Ryan Atkins on growth, education, and philanthropy
A former teacher turned Dropbox people operations business partner discusses big transitions, life lessons, and corporate giving.
What did you do before Dropbox?
I spent a little over 10 years teaching high school physics, math, and computer science at a very special, magical, small school in East Palo Alto, California. Almost all of the students in this school come from low-income households, and are the first in their families who are planning to go to college. Incredibly, every single graduate of this school goes on to a four-year college or university.
What do you do now?
I work in People Operations, which is Silicon Valley speak for “Human Resources.” My role is Business Partner for engineering team. That means I help navigate any issues that might arise with performance management, create development opportunities, implement Dropbox policy and coach engineering leaders. It’s actually quite cool, because I get to work on both business and people objectives.
I also run our in-house management training program, which is designed to give team leads a better sense of how to develop individuals’ careers, build high-performing teams, drive execution, and foster a positive working culture. People Ops is a great team to be on, because its mission is to support and enrich Dropboxers so that we can all do our best work. I’m constantly surprised how much everyone on the team, and at Dropbox in general, is committed to building a supportive culture.
What inspired you to make the transition from education to tech?
Leaving teaching was not an easy choice. However, I found myself telling my students daily that they should push themselves to grow by exploring new opportunities. Eventually I ended up convincing myself of the same.
I was already a devoted user of both Dropbox and Mailbox and the opportunity to work with incredibly talented people and help build a home for more than 300 million peoples’ stuff was simply too compelling to pass up. I distinctly remember walking away from my first interview at Dropbox feeling energized by the raw horsepower and genuinely humble intellectual curiosity of the Dropboxers I met with. I thought to myself: “I need to come back to this place as soon as I can.”
Yet, as with every former teacher you’ll meet, I do miss my students terribly, and invite them to visit Dropbox whenever they can.
What lessons did you learn while teaching?
The most important lesson I took away from that time is that everyone (seriously, everyone) is capable of greatness, if given enough support, compassion, and the highest of expectations. I witnessed my students confront seemingly insurmountable obstacles that the world had put in their path, and adopt the mindset that these obstacles are actually opportunities: opportunities for growth, development, and triumph. I watched students build up such great resilience and tenacity with raw grit and pure compassion.
I also learned that we are swimming in inspiration — and often so inundated in it that we fail to appreciate it. Despite the fact that inequity and injustice are realities that often unfairly restrict opportunity and freedom, particularly for the students I taught, we all have the power and choice to be inspired and empowered daily by what surrounds us. For me, that often took two forms: appreciating the wonder of physics, and marveling at my students’ mastery of it.
What have you done at Dropbox so far that you’re most proud of?
I’m incredibly proud of the work that I’ve done with Dropbox for Good, which is a program that helps Dropbox build partnerships with community organizations. We do a lot of volunteer efforts and philanthropic giving, and there are a number of dedicated Dropboxers who are donating their time to help build the program.
My work with Dropbox for Good has focused on internal communication and organization of volunteer events, as well as external communication with community partners, such as arranging student tours, inviting guest speakers, and so on. I’ve also helped to build our Dropbox for Good non-profit grant allocation committee.
What have been some of your favorite Dropbox experiences?
Definitely Hack Week. It was so incredible — somehow exhausting and energizing at the same time. I worked on two separate projects: One was with some of our insanely smart interns on building a framed 3.5 foot x 3.5 foot LED board that could pixelate and display any photo.
The other was a huge cross-functional effort to build an internal website for Dropbox for Good, which consisted of a collection of inspiring stories from non-profits who utilize our donated Dropbox for Business account to help them do good all around the world. We won the Commonwealth Hack Week award, which is given to the project that makes Dropbox a better place to work; anything from assisting productivity, to bringing Dropboxers closer together, or simply making our office more delightful.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I first started teaching when I was 21 years old. I completed my bachelor’s in physics and my master’s in education in four years at Stanford, which put me in front of a classroom when I was very young. Oh, and I have over 150 classroom videos of me teaching physics on YouTube.
If you weren’t working at a tech company or teaching, what would you be doing?
I would be working to change educational policy. I care deeply about educational equity and I would work to improve teacher education programs.
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