Power Pair: Steve and Mary Grove support each other and Minnesota

In 2018, Steve and Mary Grove left big tech jobs in Silicon Valley and moved to Minnesota with their twin toddlers to start a new chapter. Since then, the married couple has navigated a pandemic, job changes and this fall, the start of first grade.

“We both made a bet on Minnesota,” says Steve Grove, who grew up in Northfield and started as CEO and publisher of the Star Tribune this spring, after serving four years as the state’s commissioner of employment and economic development.  

While Steve was the public face of the state’s effort to keep businesses and workers afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary Grove has been less visibly building Minnesota’s startup culture. She arrived in Minnesota as a partner in an investment firm founded by AOL billionaire Steve Case with the mission to invest in businesses outside of Silicon Valley, New York and Boston. She now runs her own venture capital firm that skews heavily toward tech startups in Minnesota and companies started by women and people of color.  

Listen back to a conversation MPR News host Angela Davis had with Steve and Mary Grove about their marriage and shared commitment to the state.

It was the second installment in our Power Pair series, that features conversations with prominent Minnesotans that you may know individually. But in the context of relationship, you get to know them in a fresh, new way.  

Guests:  

• Steve Grove is the CEO and publisher of the Star Tribune, after serving four years as the state’s commissioner of employment and economic development. He spent more than a decade at Google, where he ran its News Lab. He also headed up YouTube’s first News and Politics team and worked short stints at ABC News and the Boston Globe.

  Mary Grove is managing partner at Bread & Butter Ventures, an investor in early-stage companies. She has a long track record supporting tech startups as a partner with Steve Case’s investment firm Revolution and before that as director of Google for Entrepreneurs. She is also co-founder and executive director of Silicon North Stars, a nonprofit that she and Steve founded in 2013 to help young Minnesotans from underserved communities pursue careers in tech.

  Do you know a ‘Power Pair?’

  Know two Minnesotans who have a close relationship and lean on each other for support in the work they do? Maybe they’re married or siblings or best friends. They could be business partners or a parent/adult child dynamic duo. We want to hear their stories on MPR News with Angela Davis at 9 a.m. weekdays.

  Read more about our Power Pair series and submit your ideas here. Or email who you think we should talk to and why to adavis@mpr.org.

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