The Power of Curiosity, Wandering, and Grit | Georgia Tech College of Computing Commencement 2024

Remarks from Kathy Pham:

Congratulations, College of Computing Class of 2024! I am honored to celebrate this day with you, your families, friends, and loved ones. Today, I want to share reflections on the power of curiosity, wandering, and grit, qualities that define our humanness and guide us through our journeys in tech.

It has been over 20 years since I first stepped onto this campus, arriving at Harrison dorms right across those bleachers. That moment changed my life and gave my mom bragging rights for the rest of hers. 

She proudly proclaimed her Yellow Jacket parent status to anyone who would listen: friends, my extended aunties and uncles, nail salon customers, strangers at Costco, and even doctors and nurses at hospital and medical centers we frequented in her 4 years with cancer. “My daughter? Georgia Tech! Where did you go?” she’d ask an oncologist at one of the world’s top medical centers.

She didn’t have a college degree, but she knew the power of one from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. She saw how it sharpened my problem-solving skills, deepened my understanding of my responsibility to build a flourishing society, and opened doors she couldn’t have imagined all throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. Her dream for me was to work in an air-conditioned office, unlike her days spent standing for hours or inhaling harsh chemicals. 

My mom died at the age of 58 of a rare adult t-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, likely environment related, but we are not sure, there’s limited understanding especially of women’s health. Her first grandchild, my oldest, was 6 weeks old.

During our cancer journey, I spent many hours by her side at chemotherapy infusions and blood transfusions when her hemoglobin (protein red blood cells) dropped too low. At the same time, I was helping build a tech startup at the White House called the United States Digital Service, focused on transforming healthcare for veterans and our military. I asked a lot of questions - of my mom’s life and the healthcare system. Those days were a blend of wonderful and intense caregiving and intense curiosity.

Sitting with my mom, I was living in electronic health record systems while working to improve them. I was discussing treatment plans while contributing to the national Precision Medicine Initiative. I asked endless questions—both as her cancer sidekick and as a computer scope study.  I was curious about what was helpful, like the way to see the records from a small hospital in Savannah, Georgia while at a big medical center in in Palo Alto, California; about what wasn’t helpful, like the erroneous drug contraindications that required extra steps to prescribe the right anti-nausea medication.  Were these software challenges, policy gaps, or supply issues?

Georgia Tech taught me to embrace curiosity—not just in computing but in other disciplines. Wandering across campus, I was exposed to psychology, ethics, and public policy, and discovered the value of interdisciplinary thinking. As graduates of our trail blazing, unrivaled College of Computing, our curiosity leads to better products for society. In my scenario, the role of the healthcare professionals in building technology is just as critical as the engineers, product managers, and designers. Let’s use our curiosity to bring many perspectives to the table as we deploy our computing skills to empower fields like healthcare, automotive, education, retail, finance, media, non-profits, venture capital, government and more. 

Today, with the growth of AI, with multimodal models in language, audio, images, video and the possibilities with agentic AI, built on decades of research from Georgia Tech faculty and alumni in machine learning, cognitive science, natural language processing +++, building a better flourishing society happens now. Let your curiosity guide you.

This leads me to wandering.

By wandering, I don’t just mean moving from one physical place to another. Wandering is also letting our mind explore new ideas, disciplines, and perspectives beyond our siloes. 

During one of my mom’s brief cancer remissions, I received a call to join the White House to help launch a government startup, U.S. Digital Service. It meant leaving a predictable role at Google, where I had worked on the first personal health records, search and talent analytics, to wander into new territory for me: public service.

That leap taught me the value of bringing skills from one domain into a different environment, bringing iterative product thinking alongside our hard working public servants, and taught me the deep responsibility our tech has to the people we serve. I later wandered into academia at Harvard, creating the ethical tech group with colleagues across anthropology, computer science, race and gender studies, data science, design, history, human rights, law, philosophy, political science, sociology and more. These are all understandings and fields that we need in tech. Then over to Mozilla where we created the Responsible Computing Challenge and a new Incubator to rethink venture funding for a flourishing internet. Then over to build our first Office of technology at the Federal Trade Commission alongside the world's most brilliant lawyers on a shared mission to protect consumers And next as the first executive director of the National Advisory Committee, which brought an interdisciplinary lens to advise the White House on AI practice and policy. And now back to industry at Workday to build technology that is the backbone for global organizations, carrying with me the people and lessons along the way. 

Each experience of wandering into new territory leaves new bridges and new dots connected. The advice I received from two former White House Chief Technology Officers has stayed with me: “Go where you are rare.” Bring your computing skills and your life’s experiences into places that need them most—places that haven’t yet benefited from what you uniquely offer.

Wandering doesn’t always mean changing jobs or locations. It can also mean letting our minds explore. There are over 130 million unique books in the world—dive into other domains. Read legal briefs, history of medicine, or psychology behind decision making. Cross-pollinate ideas from different fields. Innovation often comes from bridging disciplines, and our wandering minds can create those connections.

Finally, let’s talk about grit.

Building actual bridges takes perseverance—and so does building metaphorical ones. Applying our tech skills to solve society’s toughest problems requires persistence, especially when the path is unclear because dots haven’t been connected yet. Grit is what sustains us when someone says no, when our first prototype doesn’t work, when we discover unintended consequences and pivot, or family health matters affect how we show up in the world. We hold on to our passions and we keep learning and trying.This degree you’ve earned today gives you tremendous power to affect change, and the impact will depend on the grit brought to challenges ahead. 

And remember to apply that same grit to taking care of yourself, your health, your loved ones, and your relationship. Our healthy minds and bodies are essential to us being able to build a flourishing society. 

Let’s be curious and wander together in this precious life we have.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Recording starting at 19:18, College of Computing Commencement.

Introduction from Vivek Sarkar, the John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech:

It gives me real pride to introduce our next speaker, Kathy Pham. Kathy is a double alum from Georgia Tech; she received her bachelors degree in 2007 and masters degree in 2009. Kathy is a Shorenstein Center Senior Fellow and Faculty member at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Workday and also a Senior Advisor at Mozilla.

Previously, her private sector leadership has spanned Google, IBM and Harris Healthcare. In government, Kathy was appointed the inaugural Executive Director of the National AI Advisory Committee, served as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the Federal Trade Commission and was a Founding Member of the United States Digital Service of the White House. In 2024, Kathy received Anitab.org’s Highest Honor of the ABIE Technical Leadership Award. Believe me, there’s a lot more I can read from Kathy’s bio, but we’d all much rather her instead, so please join me in welcoming Kathy Pham to the podium. Thank you.