New Real Estate Leadership at Google

Scott Foster,VP, Real Estate & Workplace Services

Dave Radcliffe, Vice President of Google’s Real Estate & Workplace Services (REWS) and Global Security and Resilience Services (GSRS) is retiring from his role after staying on to help shepherd Google through the COVID-19 pandemic. His replacement, Scott Foster (the former Global Head of Corporate Real Estate at Royal Bank of Canada), joined the company earlier this month. 

A few recent highlights from Radcliffe’s tenure include:

• Led teams overseeing Google’s global pandemic response, setting health and safety policies to help ensure a safe return to office and productive work environment for more than 100k Google employees. 
• Helped grow Google’s footprint from a 3,000-person organization to a truly global 174,000-person company with inspiring office space in over 180 cities, spanning more than 60 countries. 
• Opened Bay View, the first campus built by Google—an all-electric, net water positive campus with the largest geothermal installation in North America.
• A pioneer in ensuring Google’s workplaces not only support Googlers, but drive sustainability leadership and help local communities solve challenging problems. 
  • Led Google’s $1B Bay Area housing commitment to catalyze the creation of 20,000 homes
  • Advancing the placemaking vision for Google’s proposed mixed-use communities in Mountain View, Sunnyvale and San Jose with housing, retail, offices and open space. 
• Driving continued progress of King’s Cross development in London, Google’s first ground-up campus outside the U.S.

Below is a snippet of the memo Radcliffe distributed to Google employees, announcing his retirement:

“A little more than three years ago I shared my plans to step down from my role leading this team and spend some much-needed time with my family. Shortly after that, we found ourselves in the throes of a global pandemic that put our team and its work at the center of Google’s response. Together, we developed policies and programs to keep Googlers safe — whether in our offices or at home — and delivered spaces and services to accommodate the changing needs of the business. And today, we’ve embarked on an even greater challenge to deliver spaces and services that help Googlers thrive in this hybrid environment, while continuing to protect our people, places and assets all over the world. We’ve developed an amazing vision for our future workplace, and I believe now is the right time to make that delayed, but not forgotten step — and bring in a new leader to lead this team, and Google, through this next chapter.

I’ll be stepping down from my role next month and throwing my full energy behind welcoming our new leader, Scott Foster, to Google. Scott is joining us from the Royal Bank of Canada, where he’s served as the Global Head of Real Estate for the past three years. His career spans more than two decades and I can truly say he is one of my most trusted peers in the industry.  I couldn’t be more thrilled to pass the baton to him in this role, and I am confident that he’ll be an amazing leader for this team.”

“Our Google community is grateful to Dave for his leadership of Real Estate and Workplace Services over the past 16 years. Dave initially announced his plans to step down in 2019, and we were delighted that he agreed at the outset of Covid to stay on to help us navigate the complexities of the pandemic and the changing needs of the business,” said Ruth Porat, SVP and CFO of Google and Alphabet.  “We will miss him and wish him the best in his retirement. We are excited to welcome Scott Foster to build on Google’s vision of the future hybrid workplace and delivery of sustainable work spaces that benefit communities around the world.”