You Don’t Need to be a Techie to be in Tech

Almost every time I head home to the East Coast, I get asked by young students how someone like me can get a job in Silicon Valley. To them, and many others, I don’t fit the typical mold — that is, I don’t have a technical degree. I have a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. And yet, I’ve been working in Silicon Valley now for nearly a decade, first as litigation counsel at Google and now as the senior director of intellectual property, litigation, and marketing groups at Adobe. The truth is, you don’t need to have a technical background in order to get a job in Silicon Valley or any tech hub in the world.