Alumni Advice:Christine Robson Weaver ‘99
By SAM ALTMAN and JINMIN LEE
For our fourth week of Alumni Advice, we have Dr. Christine Robson Weaver ‘99. After graduating from Exeter, attending MIT, and getting her PhD at UC Berkeley, Robson Weaver entered the tech industry. Currently, she works at Google as the Head of Product, managing Google’s search quality. As an Exonian with a lot of experience in mathematics and computer science, Robson Weaver generously offered advice to students.
Robson Weaver reminded Exonians about the quality of Exeter’s education, especially regarding self-advocacy and independence. “When I first left Exeter for MIT, during that first week, I got strength from the formation of a peer group with other prep school kids. Other students were having a lot of trouble with the sharp transition of being away from home for the first time, but we were used to it. So you could tell immediately when you ran into someone who went to Choate, Andover, or Deerfield, for example. My takeaway is that I would not have wanted to be friends with Andover students just a few months prior, but in the context of college, maturity and relationship strength became very important.”
Giving career advice, Robson Weaver stated, “I want to note that I come from a place of privilege for my life rules, and if you’re in a place where you don’t have as many career options, this may not apply. But with that being said, whenever I take on a task, I always consider whether I am the unique person who can do it. If it’s a task anybody could accomplish, I would rather abstain. But, if it’s something of high leverage that no one else can do, I always step forward, even if what I was doing before was important. On the macro level, that’s always been my process because I want to make the highest impact I can.”
Robson Weaver continued, “You start your life with a lot of breadth because you don’t know what you want to specialize in yet, and you need all of the basic skills—if you can’t write or do math, endeavors in technology may be fruitless. Exeter gives you a foundational level of breath that is vitally important. But when you enter a graduate program or your first job, that’s when specialization is really critical. Going deep early in your career, no matter what it is, is very important. If you do that, there will always be something that you have higher leverage on.”
“I’ll give you an example in my life,” said Robson Weaver. “My specialty was math, and I’ve been working in AI for twenty years. Nowadays, AI is a more common specialization, but in the past, I was the only expert in AI so often that I started doing quite a bit of policy work. I worked with the legal team to coauthor Google’s AI principles about how we take responsibility for our use of AI. The depth I accumulated—my math skills—alongside the breadth I learned from Exeter—writing—helped me succeed.”
Robson Weaver emphasized the importance of spending our time at Exeter wisely, especially during the Spring Term of Senior Year. “After I got into college, I decided to make the most out of my last few months at Exeter. Although I enjoyed gaming, my friends and I agreed not to play. We wanted to do things that we could uniquely do at Exeter while we were here together. That’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.”
For students who want to specialize in STEM, Robson Weaver suggested, “Take all the math you can. I did as much as I could and Exeter actually started the 999 program for math while I was here for myself and a couple of other students. The studying I did here was the foundation for how I got into AI.”
“I worked very hard while I was here, but I loved it because I worked with a peer group,” Robson Weaver reflected. “We did study breaks in the dorm all the time. I lived in Bancroft, and we’d make hot chocolate and do math together or some other work. Having that strong support group is transformative with the number of jobs you have here, and I would say I felt very well prepared for MIT because of it.”
“I did three degrees at MIT in five years, and I did not find that to be as challenging as Exeter. But despite that, I wouldn’t ever trade the experience, and I’m not sorry that I pushed myself at Exeter. Parts of it were very hard, but when you work with your friends, it makes a huge difference. As I wrote in my senior quote, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Robson Weaver concluded.
courtesy of exeter.edu