How This Former Circus Performer Is Turning Google Maps Into the Next Big Thing in Gaming

When 26-year-old Clementine Jacoby thinks back on her childhood, she remembers using printed maps to navigate strange new cities -- one of the many tools that smartphones have rendered largely obsolete. "My parents, I think, are just chronically bored," she says in a conference room at Google's New York offices. "We moved around a ton, and I was also sort of an agitated and ambitious kid and traveled a bunch on my own." It's perhaps fitting then that, after a year-long stint as a circus performer and graduating from Stanford University with a degree in symbolic systems (a program that focuses on a combination of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction), Jacoby ended up working as a product manager for Google Maps. It's a role that Jacoby feels like was made for her.