Editor's note: The number of participants for the Institute for Leadership in Technology has changed. The story has been corrected to reflect this change.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, majored in English.

Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO, studied history and literature.

Michael Eisner, former CEO of Walt Disney Co., majored in English literature and theatre.

Carly Fiorina, first female president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, studied history and philosophy. 

Humanities education, not just traditional business schooling, propelled these leaders to successful careers. These kinds of stories and others were the basis for the founding of the Institute for Leadership in Technology in 2023.

The Virginia Tech certificate program offers in-person and virtual education and experiences for business leaders covering a host of liberal arts and humanities subjects, from history and philosophy to religion and creative writing. The goal is to support professionals in building leadership potential and purpose for today's time by grounding themselves in the arts and sciences. The history of science and exposure to the origins of computing and artificial intelligence also will be infused into this year’s curriculum.

The 2025-26 fellows - the institute's third cohort - include a technology and entrepreneurship consultant, a police chief, a policy and law professional, an engineering educator, and others. 

For these seven fellows, the institute year begins next week in Blacksburg as part of one of three in-person residences. Most of the nine-month program involves virtual learning modules with other in-person meetings held in Miami, Florida, and Alexandria, Virginia. 

Rishi Jaitly, professor of practice and distinguished humanities fellow at Virginia Tech, as well as a former leader at Google, Twitter, and OpenAI, is founder of this unique leadership institute that is unlike many others in the country.  

“Through humanities-grounded education, our first two classes of fellows strengthened their contemplation, curiosity, and communications muscles – all essential to full stack leadership in this AI-ascendant era,” Jaitly said. “We’ve done so at a time when questions about leadership and learning swirl through our institutional and individual lives.”

The institute has several honorary advisors, including Robert Newman, former president and director of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.

The institute “offers current and future technology innovators and leaders the broad, humanistic grounding necessary for understanding not only the ‘how,’ but also the ‘why’ that attends their products and actions,” he said. “The fuller perspective they will take away from their immersion in this program will enhance their communication skills as well as their thought processes.”

The 2025-26 fellows are:

  • Lucía Tróchez Ardila, senior technology and entrepreneurship consultant for C Minds and the Public Interest Technology Lab, Guadalajara, Mexico, and Bogota, Colombia
  • Anthony Cheney, founder and executive director of the Olga Iglesias Project, Miami, Florida
  • John Clair, chief of police, Blacksburg
  • Kameron Jackson, founder and CEO, Personafire.io, Chicago
  • Shimal Kapoor, former policy team member for Meta India; former consultant for the World Bank, New Delhi, India
  • Ravi Ramakrishnan, Virginia Tech alumnus, professional services and customer success engineering leader, formerly of NetSuite, NASA, HP, and Accenture, Chicago
  • Woodrow W. Winchester III, executive director, Texas Engineering Executive Education, University of Texas at Austin, Austin

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