About
My name is Grady Ward and I am an engineer living and working in Colorado. Originally from Vermont, I went to school in Boston, worked in the Bay Area for a few years, and have lived in Colorado since 2018. When I was at Google, I worked on a broad range of issues that surround the responsible custodianship of data, including counter-abuse, privacy, and regulatory compliance. I'm a proud member of the IAPP, and the Integrity Institute. In my full time work today, I work at a small startup focused on making agriculture sustainable: Ambrook.
Outside of work, I take advantage of the best of Colorado. I ski as often as I can, and hike and run the rest of the year. Building things brings me joy - currently I'm focusing on an algorithm for pop-up cards to mimic the topography of mountains, but in the past I've done civic engagement work, woodworking, algorithmic art, essay collections, and modular origami. Building things is the only thing I am confident I will be doing in 30 years.
I do my best to limit the set of things I care about and believe in to only those that I feel very strongly about. A small selection of that set:
- Our primary responsibility is living a life in line with our personal principles.
- Technology that attempts to modify human behavior tends to be corrosive to our wellbeing.
- The human story is one of compounded iterative improvement - engineering connects us to past generations and builds a foundation for future ones. Abstraction and decomposition are at the heart of progress.
- Optimization is a tool and a methodology, not an end.
- Silence and stillness are salves for a world with too much motion.
- Finding and expanding your physical capacity is a great joy.
- Dogs are the best.
