Convocation | Jenny Dearborn P’19, P’21

December 6, 2018

Be Human for a Change

Worried about the right major to choose in college? Worried about how to make a career plan? Worried about technology eroding available jobs? Don’t worry! Focus on what makes you human, and all will be well.

Cate students gathered in the Hitchcock Theatre on Monday night to hear from Jenny Dearborn, Executive Vice President of Human Resources at SAP, the world’s largest business-to-business software firm. Ms. Dearborn is also mom to senior Cloe Tarlton and her brother, sophomore Cooke Tarlton. Once labeled “mentally retarded” for her long-undiagnosed dyslexia, Ms. Dearborn now spends her days advising executives and heads of government, and receiving awards like 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology. What shaped this trajectory?

After sharing some of her journey with the audience of students, Ms. Dearborn led them through a brief history of the industry through the Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution, and up to our own place on the timeline, the Cyber-Physical Revolution. She cited Big Data, technology, our socially connected world, rapidly shifting markets, and changing demographics as the five forces that are completely reshaping the future of work. The statistics were alarming: jobs or parts of jobs eliminated by technology, swift obsolescence of content learned in college, 60-year careers before retirement. But Ms. Dearborn has an ultimately hopeful message. As she noted, what will increasingly be demanded of the workforce are what she referred to as “foundational human skills”: creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and the like. She also insisted on the absolute value of multiple perspectives to decide the answers to the ethical questions that technology must pose.

To bring this abstract idea to life, Ms. Dearborn posed a striking example that circled back to her Tesla: in a crash, will the car’s steering algorithms be set to run over several people in order to save the driver or be set to save the many at the expense of the one? As she commented, she wants as many different kinds of people as possible to collaborate on this decision.

Ms. Dearborn ended her lecture with three major takeaways: be tech literate, celebrate diversity, and focus on your human skills. Standing before the students as a living example of the power of life-long learning and adaptability, she embodied a persuasive argument. Then she got back in her car and zoomed off to her next gig, preaching the power of the human.