Google is growing in Chicago. Sauder is leading charge.

Google is growing in Chicago, in more ways than one.

The tech giant is planning a store in the Fulton Market district and looking to expand its office space in the Near West Side neighborhood. Google has been tightlipped about its plans. Karen Sauder, who took over as head of Google’s Chicago office this year, wouldn’t talk about its real estate future. But she made one thing clear.

“We are growing now, and we feel very good about our presence here in Chicago,” she said.

Sauder, 50, is a vice president of sales and the site lead for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s Midwest headquarters, which has more than 900 employees. Google wasn’t around when she graduated from the University of Missouri in 1990 with a journalism degree. Now she works with teams that focus on big travel and financial services customers, among others, helping those customers with their marketing and search optimization.

Q: What kind of talent does Google employ in this office?

A: We have a very functionally diverse group here in Chicago. We have software engineers, hardware engineers, cloud engineers and business people. We also have a lot of businesspeople working with our largest customers in the food and beverage space, the travel space, also financial services. We have lawyers and accountants. Our global training organization sits here.

Q: How has Google’s presence in Chicago evolved?

A: When Google first started in 2000 in Chicago, it was a sales office. For some period of time, there were only salespeople here. We’ve had an engineering presence here (since) 2005. The hardware and cloud is newer over the last few years.

Q: Is Google’s Chicago office hiring?

A: As teams expand, we fill them.

Q: How did you end up at Google?

A: I spent my early career at Anheuser-Busch and Frito Lay. I ended up in the agency business. Google actually recruited me about eight years ago to create the consumer packaged goods vertical, and I focused on food, beverage and restaurants. It was an evolution of a marketing and advertising career. The industry didn’t exist when I graduated with my journalism degree.

Q: What did you want to be when you were a kid?

A: I wanted to be a lawyer. In those days, I thought being a lawyer was saving the world. I realized you spend a lot of time in the law library instead.

Q: What book do you have on your nightstand?

A: Oh, I always have a lot of books. I just finished reading a Nelson DeMille, “The Cuban Affair.” I like to read some nonfiction. I obviously read a lot of business books too.

Q: What do you do in your spare time?

A: I love to cook. I go to the farmers market, particularly this time of year. This weekend I had friends at the beach and I made gazpacho and an onion tart and some healthy carrot cake muffins.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.