2019 AWARDS
Ola Adekunle
Patent Counsel, Google LLC
Mentoring is an opportunity for me to give back
and help positively shape the life of someone
else just like mine has been shaped by others.”
Photo by Weinberg-Clark Photography.
BY KATLIN SWISHER. Born and raised in
Nigeria, Ola Adekunle came to West Vir-
ginia to further his education. The oldest
of three children, he was the first person
in his immediate family to attend college.
Today, he is a patent lawyer for Google,
LLC, where he uses his law and MBA
degrees from West Virginia University
(WVU) to help scientists and engineers
protect their discoveries and inventions.
As a child, Adekunle dreamed of becom-
ing a scientist. He pursued this dream first
by earning an associate’s degree from
Shepherd University and then a bachelor’s
degree in computer engineering from
WVU. That dream almost didn’t ma-
terialize, though, because of hardships
brought on by his international student
status that made it nearly impossible for
him to get an internship or financial aid.
Through hard work and perseverance,
as well as the availability of resources at
WVU and Shepherd, he was able to earn
merit-based scholarships.
“I faced challenges from my first day
in the U.S.,” he says. “I wasn’t sure I
could fit in, and I didn’t see a lot of people
Adekunle and his
wife, Yetunde, at
the kindergarten
graduation for their
twin boys, Jayden
and Nathan.
90
WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
that looked or talked like me. Besides
the impostor syndrome, I also wasn’t
able to secure any form of financial aid
or loans to supplement the limited funds
my family had put together. I couldn’t
secure engineering internships because of
my immigration status. After law school,
not a lot of law firms wanted to hire an
international student or someone they
would have to sponsor. All of these experi-
ences taught me to work even harder and
persevere.”
After enrolling in law school at WVU,
Adekunle faced a new set of challenges.
“Law school was a totally different
beast,” he says. “Engineering and science
seemed to have come easy to me because
I was an overachieving, straight-A type
of student, but law school was extremely
difficult. The reading, the lack of defi-
nite answers or results and the required
writing style were foreign to me. To this
day, I still believe my law school classes
were more difficult than my engineering
classes.”
After graduating from WVU College
of Law, Adekunle worked as a patent
attorney at boutique intellectual prop-
erty firms in Virginia and Texas where
he learned to draft and prosecute patent
applications. Five years later, he joined
Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) as in-
house counsel, eventually progressing to
senior patent counsel, portfolio manager
and intellectual property strategist for
the servers business unit and HP Labs.
During his more than five years with HP,
he received the Winners’ Circle Award for
excellence and high productivity twice,
as well as the Game Changers Award.
“At Hewlett-Packard, I learned to think
like a businessperson as well as an attorney
by seeing the big picture from a business
perspective and coming up with innova-
tive legal solutions,” he says.
Now patent counsel at Google, where
he has received the Patents Team MVP
Award, Adekunle helps shape Google’s
patent portfolio based on analysis of
Google and third-party patents, business
strategies and products.
“The biggest challenge is being proac-
tive and anticipating threats or obstacles
to freedom to operate before they even
occur,” says Adekunle. “I work on a team
that seeks to proactively identify Google
assets that may be leveraged in external
patent engagements, such as litigation,
licensing, divestiture and acquisition. We
have an ambitious and challenging goal of
doing this in near real time. This is both
exciting and challenging. It requires chal-
lenging the status quo and doing things
that have never been done by any company
in the world. That is typical Google, and
I love it.”
Because of the positive experiences
Adekunle has had at both Google and
WVU, it is his personal mission to expand
WVU’s footprint within the tech giant.
“WVU and the state of West Virginia
have given me so much,” he says. “The
opportunities that were given to me at
WVU—scholarships, fellowships and
graduate assistantships, as well as a quality
education in a supportive atmosphere—
have made me who I am today, and I feel
indebted. I want to pay this forward and
help in any way I can. I truly believe in
WVU, and I think it is one of America’s