Patrick Pichette | |
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Born | |
Nationality | Canadian |
Alma mater | |
Occupation |
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Employer | iNovia |
Board member of | |
Awards | National Order of Québec |
Website | www |
Patrick Pichette, CQ is a Canadian businessman and executive. He was senior vice president and chief financial officer of Google from 2008 until 2015.[1] He then became a venture capital fund manager, and is a director for several companies and a foundation.[2]
Pichette was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec.[3] He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Université du Québec à Montréal (1987) and an Master of Arts degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Pembroke College of the University of Oxford.[1] He received a Rhodes Scholarship.
Pichette began his career working at McKinsey & Company and Bell Canada from 2001 until 2008.
He was senior vice president and chief financial officer of Google Inc. from 2008 until 2015.[1]
In April 2011, it was announced that Pichette would also be taking over human resources responsibilities within Google from vice president Laszlo Bock,[4] and BizOps from Shona Brown.[5]
In 2013, Pichette accepted a position on the board of directors for Bombardier Inc., a position he held until 2017.[6][7]
In March 2015, he announced he would retire to travel the world.[8][9] He was succeeded as CFO by Ruth Porat.
In June 2015, he received the National Order of Québec.[10]
In April 2018, he joined Inovia Capital, a venture capital firm with offices in Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco and London.[3][11][12] After becoming a general partner at Inovia Capital, Pichette is splitting his time between the firm's offices in London,[2] Canada and Silicon Valley.
In 2019, Pichette became a lead founding member of UK's Creative Destruction Lab at Oxford.[13]
In 2021, Pichette was appointed as a board member of indoor cycling app company Zwift.
Pichette was appointed independent board chair of Twitter on June 2, 2020;[14] he had been the lead independent director since 2018. He was chair of Montreal based Lightspeed, and of the Trudeau Foundation. Pichette is on the advisory board of startups.[15]
Pichette lives in London, and is married to Tamar Pichette.[3]
He and his wife Tamar are involved in philanthropic projects including a conservation and research project with Nature Conservancy Canada in protecting Kenauk, a 65,000 acre territory between Montreal and Ottawa.[16][17] They are active partners in a project with Himalayan Cataract Project, building an eye hospital in Ethiopia.