jessblog

Jess Lee

I grew up in Hong Kong but now live in the Bay Area. The 3 things I miss most about HK are the incredible public transportation, the microwaveable dim sum at 7-Eleven, and the ability to go out to eat/shop at 1am in the morning. My mom is Japanese and my dad is Chinese.

I came to the US for college and have been living in the Bay Area since 2000. I graduated from Stanford University in 2004 with a degree in Computer Science. I also studied abroad in Japan for 6 months through the Stanford SCTI program.

I joined Google in August of 2004. I’ve been a product manager for Google Maps since January 2006. I work on the core user experience and on new features. Some of the launches I was responsible for are My Maps, multipoint driving directions, draggable driving directions, avoiding highways, reviews, user profile pages, embeddable maps, real time traffic, photos of businesses, and geocoding in the Maps API.

My favorite project at Google so far has been My Maps. It felt like a tiny startup within the larger Google Maps team. It’s been very rewarding to see My Maps being used to help out in natural disasters like the Southern California wildfires and the recent snowstorm in China. I’ve really enjoyed making Google Maps into more of a social, community-oriented, UGC-powered product.

In the past, I also worked on the Google Maps API, the Local Business Center, the Movies Onebox, and Froogle.

I’m an otaku with an enormous collection of ~1000 manga. I also love to draw. You can find some of my artwork here.