Hightower climbing the ladder

Jul. 13—Former University of Idaho defensive back Lloyd Hightower used to analyze the Xs and Os on the football field. Now, he uses those skills every day as a marketing manager of machine learning and artifical intelligence at Google.

"They would ask work-related questions (during the interview) where I wouldn't have that experience in a work setting but I did in a football environment," Hightower said. "All the skills I learned at UI are transferable to the workplace. It makes you learn how to deal with adversity."

Hightower spent five years on the Moscow campus, four as a player and one as a graduate assistant on Paul Petrino's staff.

The former Vandal may be relieved from the stress and game planning on the sidelines, but now he's applying what he learned at a global tech giant.

It took Hightower a while to realize what he wanted to do post-football because once he played his final snap his senior year in 2019 he had one goal — go pro.

The Temecula, Calif., native had 35 tackles, eight pass breakups, two forced fumbles and an interception his senior year for the Vandals. His junior year was even better, with 44 tackles, 13 pass breakups and three interceptions.

His last two seasons were promising enough to give Hightower an outside chance at making an NFL roster once the draft rolled around. But there were a couple problems standing in his way.

One is he was undersized, which wasn't new information. The former Vandal was 5-foot-11 and 189 pounds his senior year.

His size was a negative mark on his resume all the way back when he was being recruited out of Chaparral High School.

Here are just some of Hightower's recruiting stories involving his small stature:

A University of Washington scout greeted the young defensive back by saying, "I thought you'd be taller."

Fresno State came to meet with the prospect, and the recruiter requested a photo standing next to Hightower for a size reference. Finally, UCLA called Hightower to compliment his film and schedule a possible visit.

"They said we can't wait to watch you for the next two years," Hightower said. "He thought I was a sophomore. ... They stopped recruiting me after that."

So when it came to pro scouts being skeptical about his size, Hightower wasn't too worried. All he had to do was show off his measurables during Idaho's Pro Day. But that's when another problem surfaced — the pandemic.

COVID-19 shut down UI's Pro Day, making it hard for Hightower to perform in front of scouts.

An opportunity presented itself for him to do his Pro Day at Washington State, but that also fell through. After several more failed attempts at setting something up, Hightower's agent linked him with a former NFL player who recorded him doing workouts in Southern California.

Despite all the adversity he faced, Hightower pushed his NFL dreams until the final whistle, and when the draft came and went, he didn't get selected.

Hightower stayed in shape in case any opportunities came his way, but he didn't really have a backup plan.

Then the one guy who Hightower could always count on, Petrino, came in clutch by offering him a spot on his staff.

"I am forever indebted to Coach P," Hightower said. "He showed me what hard work is, and I think a lot of his players would share that same sentiment."

While a graduate assistant on Petrino's staff, he got his master's degree in Public Administration — which he now wishes was a Master of Business Administration instead.

That's when he started turning his attention away from the football field. But it wasn't easy at first.

"While I was a GA, I wanted to get closer to home and do something I loved to do," Hightower said. "We had a business competition, and we thought it'd be a great idea to create it with a coding visualizer. We wanted to create a demo, but it failed. We were pitching and we were trying to demonstrate with our hands, and it failed pretty badly."

Hightower started to learn from his mistakes and would involve himself in a college startup that developed an empathy tech device that helped people with high anxiety.

The group won a competition with this piece of technology as well as $2,500. Following the victory, the group came to the consensus that the best decision was to split the money and go their separate ways.

Through those competitions, though, Hightower learned that it was tech and business that he wanted to pursue.

After he was done in Idaho, the most important thing to Hightower was being closer to home.

So instead of being conservative, the former defensive back shot for the stars right away, aiming to work at Google, headquartered in San Francisco.

Hightower went about making his mark in an unorthodox way, sending more than 90 messages to Google employees on Linkedin — and finally, he got a response from the director of hardware.

"I told him that I'd just love to hop on a call and pick your brain," Hightower said. "So this guy became my mentor, and we would schedule bi-weekly calls, and it got to the point where he told me that he had this role for me and he wanted me to apply for it."

The only thing Hightower's new mentor could guarantee was the first interview; what happened next was all up to him.

By his own account, the Google interview process is strenuous, with each interview being harder than the last.

Hightower went through five rounds of interviews, with the first three rounds being simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down assessments, which he passed with ease. The fourth round came with an assignment that Hightower passed with flying colors, and by the fifth round, Google had offered him a spot on the Android team.

After spending a year on the Android team, with the rise of apps such as ChatGPT, Google's AI department grew, giving Hightower a spot on its team, where he currently works as an associate product marketing manager.

Always anticipating his next move, Hightower hopes to move up to a director position in the near future.

"In my last year of football, I got to be a captain, and I think leading a team is where I'm at my best," said Hightower, who is currently based in Seattle. "There is something about organizing a group of people to achieve a common task, and I love and want to be a leader."

Pixley may be contacted at (208) 848-2290, tpixley@lmtribune.com or on Twitter @TreebTalks