Ubben Posse Fellow Interviews: Chris Urmson
The Jeff Ubben Posse Fellows Program awards five exceptional Posse Scholars $10,000 each and the chance to spend 4-6 weeks during the summer shadowing and learning from a major industry leader. The interview below with Chris Urmson, CEO of Aurora, was conducted by Posse Scholar Fadhil Lawal, a current junior at Vanderbilt University, who worked with Chris Urmson as a 2026 Jeff Ubben Posse Fellow. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
FADHIL: Aurora just launched the second generation of the Aurora Driver, a huge milestone. What does that feel like from where you sit versus where you thought it’d be when you first started the company, or back in your days at Google?
CHRIS URMSON: It’s very exciting. Last year was a big deal, first of its kind, and let us run the whole process of getting something safe on the road. This one’s even bigger, because we can scale continuously from here with more capability. It’s what we believed possible for years, hoping it would happen, not knowing exactly when. Now it has. So it’s very exciting.
What problem does this launch not solve? What’s next? What are you looking to get out of the next generation of trucks and the next phase of the business plan?
This release gets us to about 1,500 trucks on the hardware side. It’s broad and capable, but we’ll still need to augment it for more weather conditions, snow eventually, and more places. Really, it’s the bridge to true automotive scale, which kicks in when we launch with Aumovio next year.
If you were starting undergrad fresh, knowing what you know now about this industry, what would you do to optimize your experience? What did you actually do?
I never expected to end up in the CEO seat, that was never the plan. I did an undergrad in computer engineering, a PhD in robotics, and figured I’d be faculty. I kind of stumbled into this, and it’s worked out well. Find something you’re excited about and good at, and if you’re lucky it’s also valuable. People talk about having a roadmap for their career. I didn’t, I just took the branch that seemed most interesting each time. I had opportunities partly from that, partly luck. But being willing to seize opportunities as they come, I think that’s the important part.
You went from the DARPA Challenge to Google to Aurora. If you could boil it down to a single decision that pushed you most toward where you are today, what would it be?
It was taking part in the DARPA Grand Challenges. I was nearly done with my PhD when this came up: to build a robot to race across the desert from LA to Vegas. It sounded cool, and I figured success would create visibility and opportunities. I talked it over with my wife, and she was okay with it. You can trace everything since back to that moment: the three DARPA Challenges, getting recruited to Google to start what’s now Waymo, and eventually founding Aurora.
If I were a new grad looking to get into the industry, what should I be looking at, the manager, the team, the company’s trajectory? What truly matters?
Culture is really important. At Aurora we’ve tried hard to build one where people feel respected, do their best work, and feel like we’re in it together. Pay attention: how do people treat each other, especially in the moments they don’t think they’re being watched? I personally notice how candidates treat our EA team or recruiting coordinators. If they’re rude, that tells you something.
The people you work with matter too. Three things matter most to employees: a mission you believe in, interesting work with good people, and being paid fairly. The mission pulls you through the weeks it sucks; everyone has those. If you don’t care about the work or the people around you, go find something else. And pay should be fair, nobody wants to feel taken advantage of.
How do you know when it’s time to leave a company? How did you know it was time for you?
If you’re not excited, life is short. Don’t judge it by a single bad day, but if over three to six months you’re still not excited, you owe it to yourself, and the company, to find something that excites you. You’re probably not doing your best work otherwise.
Building something starts with an idea and a belief in that idea. What makes you confident that other people will be interested in what you’re building?
It’s a leap of faith. Early on, one of our values borrowed from Carnegie Mellon was the "reasonable person principle," which boils down to assuming positive intent. But starting a company to do something ambitious is inherently unreasonable, so it has to be a leap of faith. You need conviction, because if you don’t have it, it’s hard for anyone else to. When Sterling, Drew, and I founded Aurora, we saw the challenges in the industry and an opportunity to build something with the right culture and people. We tested that belief, and we were fortunate people bought in.
Tech like this often doesn’t show results in a year or two, it’s a decade-plus investment. How do you sell that to investors looking for ROI as fast as possible?
The key is finding the right investors. We’ve been clear that what we’re building creates real social good and long-term value, but it’s not a quick win. We lay it out plainly: what we’re planning, why it’s impactful, why we’re the right people to do it. Communicating with integrity and transparency builds trust, and that’s kept people invested for years. Where you get sideways is telling people what they want to hear instead of the reality. Some investors passed, and that’s fine, there needs to be alignment on both sides.
How do you think your idea or practice of leadership has changed over time?
I was a strong engineer early on, so I started out fairly micromanage-y. Then I got told to back off, and swung all the way to the other side, just letting people do whatever they wanted. Neither extreme is right, it depends on the person and the moment. Some people want clear, directive leadership. Others want space and a broad mission to figure out themselves. I don’t always get the balance right, but recognizing there’s no single answer, that you need a whole spectrum of tools, is the important part.
What do you think most people get wrong about leadership?
Chasing the title, wanting to be a VP or CEO as the goal itself, is the wrong mindset. You should want to actually do something, then find the role where you can contribute most. Titles are a means to an end, not the end itself. Figure out what you want to contribute, and find where you add the most value, whether that’s as a formal leader, an informal one, or an individual contributor.
Last question, if you had ten words to pass on to the next generation of leaders what would those ten words be?
Leave it better than you found it. What disappoints me right now is that a lot of leaders in tech don’t appreciate the investment others made that enabled them, whether that’s a country built on the rule of law, the federal and state research that enabled the technologies these businesses are built on, or the people who supported them over the years. That mindset, that we owe something to what came before, and giving back rather than dismantling it, feels like something we’re missing. So: do your part to leave it better than it was.
