilege not afforded to some of my friends at university who didn’t have the opportunity to live abroad and go to an international school. That international environment at ACS Cobham contributes to a less UK or US-centric point of view, which can lead to some interesting conversations with my peers when it comes to where the future is headed!
Can you tell us a bit more about your career to date?
There are two main things I work on right now. By day, I am a Product Marketing Manager at Google, working on driving awareness of and engagement with Google’s privacy products: the tools that allow users to choose what their data settings are, and utilise the personalisation Google offers to them. Our goal is to make sure that as many users of Google as possible know what controls are available to help them get the experience they want.
By night, for the last decade I have been writing and performing spoken word poetry, a form of performance poetry that combines the elements of performance and writing, (and, sometimes, competition and audience participation). Now, in the last couple of years, I’ve found that a lot of people in the corporate universe want to drive innovation, but are actually really uncomfortable accessing the creative part of their thought processes and energy in order to bring about these transformations.
Through writing poetry, you’re forced to take risks, be vulnerable, and try new things that really open your perspective and blow it apart. For this reason, poetic thinking is something I feel that a lot of people in corporate spaces can benefit from exploring.
So, I now deliver hybrid presentations - performances that explore the connections between creativity and leadership, using poetry as a springboard to inspire people to develop perspectives they wouldn’t otherwise develop.
What advice would you give to the current cohort of students at ACS Cobham?
You are so blessed to have such an incredibly supportive environment at ACS Cobham, but don’t forget how big the world is. Resist the urge to become a big fish in a small pond; always question what it is you don’t know, and lean in that direction. You’ll be surprised over and over how big the world is, and you will realise how much there is to understand in order to truly serve the communities that matter to you. Always lean into the unknown and keep trying to broaden your perspectives. Don't get comfortable!
French teacher, Helene Balin, is one of several teachers Tucker credits for his success.
Stanford University
