Roberta Katz: Gen Z, Explained

Roberta Katz was involved in helping to establish the Distinguished Careers Institute program at Stanford University and has been a DCI advisor for many years.  She is a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and co-author of the book Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age (University of Chicago Press, 2021). In this podcast she and Avivah Wittenberg-Cox discuss the book, which describes the findings from a multi-year, interdisciplinary study of the behaviors and values of American and British Gen Zers and analyses the historical, technological, and social trends that have influenced them.

Roberta holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Columbia University as well as a JD from the University of Washington. She was in private law practice before becoming the General Counsel and Senior Vice President of McCaw Cellular Corporation (now AT&T Wireless) and, subsequently, Netscape Communications Corporation. Between July 2004 and September 2017, she served as Associate Vice President for Strategic Planning at Stanford. She has been deeply involved in the facilitation of a variety of interdisciplinary research initiatives at Stanford, and is a member of various Stanford advisory boards. She is also a member of the Boards of Trustees of the Exploratorium (SF) and the National Parks Conservation Association (DC).

Some Useful Links:

* Roberta’s book is Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age. It is by Roberta Katz, Sarah Ogilvie, Jane Shaw and Linda Woodhead, and is available from Amazon here (USA) or here (UK).

* Roberta also mentioned Parenting for a Digital Future, by Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross (Oxford University Press, 2020), about democratization of the family.

* Distinguished Careers Institute, Stanford University