May 04, 2026
When Katharine McLennan, MBA ’95, and her classmates were at Stanford Graduate School of Business, they communicated with each other via notes placed in personal mailboxes known as pigeonholes. “With no mobile phones or internet, we used pigeonholes for messages to our friends to meet somewhere,” she recalls.
Three decades and many technological leaps later, McLennan created a new way for members of the Stanford GSB community to exchange messages. In November 2024, she launched From Baby Boomer to Gen Z, a podcast that paired 25 “elders” from the Class of 1995 with 25 “youngers” from the Class of 2025 for a series of conversations that covered topics such as finding purpose, avoiding burnout, and the importance of intuition in a data-driven economy. McLennan framed the podcast around a question facing leaders of all ages: “In a world increasingly shaped by AI, will we collapse into isolation as a society, or can we catalyze the ‘ingenuity age’ instead?”
The 25-episode series was timed to celebrate three milestones: the Class of 2025’s graduation, the Class of 1995’s 30th reunion, and Stanford GSB’s Centennial. Yet its aims extended beyond nostalgia. McLennan, a leadership and culture strategist, envisioned the podcast as a “wisdom exchange” between two generations that have experienced massive technological shifts. “Our Class of 1995 graduated at the dawn of the internet, heralding the move into the information age from the industrial age,” she explained in the first episode. “The Class of 2025 will graduate at the dawn of artificial intelligence, another transformative moment in history.”
Reflecting on the completed series, McLennan noted how alums separated by three decades came together to find new connections. “I was deeply moved by the wisdom of both generations. The Class of 2025 brought fierce curiosity and ethical imagination. My Class of 1995 brought our experience, hard-won, our humility that comes with that, and decades of lessons from lived leadership.” She hopes to launch a new series including members of the Class of 2027 later this year.
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