Giselle Huron Wants People to Know They Belong

You can tell a lot about a person from the way they speak about the people who matter to them. For Giselle Huron, that’s her children, her mother, her grandmother, her husband, and her friends and family. But the senior counsel and anticounterfeit lead at Google has another large group of people outside of her day job that she comes back to time and time again: her law students at Columbia Law School, where she teaches part-time. She wants that diverse group of students, many already practicing law, to know that wherever they are in their journeys, they belong there.

“When my students walk into a room, I want them to know that it’s a place they deserve to be,” Huron says. “If they don’t see people that look like them, that place is lucky to have found them. They should be who they are and put that fabulousness on display. We should all be our fabulous selves.”

Fabulous is a funny word for someone with Huron’s strong pedigree to drop, which makes it all the more welcome. Huron recently took over trademark legal support for Google’s DeepMind AI business, which is working on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence. The research-focused, largely noncommercial client base has required Huron to get deep into the weeds on issues and technologies she had only read about in the past. Huron is a veteran of tech-focused trademark and anticounterfeiting issues, but the pace of Google’s disruptive evolution has required Huron to continue to stretch herself in new ways.

Huron’s own fabulousness hasn’t always been welcomed throughout her career. “There’s a good chance I might have stayed in the big corporate white-shoe firm life if I didn’t feel like I was being too loud in the hallways,” Huron says. “I didn’t know why I was always the one being asked to organize social events at the latest ‘spicy’ new restaurant, but those things build up over a long enough time.”

And Huron knows that despite a wave of perceived change and societal expectations, her students are still facing some of the same issues she faced coming up the ranks. Some of her students show up to jobs just wanting to do good work and encounter corporate environments where, despite the rhetoric and social media posting, real biases still play out. Structures, acknowledged or not, are in place that make life for anyone who is not a white man inherently more difficult.  

“What I try to stress to my students is that these issues may get them down. It’s natural,” the lawyer explains. “It can put you in a box, and if you cannot find a way to adapt—because it’s probably not going to change anytime soon—you need to go somewhere where you feel seen and are able to do your best work. That bias is real. Sometimes you can overcome it in a way that is meaningful and not heartbreaking. But sometimes you just need to move on.”

When Huron was profiled by Modern Counsel in 2022, she reflected on her own mother, a Dominican immigrant who raised her alone and overcame all odds to build something lasting for herself and her family. Huron speaks with her students frequently about overcoming the belief that they should somehow be grateful for the roles they have or will secure. Her family cultures, which are both Latina and Chinese, place a premium on modesty and humility, but her stance isn’t a lack of humility.

“How you value yourself plays so much into how you’re valued by others,” Huron says. “I had a great manager who frequently asked me what my real driver was. I remember looking around at what I had accomplished and wondering how I had gotten where I was. I felt like I was on the ‘American Dream track’ without always knowing what I wanted. Your needs change over time—it might be a better title or money or balance—but you need to be aware of what’s ultimately driving you. And you have to be willing to adapt and advocate for yourself in the process.”

Huron recently brought in Monique McNeil to speak to her students about that exact journey. The payments specialist is, as Huron puts it, “an amazing Black woman who loves community and family and isn’t just her job.” Over the course of three years, McNeil and her husband fostered three children, ultimately adopting two siblings into their family. Huron’s students—and Huron herself—were shocked. How could McNeil manage that on top of all the stress of her demanding career?

“She said [she and her husband] felt a profound calling to serve these children’s lives and recognized that waiting for the perfect moment might mean never acting. They prioritized making space, leaned on their faith, and seized the opportunity to make a profound difference in a way that truly mattered to them—and formed a forever family in the process. Giving those lessons to my students and letting them hopefully integrate that into their approach to their work means a lot to me.”

Those lessons, Huron hopes, will help her students see the bigger picture. She looks to her mother, who not only takes care of her own 97-year-old mother but also picks up Huron’s kids from school twice a week. She hears the pride of her children who still can’t believe she works for a company that makes the helpful products they use every day. She works with clients applying AI advancements to complex problems like climate change and disease. She sees her mentees volunteering and working with vulnerable members of their communities.

And Huron sees her students: people who will undoubtedly have their hearts broken by their work at times. Things haven’t changed as much as we’d hope, but people like Huron will help prepare the next generation to keep pushing for change, adapt as necessary, and most importantly, be themselves in the process.