Kathy Pham profile interview
Kathy Pham is the VP of AI at Workday, Faculty & Senior Fellow at Harvard, and a Founder Member of the United States Digital Service. We recently asked Kathy a few questions for our latest Responsible Tech Guide. Read the interview below.
“The biggest barrier I’ve seen in advancing responsible technology is the language gap between disciplines.”
Tell us about your career journey. What key steps brought you to your current role, and what guidance would you give someone following a similar path?
My career has been about intentionally following meaning and purpose across sectors. I started in computer science and product management, but I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use technology in service of people, regardless of field or job title. That path took me from Google and IBM to helping launch the U.S. Digital Service at the White House, building the first Office of Technology at the FTC, teaching product management at Harvard, advising Fortune 500 companies, building responsible computing initiatives at Mozilla, and now leading AI at Workday.
The throughline has never been about titles, but about asking: Where can my skills make the most impact? Sometimes that meant creating roles that didn’t exist before.
The guidance I’d offer is this: state your intentions out loud, even before you know how they’ll happen, because others can help bring them to life. Be open to moving across sectors and disciplines, since the most important work often happens at the intersections. And don’t be afraid to honor both your personal values and your professional ambitions; the most fulfilling roles will let you bring both!
This year's Responsible Tech Guide explores how different fields intersect - like Responsible AI and Trust & Safety. What disciplines or domains intersect in your work?
I live at intersections and love finding value at the intersections! In my work, the intersections are the most powerful parts. Responsible AI connects directly with trust and safety, and also with product management, software engineering, law, policy, design, anthropology, and more. Responsible AI requires the understanding of how we as people operate in our societies and then seeing how technology fits into that. Responsible AI is about how technology shows up in a product, how a customer experiences it, and how regulators or policymakers will view it.
I have also seen that progress comes when engineers, product managers, and responsible tech teams actually learn each other’s language and respect each other's expertise. That’s why I care so much about weaving responsible technology into the product lifecycle (and teach a class on it call Product Management and Society at Harvard), so it isn’t a separate domain, but a shared responsibility across disciplines.
What are the biggest barriers you’ve encountered in advancing responsible technology within your field, and how have you addressed them?
The biggest barrier I’ve seen in advancing responsible technology is the language gap between disciplines. By language, I mean the priorities, assumptions, and shared knowledge within each silo. A responsible tech team may not always translate their concepts into something an engineering team can execute, and engineers may struggle to frame their challenges in ways that resonate with responsible tech colleagues. That disconnect makes it difficult to move from an issue to a concrete product change.
One way to address this is by embedding responsible tech champions within product teams, much like how some organizations embed security champions. Product teams should help shape responsible tech concepts, and responsible tech experts should be part of product decisions. The work is most effective when responsibility is woven directly into the product lifecycle.
What emerging trends or issues in technology most concern you, and where do you see the greatest opportunities for shaping a more ethical, human-centered future?
What concerns me most right now is the erosion of human agency at the very moments we most want to keep it. Technology, especially AI, no longer just supports our decisions; it increasingly shapes them, and sometimes quietly takes them away from those decisions. From what we watch to how we work, to how we participate as citizens, our choices can start to feel less like our own. Sometimes we want the agency taken away to get the help we need; other times, we want to keep our agency because we find purpose in it.
The opportunity is to design what I've introduced as Agents of Purpose - AI systems that amplify our intentions instead of overriding them. That means being deliberate about what gets automated and what must remain human for meaning, dignity, and accountability. If we’re not intentional, technology risks eroding the very parts of life we value most. Done right, Agents of Purpose can expand potential and strengthen what makes us most human.