From Senegal to Silicon Valley, Aicha Evans plots a course for societal impact and improvement

The United States was founded on innovation, on risk-taking, and on bringing so many different people together from so many different countries, choosing this nation and choosing its value system.

When Aicha Evans made plans to leave Intel after 12 years, having risen to the position of senior vice president and chief strategy officer, she knew she wanted a change from the multinational public company environment. When Evans was recruited for the position of CEO at Zoox, the autonomous vehicle startup company, she realized the position was in her sweet spot: “forward-looking technology with a big impact on society.”

At a recent Stanford University event, Threshold Ventures Partner Heidi Roizen spoke with Evans about her early passion for technology, and the challenges of running a company not only in the middle of a global pandemic but through Zoox’s acquisition by Amazon in August 2020. Threshold invested in Zoox and Roizen was on the company’s board of directors. The conversation is excerpted below.

Heidi Roizen: Tell us about your journey from Senegal to Silicon Valley.

Aicha Evans: I was born in Senegal and I bounced back and forth between there and France. I quickly saw the difference it makes to have technology, and to not have technology — like trying to stay in touch with my friends when I was in Senegal, or when I was in France and having to hack my phone at home to be able to make phone calls. It was a mix of a lot of different cultures and viewpoints. When you are a Senegalese kid in Senegal, people are like, no, you’re from France, and when you’re in France, they’re like, you’re from Senegal.

Since I wanted to just be me, I came to the US to study. I was born and raised an engineer, but I also love technology and its impact. How does it make people’s lives better? How does it advance society? And that’s sort of how I’ve guided my career.

Heidi Roizen: What you’re doing today is going to have a huge impact on the world. For people who aren’t familiar with the company, can you tell us what Zoox does?

Aicha Evans: I’ll start at the top, as if you were a customer. Urban mobility is really important in the movement of people in cities, and so we sell you a ride. Why should you be worried about driving and parking, and why should so much real estate be dedicated to parking spaces? Look at a city like San Francisco that has a housing problem, and that wants to retain economic activity — but 30% of its real estate footprint is for parking.

What’s behind the ride is an autonomous machine that takes you from point A to point B. We like to say that we’re reinventing personal transportation, especially in urban centers, to make it cleaner and the environment safer, and also to make it enjoyable. We pick you up in this beautiful machine, almost like a moving living room, where you have a little screen that tells you what’s going on. You can be on your phone, you can meditate, you can relax, and then we drop you off and pick up the next person. It’s pretty exciting.

Heidi Roizen: Let’s go back a few years. When I first met you at Intel, you had upwards of 8,000 people reporting to you. Besides my incredibly persuasive skills, what made you decide to take the leap to the startup world and the CEO role?

Aicha Evans: I had a one-on-one with myself after almost leaving Intel a few years ago and said, what do I really want? And I had decided that I was not going to go to another big company. A few friends of mine in the recruiting world asked what they could call me for, and I said it would have to be a forward-looking technology with a big impact on society. It also had to be a private company — with two teenagers, I can’t afford the public life right now. It also had to have founders that I could fall in love with.

Zoox ticked all the boxes. Economic activity and advancement of societies happen through the movement of information and people. That’s true even of the internet — it’s actually a transportation system that just happens to be virtual. So Zoox ticked that box as well. Its mission is bold and ambitious and absolutely worthy, and I want to spend my time on worthy things.

Heidi Roizen: You were jumping into a company of only several hundred people. You’d managed much larger groups than that before, but it’s a little different being a CEO, right?

Aicha Evans: First of all, it’s very lonely. Second of all, there’s a sense of responsibility. You’re not just responsible for Zoox, the roadmap, and the fundraising — you’re responsible for a lot of families. When you work in a big corporation, you can always look up and say something is the CEO’s fault, or the board’s fault, or the market’s fault.

As the CEO, the buck stops with you. You don’t get to complain. You have to build the infrastructure — HR, finance, all of the systems — and drive toward milestones. But you have to do so from a place of generosity and manage the rhythm and cadence so that you meet people where they are and then go along on the journey with them. You have to try to make the change positive, and make it even feel good.

Heidi Roizen: All of a sudden, COVID enters, and you run a prototyping factory in a lab. You can’t just send everybody home. How did you keep Zoox moving forward during that time?

Aicha Evans: I was literally in shock. I had my little crying moment. And I was like, dang, we’re done. Literally, we had to reveal the vehicle at the end of the year, and that was a big deal. And this was where [former Intel CEO] Andy Grove helped me from the grave — he used to say that in a crisis, bad companies die, while good companies survive and thrive and emerge stronger.

So, with that, we thought, let’s break down the problem. How do we work to have the minimum number of people onsite to be able to build this vehicle? How do we organize the shifts and phases so we can have social distancing? How do we put health and safety protocols in place? We got a medical doctor as a consultant to help us with all that, and we reassured everybody that this was totally voluntary — and if they were not comfortable doing it, then we were not going to do it. We started testing and rotating people around.

It also brought a lot of clarity in terms of the idea that this is a long-term game. At the time, we happened to have one company, Amazon, that we felt was logical to be in this market, even though they weren’t in it at the time. To make a long story short, we ended up with Amazon.

Heidi Roizen: Silicon Valley is notoriously bad when it comes to diversity. What are your thoughts on the state of diversity and inclusion in the Valley, and how can we change it for the better?

Aicha Evans: Well, it is not good. For one thing, I don’t think we’re applying enough generosity in sitting the majority down and talking about what it means not to have diversity and inclusion for companies — from a bottom line and innovation standpoint, and frankly, for this nation. The United States was founded on innovation, on risk-taking, and on bringing so many different people together from so many different countries, choosing this nation and choosing its value system.

What I think needs to happen is a resetting of the conversation. This is not about the scarcity of talent. It’s about things that are systematic. Taking my son to Lego Robotics opened my eyes.

The kids that you want to bring into the conversation have parents who work on weekends and don’t have time to drive their kids to Lego Robotics. The kids don’t have mentors in their schools on the Lego Robotics classes. And when there is a project, the kids and their parents don’t have access to Silicon Valley. We need to create a mentality where we say, “The systematic stuff is everyone’s problem.” And then we decide on what chances we give to people to make that systematic change happen.