By Orianna Rosa Royle
Publication Date: 2026-03-30 07:05:00
Alon Chen joined Google in 2006 at 23, with no marketing experience and no connections at the company. By 28 years old, he was a CMO—overseeing marketing for Israel and Greece, building a $2 billion product line across 30 markets, pulling in a highly six-figure salary and a seven-figure equity package.
By most people’s standards, he had made it absurdly early—and he says getting there was “easy,” too. Not because of mentors, politics, or any formal promotion track. In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Chen says he just ignored every rule he was given.
“Climbing up was fairly natural and easy,” he tells Fortune, “simply because I just disregarded all the status quo and the rules and realized what’s the right thing to do, and went all the way with it.”
Chen’s not all talk either: When a senior team at HQ blocked his plans to launch Google Partners internationally, Chen launched it anyway—in foreign languages, in foreign markets, without telling…
