Biography
Transformation architect catalyzing organization's momentum towards their north star by helping them to broaden and sharpen the solutions they find for hard problems.
Pamela L. Jennings, Ph.D., MBA, is internationally known as a thought leader in integrative research and learning across computer science, engineering, and the arts. As a Presidential Innovation Fellow, Pamela is detailed at the U.S. Department of Transportation in the Office of the Assistant Deputy Secretary of Research. There she works closely with subject matter experts in the Office of R&D Coordination and USDOT leadership across the agency. Pamela’s USDOT work supports grant initiatives and strategic foresight projects that respond to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the White House Executive Order on Equity, and implementation of the technology transformation goals from the 2022-2026 USDOT Research, Development, and Technology Strategic Plan.
Pamela has developed program frameworks that integrate learning, research, creativity, innovation, and economic development. She believes this is the nexus where breakthroughs and paradigm shifts that drive our better futures will be made. Pamela’s boundless curiosities about developing technologies in the service of people was anchored early in her career at IBM Almaden Research Center and SRI International as a Human Centered Computing and Education Technology design researcher. Pamela served as a professor, academic administrator, and research director at a range of higher education institutions from Research 1 Universities to Art and Design colleges and HBCUs. As an academic, she taught, mentored, and supported innovative projects and their people who worked across and in-between academic disciplines and professional practices. Pamela served as a National Science Foundation Program Director in the Computer, Information Science, and Engineering directorate where she led the groundbreaking CreativeIT and co-managed the Human Centered Computing grant programs. She has been a contributor and project lead in several National Academies of Sciences (NAS) initiatives that elevated the importance of integrative learning and research in higher education. This included being a consensus committee member for the 2018 NAS report, “Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education: Branches from the Same Tree”.
In her leisure, Pamela enjoys singing Puccini and Copeland. Pamela received her Ph.D. from the University of Plymouth; MBA from the University of Michigan; MFA from the School of Visual Arts; MA from New York University and the International Center of Photography; and BA from Oberlin College & Conservatory.
