Stanford MBA: From Baby Boomer to Gen Z | Class of ‘95 Meets Class of ‘25
I’m Katharine Keough McLennan, Stanford MBA Class of 1995 alumna; I am the creator, producer and facilitator for this series in which I have the honour of hosting each episode with a different pair of two Stanford MBA generations—one from my Class of 1995 and the other from the Class of 2025.
Our dialogues explore the profound shifts both of these classes saw in the "Changing of the Eras" :
- The Class of 1995 graduated at the dawn of the internet, heralding the Information Age emerging from the Industrial Age. Some of our classmates are considered global internet pioneers, and the companies they created are well-known worldwide. Our class is now in our 60s.
- The Class of 2025 enters the next era as we witness the rise of artificial intelligence. Information is a commodity and no longer describes an "era." They now grapple with a very different world than we did 30 years ago -- not only in technology but also in politics, economics, social connections, environmental challenges, and legal dynamics. They are in their 30s.
Together, we unpack the possibilities: Will AI spark a new era of human creativity and connection that I call the Inspiration Age? Or will it deepen disconnection, ushering in an Isolation Age?
This podcast is a "wisdom exchange" across generations, blending the hard-won lessons of my peers in their 60s with the bold vision of leaders in their 30s. Through candid, inspiring, and often humorous conversations, we reflect on aspirations, anxieties, and challenges while envisioning a future shaped by collaboration, ingenuity, and integrity—a call to action for a world where technology serves humanity.
For updates and more, visit katharinemclennan.com
Let’s shape the Inspiration Age, together.
Stanford MBA: From Baby Boomer to Gen Z | Class of ‘95 Meets Class of ‘25
Podcast Ep. 25 Stanford MBA '95 Katharine McLennan meets MBA '25 Carmen Gordon
Today, I’m joined by Carmen Gordon from the Stanford MBA Class of 2025. Carmen is a second-year MBA student originally from Spain, who previously worked in strategy consulting at McKinsey. She’s driven by a passion for social impact and has worked in the Philippines, Malawi, and Colombia, focusing on socioeconomic empowerment. During her time at Stanford, Carmen co-founded a startup exploring how AI can support freelance fashion designers and spent the summer in India and Europe, working with artisans and luxury brands to bridge cultures and commerce.
This episode is bittersweet—it’s the last one I’ll record with a member of the Class of 2025 before I do a final wrap-up episode reflecting on all 25 conversations. I hope to continue the podcast in October with guests from the Class of 2026, and between now and Octobert, I’ll be sharing weekly solo reflections on the research behind my upcoming book, The Leader’s Choice in the AI World: Sinking into Inertia OR Catalysing Ingenuity.
In this conversation, Carmen and I reflect on the differences—and surprising similarities—between our MBA journeys, 30 years apart. Carmen shares how technology is shaping the future of fashion and supply chains, and how her work is driven by a deep personal mission to foster meaningful livelihoods for artisans. We explore what it means to define success on your own terms, the courage it takes to walk your own path, and why reconnecting to your roots can be the most powerful leadership choice of all.
Chapters
00:00 Graduation Reflections and the Final Episode
03:11 Carmen’s Graduation Week and Pre-Graduation Rituals
04:26 Carmen’s Background and McKinsey Experience
05:53 The Differences in Entrepreneurial Culture
07:24 Comparing Paths: Consulting, Startups, and Career Ladders
11:00 The Social Impact Startup Journey
14:09 Carmen’s Malawi Inspiration and Volunteering
15:57 Launching the Startup with Classmates
17:38 Challenges with Emerging Markets and Luxury Brands
20:44 Rethinking the Design Process with AI
23:43 Generational Shifts: Big Picture vs. Implementation
28:29 Focusing on Designers: The AI Agent Project
31:32 AI as a Tool for Designers, Not a Threat
35:37 Generational Mindsets and Meaning in Work
38:47 Carmen’s Decision to Return to Spain
41:47 Balancing Career, Spirituality, and Roots
43:23 The Impact of Political Climate on International Students
45:33 Reunion Stories and Evolving Definitions of Success
47:27 The Bigger Picture of Technology and Meaning
49:49 Carmen’s International Adventures and Final Reflections
52:00 The Essence of Stanford and Redefining Success
54:26 Final Words and Emerson’s Quote on Success
Join the Podcast Series
Stanford MBA: From Baby Boomer to Gen Z | Class of ‘95 Meets Class of ‘25
Each of these episodes will feature a different pair of Stanford MBA people -- one from the class of 1995, and one from the class of 2025.
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Contact: kath@katharinemclennan.com
Katharine McLennan (01:02)
Today I'm joined by Carmen Gordon from the Stanford MBA class of 2025. Carmen is a second year MBA student originally from Spain who previously worked in strategy consulting at McKinsey. She's driven by passion for social impact
and has worked in the Philippines, Malawi, and Colombia, focusing on socioeconomic empowerment. During her time at Stanford, Carmen co-founded a startup exploring how AI can support freelance fashion designers and spent the summer in India and Europe working with artisans and luxury brands to bridge cultures and commerce.
This episode is bittersweet. It's the last one I'll record with a member of the class of 2025 before they graduate this coming weekend. And before I do, I final wrap up episode reflecting on all 25 episodes conversations I've had.
I hope to continue the podcast in October with guests from the Stanford MBA class of 2026. And between now and October, I'll be sharing weekly some reflections on the research behind my upcoming book, The Leader's Choice in the AI World, Sinking into Inertia or Catalyzing Ingenuity. I'll speak more about that in the episode 26 of this series when I wrap up all the themes that came up.
through the last 25 conversations, which have been a real honor to be part of. In this conversation though, Carmen and I reflect on the differences and surprising similarities between our MBA journeys 30 years apart. Carmen shares how technology is shaping the future of fashion and its supply chains and how our work is driven by deep personal mission to foster meaningful livelihoods for artisans.
We explore what it means to define success on your own terms, the courage it takes to walk your own path, and why reconnecting to your roots can be the most powerful leadership choice of all.
Katharine McLennan (03:11)
Okay, so we have Carmen Gordon and just wondering where we find you today. It's let's see. Yep.
Carmen Gordon (03:18)
Well, I'm at the GSD
in the Bass Library and today is the last day of classes, so I am very excited to wrap this whole experience with this.
Katharine McLennan (03:29)
You guys are getting ready to graduate after two years of an MBA. What do you do for the next couple of weeks? Because you graduate on the 14th, is that right?
Carmen Gordon (03:34)
Mm-hmm.
So we have this orientation week. Did you also have that back in... Oh, amazing.
Katharine McLennan (03:42)
⁓ I think so. I think
so. I think it's like disorientation, Disintegration. So tell me about that. How do you wrap up two years in 10 days?
Carmen Gordon (03:48)
Yes, yes, exactly. ⁓
It is a hard thing. There's a lot of activities, ⁓ but I think the whole idea is just like to reconnect with everyone. Everyone has been so we see in the last months like recruiting or trying to figure out their lives. So we haven't seen each other as much as we used to. So these are just like 10 days full of pass down parties, ⁓ last lectures by the best professors or like, you know, the last bike ride to Alice's, the last fountain hopping.
Katharine McLennan (03:59)
Yay.
Carmen Gordon (04:26)
and all these things that we used to do, especially at the beginning. So yeah, that's that.
Katharine McLennan (04:30)
Yeah.
So it'll be, it'll be interesting to say goodbye to people. remember how emotional it was
so here you are. at this point, it was an awkward question to say, so what are you doing next?
And not everybody has plans. Carmen, so you came from McKinsey. So was it directly before business school that you were working for McKinsey? Tell us a little bit about that
Carmen Gordon (04:59)
Yes.
I only worked for a year and a half before coming here. I'm on the younger side of the class. I was working at McKinsey, as you said, in Spain. And I have decided to go back, ⁓ mainly because I want to go back to Spain. And there's not a lot of job opportunities there that match what I want. But also, I was exploring.
Katharine McLennan (05:09)
in Spain.
Carmen Gordon (05:22)
I think we talked about this before, I was exploring a startup idea with one of my classmates and it has been like an amazing two-year adventure. I loved it. It was basically AI for fashion designers, although right now it's only like for freelance designers. And my classmate is going to continue doing that, but I just like needed to go back to Spain. hopefully in two years when I pay back my sponsorship, I'll rejoin her. I don't know, but.
Katharine McLennan (05:23)
Yeah.
Carmen Gordon (05:50)
Regardless, it's been such an amazing journey.
Katharine McLennan (05:53)
So you grew up in Spain. What part, what part of Spain did you grow up in? Madrid. Okay. And is that where McKinsey offices that you're going to? Going back. that's, my journey. So I worked for a consulting firm
Carmen Gordon (05:55)
Yes. Madrid.
Yes, exactly.
Katharine McLennan (06:09)
just like you had sent me to business school and it paid my tuition. And then I came back and similarly, you know, paid it off three years. So 1995, we graduated, which seems probably ancient to you, but yesterday to me. ⁓
I graduated in 1995 and we went back to Sydney. So I didn't grow up in Sydney, but I had been there since 1990.
the internet was just happening and that's why I'm fascinated with your class as well because like you, the internet was not like in terms of AI. So for us, it was the internet and it had just started really unlike AI. was, it was just literally coming on the horizon.
We didn't understand it. It had existed for many years in the defense area of that, but it hadn't existed in a consumer sense. And so it literally launched when we graduated in the form of an internet service provider, ISP, called Netscape, which eventually became AOL.
didn't have the courage at that point. There were some of us that did and they could see the future a bit and they were courageous.
Carmen Gordon (07:24)
I wanted to ask you because I feel like right now all of my classmates that are pursuing some entrepreneurial thing are like clapped and everyone encourages them. But it's not the same in Spain or in Europe in general, where like someone that starts something and goes off the traditional path is looked as crazy. You were like, I know. So I wanted to ask you, like, how did you look to these people that were
starting something completely new.
Katharine McLennan (07:52)
Carmen, it's so similar because in Australia and still for the most part, ⁓ we don't have a venture capital industry. Many of us that are looking for venture capital will go to the United States and capital. We have private equity very well and we have bits and pieces of venture capital, but if you're looking to start up. So at that point, number one, it just wasn't.
a path like it is at Stanford. In fact, you guys are flip-flopped in terms of, I'd say, seemed like 80 % of our class went back to consulting. They went to investment banks. They went into the corporate positions that they were at. And then it was 10 to 15%, maybe 20%.
were going into startup, whereas your class, because the technology, the path, even what you guys study in terms of startups and the exposure that you have is incredible because that's been a path that's well honed. know, all the places on Sand Hill Road, they were really, they existed and these are.
for those of you listening, Sandhill Road's known for its support of startups and adventures. But for us, at that time, it wasn't, there was only a few people that began to understand that infrastructure. So many of us didn't really have the courage to investigate that. It was unknown to us. ⁓
Actually, there's some really interesting reflections. And again, it'd be interesting to talk about your decision, Carmen, because for so many of us, we climbed the ladder of each, like of high school and then university and then McKinsey's classic, because you know, when you start as whatever you guys studied, I remember we were called analysts, research analysts. And then the next stage is associate and the next. So the ladders are very clear.
Carmen Gordon (09:44)
Mm-hmm.
and do it.
Katharine McLennan (10:01)
And then you go, well, I've got to go to business school because that's the next rung and I'll try to get into the best business school. And then for us in business school is fascinating. And I loved every moment, but I was like, well, the only ladder I know next is to go back to my consulting firm and eventually become partners. So it was a lot less. It was a lot more courage to get off that path or to get on that path for some people that had come from St. Military or.
Carmen Gordon (10:01)
Mm-hmm.
Katharine McLennan (10:30)
other governments or those sectors. what I did is I went back in. my, it'll be interesting to talk about Spain too. ⁓ Australia didn't, I wanted to go back, right? So my family, my partner at the time we got married was Australian. I love Sydney. It has always, always been my love. I don't see myself leaving Sydney at all.
Carmen Gordon (10:30)
Thank
Katharine McLennan (11:00)
I just had to go back for the opportunity to get paid and So, you know, I, and I just didn't really see the opportunity. We had a few classes at Stanford that were at startups. I didn't even take those Carmen. loved finance and I took way more finance classes because it really appealed to me in terms of logic and structure.
numbers And the funny thing is I never did anything with it. ⁓ My fixed income and corporate finance professor ⁓ was my favorite professor. He was a guy called Professor Van Horan. he, in fact, you might even have a textbook. And he really encouraged me to go into investment banking. And some of me wishes, nah, I don't know, whatever. So let's go back.
Carmen Gordon (11:26)
You
Well... ⁓
Katharine McLennan (11:51)
Let's go back to your parallel experience. So you have an opportunity to go into this fashion.
Carmen Gordon (11:57)
I love McKinsey, so I came to the GSB kind of knowing that I was gonna go back, but I wanted to take advantage of these two years to explore other things. And that exploration completely blew my mind.
I discovered that I came to GSB with a very narrow definition of what success meant. And then after talking to all of my classmates and listening to their backgrounds and their incredible stories and knowing that the GSB admissions comedy had thought that they were very successful, I just started seeing a world of possibilities. So that really inspired me and I was like, okay, things that I've always cared about are like social impact. And I've done a lot of volunteering, but I never considered that.
within the core of my career. And then another thing that I'm really, I always end up doing things in fashion, design, or a precision of beauty in general, like art. ⁓ But I've always thought that that was very superficial and also kept it aside. So I was reflecting and I am like, okay, I have this passion for beauty, for social impact. Is there a way to combine them both and make a career out of it?
So I was like dealing with these things and then I met ⁓ Lisi, one of my classmates, and she was like going through a similar process. She had been working in private equity for so long and she was like completely done with that and wanted to pursue something related to the creative space. So we started talking and ⁓ we decided to explore the idea of doing something in developing countries related to our descent. We saw a lot of
skills, lot of handcraft, a lot of ideas, traditions that we wanted to, I know we wanted to make them be able to pursue a life out of their art and not just sell things at a very like low price and like barely surviving when their things could be in the world. So like in the past I had an NGO that was ⁓ basically
The whole intent of the NGO was to promote art in Malawi or to promote art decents from Malawi, artists, sorry, from Malawi, by taking their art into the international sphere. international people could buy their art and the artists in Malawi could pursue a career in art instead of going to farming or something else. So we
Katharine McLennan (14:09)
⁓ yep.
Mmm.
Okay.
Why Malawi?
Why was that? How did you even get to that country?
Carmen Gordon (14:30)
So I went when I was in undergrad, I went for more than a month to live there. ⁓ And I just like found amazing things. was like my volunteering had nothing to do with art. was like I was ⁓ teaching and cooking at a school. But like I know when I was walking around, I saw so many like talented people that were selling their things on the street. And of course, no one had the money to buy it. And no one cared about Malawi. I think it's the second poorest country in the world. So art doesn't have a place there.
And then I started struggling, why people that are so talented in something that is useless, quote unquote, ⁓ cannot pursue that. And instead they have to dedicate their lives to something that they're not that skilled and that work is not gonna fulfill them as much. So that's how it all started. But then because of COVID, we had to repurpose the whole NGO more to distribution of food. And I just wanted to take the GSB to explore that angle again and see.
there was something that could be done.
Katharine McLennan (15:29)
Okay.
So you spend a month in Malawi and really live because many people often think, ⁓ what country am I going to serve? And they pick, they go on the map behind me and they go, ⁓ or the statistics that say, but you had on ground experience to work with that country and see it and then start thinking about
how do I serve it? How do I make a business out of it? So you bring these ideas to Stanford and you think, okay, let's do that. And the two years at Stanford, unlike a lot of our experience, you guys were encouraged to take ideas and actually start implementing them. Is that right, Carmen?
Carmen Gordon (15:57)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes,
we there's a lot of classes that push you towards that. And also my classmate and I, we got awarded, do you know what is ID for Bota Chan? There are like these fellowships that they pay you a salary throughout the summer so that you can pursue your own idea instead of working for someone else. So that was great because we applied with more of a specific. Lizzie and I met around
Katharine McLennan (16:35)
Okay.
Carmen Gordon (16:42)
November, MBA one, we started chatting about all these things, but it was in a very high level. And like finally throughout all these conversations ⁓ and investigation, we narrowed it down and we wanted to do a marketplace between luxury brands that they need to innovate and they need to reimagine their supply chains to like China events as we know, ⁓ and emerging countries that they have the talent, but they don't have.
the people that want to buy it. So we just wanted to match them. we got a word. ⁓ So we just got a word that these fellowships that we and we spend the whole summer investigating that idea, then we decided to free but away from that. But it was an amazing experience that was like, it was made possible by Stanford. And we spend the summer in India, talking with a lot of manufacturers there. And also
Katharine McLennan (17:12)
Okay, that's a huge. ⁓ keep going. You're gonna match them. Okay.
in.
Carmen Gordon (17:38)
in Europe talking with the luxury brands, so it was incredible.
Katharine McLennan (17:42)
So, okay, so how do you match the luxury brands with places in India? Are they artisans locally that could provide to the luxury brands? Give us an example.
Carmen Gordon (17:51)
Yes
There are. there are, Gucci, for example, works with a lot of embroidery. It comes from India, from the silk. That is an issue also that sometimes India or China are associated with low quality materials. But if you think back, India, the gems, the stones,
the skill set of like just doing the actual embroidery. If you look at the traditional gowns, they are pieces of art. So that part of the whole Indian manufacturing landscape is where luxury brands are focused. But the thing is that after all our conversations with luxury brands, we realized that they don't love working with emerging countries because A, language barriers, B, ways of working like in some of these countries.
If one day it starts raining, they will stop doing anything because there's no light at the factory or the road gets collapsed or someone dies and they all need to go to the funeral. ways of working are not that stable or that foreseeable. And then finally, it's just that in fashion specifically, sometimes you just need to see and touch the fabric, the purse, the final details, and you cannot travel.
those long distances. instead luxury brands prefer to stick with their traditional artisans in Italy, in Spain, in France. ⁓ So yes, we were exploring this whole thing to see if those barriers could be overcome by AI, but...
like Wootie, Louis Vuitton, Louis Evée, Warberry, things like that.
Katharine McLennan (19:38)
Is it
it's interesting. So what's the like the one that's been around? Well, Vuitton, right? So yeah, okay.
Carmen Gordon (19:44)
Yeah,
it's a big luxury group, LVMH. Loewe is also part of that group, but it's a Spanish one. Probably that's why I mentioned it.
Katharine McLennan (19:56)
Yeah,
So they so what's fascinating. So what did you were you still able to figure out a way to come up with those?
Carmen Gordon (20:04)
No, so we realized
so many problems to fix the relationship between Luxury Brands and Artisans that we had to start a step before that interaction and we had to start with like the whole thing had to be reimagined, the whole production process. So we wanted to start at the very, very beginning, which is the design process. And then once we solve that, we wanted to like escalate until the whole
process was sold through technology. ⁓ So that is why in the end we're doing an AI agent to help designers.
Katharine McLennan (20:44)
Tell me about the AI agent helping
one of the driving interests I have to doing these conversations amongst many other reflections I'm doing
the industrial age, we're talking about factories, just like we're thinking about in these third countries. And we're talking about industrial organization culture and industrial leadership, which a lot of our companies are still using, you know? And then when our class graduated, we were now looking at a different age. We didn't know that, ⁓ but the information age, big data, ⁓ to even get data, like Carmen, I remember racing
before business school, I remember in Sydney, we were racing McKinsey to get to the library to get microfiche on, let's say, the latest retail world statistics on whatever client we were doing or the latest because we couldn't do data. I had to go to Indonesia once and look at the wastewater and water industry for joint ventures for one of the Australian companies. And so one of the questions we are investigating was how large
Carmen Gordon (21:34)
Bye.
Katharine McLennan (21:56)
is the steel pipe industry in Indonesia. It's not like we could type up how large is the Indonesia, which we could because there was no information flowing in that. And the information age interestingly allowed our consulting industry to grow exponentially. So the McKinsey's and the Booz's and the Baines and the BCG's, those are the top four. ⁓
really grew because of the internet and information sharing. ⁓ for example, in Madrid, you guys could be working on a grocery industry and you could say, ⁓ let's get information and reports from Sydney because they just worked on the grocery.
In fact, we could share the data, we could share the report. And that was the first time that that
that could happen. And so that just grew and big data came in and the ability to share data. And there was a rise in the last before AI started getting interesting. We had a rise in, we need more data analysts. We need more data analysts. We needed to get undergraduates to study statistics and to study that and to learn how to maneuver, manipulate data.
And so this was a different age. And so I've always been fascinated by culture and leadership. It wasn't even a topic that we really studied except for a class or two at Stanford, leadership. We had one leadership initiative like you guys completely studied all the time, influences and infiltrate. So anyway, so ⁓ the reason I was going there was because I'm fascinated with
Carmen Gordon (23:31)
you
Katharine McLennan (23:43)
Okay, the changes in not only the technology, but the way you guys think I'm part of Generation X, just at the beginning of Generation X. I was very close to being a baby boomer. So now you guys are in a total generation, you have a different way of thinking, and you're facing a different huge technology. And so here you are. And you're saying, all right, how do I use AI to look at
Carmen Gordon (23:55)
Thank you.
Katharine McLennan (24:10)
this incredibly integrated social condition integrated with a business. On one side, the luxury business, but on the other side, these local artisans. we just, there's no way, first of all, that we would have, some of us would have had the courage or the awareness that we would go to Malawi or we could go to Vietnam or we could go, because you've been to the Philippines as well. saw Carmen,
Carmen Gordon (24:16)
Mm-hmm.
Katharine McLennan (24:37)
figure out how to go to the local arts and so, so back to that, I'm fascinated with how, how you guys think and the travel that you do and the awareness through the internet that you have of even beginning to, to see opportunities.
connecting the supply of local artisans and thinking about the challenges socially, I'm not sure we could have done that. Maybe a few, but I just don't know if that would be in our conscience.
Carmen Gordon (25:09)
it feels that at some point my generation is too big picture oriented and then you dream too big. And sometimes it's hard to know where to start and then you just become overwhelmed. Like that's what happened to ⁓ my friend and I. Like we were just, it was too big of a problem. We didn't know what we were to start. We decided to start at the very beginning of the whole process. But then we got, we got far away from our like social impact.
Katharine McLennan (25:21)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Carmen Gordon (25:37)
intent just because we had to start somewhere. And then it was frustrating to have these big dreams and knowing that your day to day we were focusing on something that was not, it will get us there eventually, but we were way more impatient. want, we have like this big picture and impatience. it's, it's a bad combination, but we keep, yes.
Katharine McLennan (25:56)
Isn't that interesting? So,
okay, so you're at the, you guys are at the cusp, aren't you, between generation Y, generation Z, is that right? Or we call it Z.
Carmen Gordon (26:05)
Yeah, I'm
particular, I'm Generation C, but yes.
Katharine McLennan (26:10)
And it'd be interesting to reflect on the difference of that, but just like us, some of us were baby boomers in our class and some of us were that.
a global context and Stanford type of people, not everybody, will have the invitation and the mind, the mindset to actually take on the world and see, okay, what are we seeing? You'll have the information to realize that there's huge inequality. We had a notion, we had a world, there was a, at that time there was an author called Thomas Friedman.
He still is a really interesting guy. He wrote the world is flat. And we had a concept at Stanford. It was called globalization. And that was so interesting to us because all of a sudden we could access, start to access different parts. anyway, so your generation, as you say, start saying, well, how can we?
this whole supply chain, you know, from Louis Vuitton all the way into Malawi. let me take an example. So eBay. So I don't know Jeff Scholes, who was our classmate that founded it along with the technologists, there were two people that founded it. There was a local San Francisco.
Carmen Gordon (27:10)
Thank
Katharine McLennan (27:31)
opportunity to do to create internet around trade, like going to a garage sale, you know, and buying used products. So, so locally they thought about technology solving a local exchange.
of goods that were normally sold through antique shops, So here you are, here you are, you know, I can see why the overwhelm occurs. I can see that. I when I talk to your classmates, I love the fact that they're asking questions like how can AI help the healthcare industry? One of your classmates,
Carmen Gordon (27:58)
Nah.
Katharine McLennan (28:17)
was saying, can I influence the whole health care system of India? so your experiences, this is overwhelming And so what do you do? You come back after that summer and what's the decision making?
Carmen Gordon (28:29)
Yeah. So
we came back, we realized that that is a very big problem to solve. So we decided to solve it all, but one step at a time. So we start with the very first step, which are designers. We try to understand how designers work and get into their brains and see how AI can help. Basically, if we go back to the big picture, the intent was
Katharine McLennan (28:40)
once a better time.
Carmen Gordon (28:59)
to make the relationships between the artisans and the luxury brands as frictionless as possible so that they can collaborate more and therefore the artisans get more requests and they can like earn more money, have a better quality of living. But to do that you need to have a playbook, a very standard way of working and technology can help in that. But as of now, that is not the case. And that is why luxury brands from the West don't like collaborating with artisans in emerging countries because it's just too slow.
Katharine McLennan (29:17)
Yep. Yep.
Carmen Gordon (29:29)
So ⁓ if we go and revisit the whole process and every stakeholder at a time to make, there's like this ⁓ program that is the backbone, like the technological backbone of this whole process that right now is very antiquated. Like it doesn't really, it's very clunky, hard to use, especially for people in the creative world. They love tools that are creative as they are. And this technology is just like very, very chunky. Like no one really likes
Katharine McLennan (29:58)
Give me an example.
Like when you say this technology, pick part of the supply chain,
Carmen Gordon (30:02)
imagine, like, as a designer, let's start again with the beginning. ⁓ You would think that a designer, like, opens whatever tool they want. Like, it can be a Figma or they can draw something on a white paper. But that is not the case. Like, they rarely start with a white sheet of paper. They usually leverage something that's been done in the past in another collection, and they just adjust it. So the thing is that...
Katharine McLennan (30:05)
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Yeah.
Carmen Gordon (30:30)
If the designer has not been working in the company for a long time, they may have no idea that that thing that they are about to create has already been done, or they can like save a lot of time by using something that is their intent book. So if they don't know it, or maybe if they know, but they just don't know where that file is located, they're going to spend so much time trying to figure it out because the looks, the fashion world is not that technological savvy as you would imagine. So...
They have everything in papers and folders. So you need to go to the office and skim through all the folders that you can find until you finally get that dress that you were thinking of. So that's just a lot of waste of time. And instead, what they could do is have AI. They can describe to AI, OK, given the budget that I'm managing, given the providers that I need to work at, given the colors that are fashionable right now.
giving the ethics of the statics of the brand and giving my idea, have we done something similar in the past? Yes, here.
Katharine McLennan (31:32)
Okay, interesting.
I remember at the beginning of our internet experience, let me tell you, like if I had, I did the Indonesia study before business school. So no internet, forget it. maybe local data, but.
What's interesting about what you're saying is we still, in order to use AI, you still need the information in it, right? So I see who are the best embroiderer risks in India, you're not gonna know. You can't find, you can't find.
Carmen Gordon (31:57)
Yes.
Thank
No. No.
Katharine McLennan (32:08)
a beautiful woman in a small Indian village the other thing with fashion, is sure you could crunch large pieces of data in terms of the consumer desire, what was last season, what the colors are. remember the comp, is Benetton still? Yeah, I remember we had a case study around Benetton and how they were able to change from.
Carmen Gordon (32:23)
Mm-hmm.
Katharine McLennan (32:30)
standard, we're going to just do this color, this color, these sizes. And they were able to get individual customer data. So they could say, okay, well, what does Catherine need? And create that Levi Strauss was starting to get individuals. my gosh. how could you make a customer and equals one and still, and instead of segmentation, we were just being able to segment in large groups of population and in order to use data.
Now you're using AI to do all that consolidation. So you don't have analysts like us crunching large spreadsheets that we designed, right? I remember doing segmentation for a bank product, a savings product for one of our banks. And I built this huge spreadsheet.
Carmen Gordon (33:07)
Thank you. ⁓
you
Katharine McLennan (33:19)
the different populations based on buying behavior. had a thing called conjoint analysis in marketing that looks at the characteristics of the buying part of it. And we were essentially able to create the data crunching ability, the sound, but now AI can do that. And what I'm hearing you say is yes, it can. However, it needs to have access to
Carmen Gordon (33:28)
I
Katharine McLennan (33:47)
those people who aren't providing AI. We don't even know they exist on chat chibity, right? I don't know. Tell me about that.
Carmen Gordon (33:57)
companies, not even fashion, but amazing companies in the middle of nowhere that they don't even have a website. So we're talking about AI, the previous stage has not been completed yet. So how do we ensure that part of the world doesn't stay behind just because you're not fast enough to embrace all these things? Well, I don't know.
Katharine McLennan (34:08)
Yeah, there you go. Yeah.
Yaaas
And
we can't access it. It's such a great case study, Carmen. You guys gotta go back and write a case study because I'm excited as everybody else about the opportunities. I'm not frightened like a lot of people. guess there could be a lot of fright. We were scared. Our generation were a little bit scared of the internet in some respects. Number one, we did not understand what it would do. I had a debating class at Stanford.
And it was the debating class across the way. was just, ⁓ it was offered by an undergraduate class And the debate that we were on is, the internet going to listen to this impact retail? And we had pros and cons. And so, so here we are Carmen and we're asking, okay, how is AI
Carmen Gordon (34:55)
Yes.
Katharine McLennan (35:12)
What I love about you is the what you guys did is how is AI going to take a social cause and this is inequality between what you could say is third world parts of parts of our thing across and how do you address that through commerce and what does the technology do and what doesn't it do? And that's a huge question.
Carmen Gordon (35:37)
so we decided to focus only on designers. We go on a journey of interviewing a lot of them, understanding how they work. And we realized that they are very averse to technology. They think that AI is going to take over their jobs. ⁓ So a lot of times they just didn't want to talk with us because they were these people. They're creating my enemy. Why would we even
Katharine McLennan (35:54)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carmen Gordon (36:04)
like talk with them and give them information when like this is going to play against this. So it was a really hard job for us to convince them that we didn't want to touch the creative process. We only wanted to touch the technological backbone that would actually enable them to focus on creating instead of having to deal with all these bureaucratic things. Because we learned that a designer spends like three hours a day doing things that what I said before, like digging through papers, trying to find the adequate reference or
talking with someone that didn't do the sample as they thought. Realizing that their vision was not adequately transmitted because of not using a simple language or technological help. And they lost a lot of money and time in creating samples that were not aligned with their vision. yeah, just teaching them that technology can serve as a language and as a time saver was really tough.
Katharine McLennan (37:04)
It's really interesting. So the essence of that, I think for me, studying culture and leadership and how this changes ⁓ is my own And your experience when I talk to your fellow students about how you use chat, GPT and the like in your studies might reflect that, but it actually is increasing my creativity. I am actually feeling
originating my ideas. And then number one, help, you know, saying where are these ideas being looked at by other students of culture? And not in even more interestingly, helping me consolidate my ideas and play them back and keep track of them.
because I might have a fragment of idea yesterday about something like I'm writing a book now. I might have a fray about this and I'm writing, I might have a fragment of something Carmen you're inspiring me right now. ⁓ wow, okay. So I might capture that and it stays with me and it might say, you know when you wrote that five months ago, that might work in this, you know, that's crazy.
Carmen Gordon (38:15)
You
Yep.
Katharine McLennan (38:19)
That's really helping me. And so you have an interesting challenge as you look at the even the fashion designers to show them that this is possible. And I think that's going to apply to a lot of our industries. I don't know. So here you go. So you get to a certain point this year in your studies in second year and you go, you know what?
Carmen Gordon (38:37)
Yup.
Katharine McLennan (38:47)
If you want to go back to Spain, number one, which is interesting, a lot of your colleagues want to stay in the San Francisco area. So you're being pulled back to your country. How's that? Why is that, Carmen? What's the?
Carmen Gordon (38:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yes. ⁓
Mm.
I don't know, honestly I don't know. The thing is I've always been a very adventurous person. I lived in Hong Kong and Switzerland, in Ireland, in France, in the US and I did all these volunteers for a lot of months in different countries. But for the first time I feel that I need to go back home to regain energy to align back with my roots and then be ready for the next adventure.
took my favorite class at the GSB, is this one that is called finding religious and spiritual meaning at work. And it really made me think about what's important to you, how do you define success, what are your rules of the game? When you're about to die and you look back, what do you wanna see? And I realized I wanna see my family and my friends. I wanna see a lot of love around me and my life is in Spain. So.
Katharine McLennan (39:44)
Thank
Yeah.
Carmen Gordon (39:54)
Even though I am always going to be seeking international adventures, I need to create these deep foundations in Spain so that I have a place to go back. My career path is already on track, but I don't want to lose sight of my personal project and get blinded. ⁓
Katharine McLennan (40:11)
I love that.
Carmen, to even have that class in spirituality at the business school, that's huge.
elephant, what's, ⁓ I can't think of it. But anyway, so, ⁓ and that is asking the really important questions. In the last podcast said,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, have all these adventures, do all this business, it's all interesting, but at the end of the day, ask yourself what you're asking yourself, Carmen, where are my roots? Where am I going to spend the time with people that I will continue to nurture, building the relationship?
So the call back to Spain, I'm so glad that you're listening to it, especially because you have had the adventures, right? And you can still have them and you come back to your base. You come back to your base.
Carmen Gordon (41:00)
Yes. Exactly. And I
think it is really hard to listen to that quote when everyone is fighting so hard to stay in the US, everyone really, really want and they look at you and they ask you like, are you crazy? Why are you going back? And like, well, Spain, thankfully, it's a great country and I have opportunities. There is not like I'm coming from a town in the middle of Malawi, you know, ⁓ but still they look at you like, why would you let the US opportunity pass?
Katharine McLennan (41:16)
Yeah. Yep.
Carmen Gordon (41:30)
⁓ But then you have to stay strong and say like, well, this is what I want. Like success for me means a lot of like I want to be successful in a lot of different dimensions, not only one. So if this is the price that I have to pay, I am so willing to pay it because it's for my own happiness.
Katharine McLennan (41:47)
The, how much does the current, and we don't have to take sides on the political spectrum, but the current political pressure on Harvard must be playing in the way you guys think that you guys, say us too, ⁓ international students in other words, ⁓ how's that infiltrating you guys at Stanford? How does that?
Carmen Gordon (41:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Katharine McLennan (42:15)
influence your ideas because this just happened, right? So this is a new factor in the decision for international students and graduates to stay in the United States.
Carmen Gordon (42:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, especially
for graduates. So everyone in my class is pretty scared. ⁓ Because, you know, like people want to get a job, especially in startups and startups don't hire until like very soon to start date. So it's around this time of the year. And because they're listening to all these news, they just don't want to take a bet on international students because they are like, why should I bet on you when I have this person from the US that
like they are gonna stay and I don't know about you. So it's just like very uncertain. People are scared that they're not gonna be able to stay in the US and that is such a pity. ⁓ I don't know. Because I had made my decision before. I'm not personally worried but I'm very sad about everyone's feeling this uncertainty ⁓ and amazing people not getting the jobs that they want just because of this.
Katharine McLennan (43:23)
Well, I'm very, because your class, our class, I don't know the statistics, but it felt like, let's just say what it felt like. So we had similar size 300, I don't know, like you, like 300 plus students. And it felt like it was about 10 to 15 % not American and not North American as well. So.
Carmen Gordon (43:30)
Okay.
wow.
Katharine McLennan (43:49)
Your statistics are way higher than that in terms of the international students.
Carmen Gordon (43:54)
around 60 % are from the US and 40 % are in...
Katharine McLennan (43:58)
Yeah,
there you go. So 40 % not from the United States and the richness that that gives Stanford Business School of 300 people is extraordinary impact for the world, right? One of your colleagues is going back to Saudi Arabia and I guarantee that he will have a huge influence on that country's 30 year vision. ⁓
And the importance of that, not because Carmen, we have to like take over Spain, you know, with our great Stanford brands, you know, I don't think I came to a straight, but the internationalism of the richness of the experience is just.
Carmen Gordon (44:42)
Yeah, and even knowing that
you have a home everywhere you go, like from the basics.
Katharine McLennan (44:47)
Yeah, the callback to the country I think is so important these days, but the loss, and I hope it's not the loss of the students and the ability to influence the US, the biggest ⁓ industry or economy and oftentimes the leading technology is a worry. So let's hope that that
doesn't continue to persist. So you're going back to Spain. What your thoughts are, the meaning that that means. I'm so glad that your generation is asking that.
Carmen, what was interesting is, let me tell you a little bit, because I don't usually talk that much, but about our fifth reunion, our 10th reunion, and maybe even when that started to happen, people, our class would come back and talk about the
Carmen Gordon (45:33)
Mm-hmm.
Katharine McLennan (45:45)
the successes, a little bit of failure of how much money they raised and how big their companies were and how innovative and the experience of their jobs. I actually decided, I think it was, let's see, 20th reading, I asked to speak, there's always five speakers, I asked to speak and I decided to talk about midlife crisis. It had nothing to do with my job, it had everything to do with the disasters of,
Carmen Gordon (46:07)
No.
Katharine McLennan (46:13)
I had health disasters, mental health disasters, divorce disasters, challenges with children, and good things, and good things. And that was the first time that anybody actually spoke about non-career. And the number of people that came up to me that were just relieved to go, my god, I'm so glad you talked about. And the funny thing is, in the 25th reunion, all the five speakers didn't speak.
Carmen Gordon (46:33)
Thank
Katharine McLennan (46:41)
speak about business at all.
Carmen Gordon (46:43)
Wow,
that's neat.
Katharine McLennan (46:45)
And it's interesting. And so it'll be interesting on the 30th reunion. I'm still fascinated with what you guys are thinking in the generation, not only in the business ideas and understanding, I don't know, example AI, example the thoughts about what the health care system looks like, the medical technology, et cetera, this whole thing about longevity, la la.
I'm still fascinated with that and yet what you were saying gives me a great deal of hope ⁓ that the questions you're asking call back to Spain. know, the spiritual aspect calls you back. I love that. That gives me hope.
Carmen Gordon (47:27)
I think, yeah, well,
I cannot talk for my whole generation. ⁓ But I do think that technology and AI have a role in that because you... Okay, let me see if this makes sense. Before, it was easier to get trapped and just like going to work and doing something because it was like hard. It was hard to do it. And so you got trapped in the details into like...
Katharine McLennan (47:32)
Yep, yep.
course.
That's it.
Carmen Gordon (47:56)
finalizing the model to the best possible, whatever. And things took more time, but with technology, you get to see the big picture. You get to think more. So you need to understand where you're going because the details are done by AI or by technology. So you need to be the bigger person here. You're not following what your boss is telling you to do. You have to own it. So...
when you start walking, need to know where you're going. So that starts making you think. And that is at least how I started thinking about, in the end, when I die, what is the picture that I want to have painted? And then you start doing backwarding in your new till today.
Katharine McLennan (48:30)
That's.
What I just, you said something really cool that is important that I just ⁓ caught that I want to play back. If when I, when we went and I'll give you the example of the eBay, know, San Francisco, how do you make second ⁓ use products available at a price at a market? And how do you make that retail? ⁓ And then they grew out of San Francisco at more technology, not just use products.
⁓ Amazon, same. You know, it started with, okay, how do we make books available? He probably started in the local market. ⁓ I don't know if that's the case. So, it was incremental. Now, what's interesting is you guys have the ability to ask meaning to look at a larger picture, which we just never would have. don't, wow, I'm exaggerating like crazy, but.
Ask, seeing the opportunity of technology to go back to meaning. So go back to, did you get to, well, you did in Malawi. Did you get to Indian villages as well?
Carmen Gordon (49:49)
in the Philippines as well. In the Philippines, was like with creating a drug addiction rehabilitation program.
Katharine McLennan (49:55)
See? so when I went back and even before business school with our consulting firm, we were looking at hospital effectiveness and efficiency, but we didn't, I didn't.
Other than getting the data, the benchmarking data of efficiency from other offices in Boozal, I didn't step back and actually look at the healthcare system in general in Australia, in the world. It was quite around efficiency. We even use words like process and re-engineering. And so that's what's interesting about shift to this
this new AI world. However, here's the thing. We need brains like you have. We need brains that are at the Stanford and Harvard to think systemically. And our education's not creating that. that's what the thing is, Carmen. You have a mind that can do that.
And the education allowed you to get that exposure. And the technology allowed you. You guys travel like there's, we can travel like your generation. No way. I mean, going to the Philippines, you're crazy. We could only spend like, I don't know, a month with a year rail pass and we'd go to Madrid, but we wouldn't go to any, like anything out of Madrid. Going to Madrid was exotic, you know? Anyway.
Carmen Gordon (51:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, mean,
it's like more frictionless for us. So yes, no matter.
Katharine McLennan (51:32)
Oh, so
much so. All right. So as we, I could talk to you forever. As we come to a close Carmen, so you're in your last two weeks. What is the essence of Stanford that you're going to take forward with you as you go back to Spain and you, you recreate your next stage of world? What do you, what's the essence of the last two years that you take back with you?
Carmen Gordon (52:00)
think, as I said, the definition of success, now I own it. It's what I want it to be. And I am going to hold myself accountable for my definition of success instead of following others. That for sure. Then the second, the risk taken, the courage. Here, I've seen people that are not afraid of dreaming bigger and making it happen. People in my class...
Katharine McLennan (52:05)
Yeah.
I love that.
Carmen Gordon (52:29)
raising funds, buying companies, and people that are like a couple of years older than I am, I would have never dreamt of that. And not because I can't, it's just having the boldness to ask, believing in yourself in a way, like, I don't know, I'm just like, I am fascinating by that and I wanna be surrounded by these people and gain the courage that they have so that I also can do like amazing things.
Katharine McLennan (52:55)
Isn't that a phenomenal answer because here you are combining two sides of the equation, which is what is success? And you've given, you you've had time, but also exposure to lots of cultures, lots of ideas, lots of thoughts as to what is the meaning and you go, okay, but there's still courage that I can apply and my wish for you,
Carmen Gordon (53:07)
Mm-hmm.
Katharine McLennan (53:20)
is that you think courage in your non-working life, because all of us, and even a 10 years old, 20 years old, will
come up with challenges that are just unimaginable. The whole experience for me, not everybody has an opportunity to be in a marriage or have children and maybe in a couple of years have grandchildren. With my daughter getting married, that's a huge milestone. Being a mother of a bride, you're kidding. Anyway, so the linking of those two ideas with the courage to
Carmen Gordon (53:55)
Yeah.
Katharine McLennan (54:03)
The courage is the courage to try new ideas in your social work, to reach out to people that, like your drug addiction in the Philippines, to reach out to different parts of society, not necessarily to help them, which we love to do, but to be fascinated and to think about the mutual interest even around the corner in
Carmen Gordon (54:26)
Yeah.
Katharine McLennan (54:32)
you know, in Madrid. So let me end with this because you prompted me to end with this. This quote is from Ralph Waddle Emerson. And ⁓ what's interesting about this quote is that it was originally written by a woman, unknown women. And it's not in the exact words, right? In her own words, ⁓ her name was Betty
Stratton, think. And he saw this and reformed the concept in his beautiful poetic language as he could. And this has happened many times in history. There's a quote that is described to Nelson Mandela that was actually written by a woman called Marianne Williamson. And it happens. But anyway, but the quote, interestingly enough, was put on a card that was given to me by my best friend in high school.
Carmen Gordon (55:13)
Thank
You
Katharine McLennan (55:30)
And then the same exact card four years later was given to me by my college roommate. And it was interesting. I keep this to my heart. So it's Ralph Waldo Emerson and says, what is success? And it says to laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the
appreciation and ⁓ approbation of honest critics, to endure the portrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find to find the best in others, to give of oneself, whether it's to leave a better child, healthy child, better child.
Carmen Gordon (56:08)
Thank
Katharine McLennan (56:18)
garden patch or a redeemed social condition to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation and this is my favorite part and I always try to think of it I forget it all the time in the day of life is to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived this is to have succeeded and I love that
Carmen Gordon (56:37)
Yeah.
Yes, last sentence in other languages
is something very similar and I just love it.