At the AI Kiran Inclusive AI CXO Event in New Delhi, LinkedIn Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Jessica Jensen delivered one of the most candid and compelling conversations on leadership and the future of inclusive AI. Sharing the stage with Dr. Sapna Poti, Director of Strategic Alliance at the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India, Jensen offered a deeply personal and sharp analysis of how AI can empower workers, reshape hiring, and widen opportunity in India and beyond.
A Career Built on Reinvention and Purpose
Jensen opened by tracing her unconventional path from Boston Consulting Group to digital media and then to entrepreneurship.
“My parents said, what are you doing? That sounds absolutely tedious and insane,” she said, describing her consulting years. She later joined a small newspaper company and helped take it from print to digital.
Then came her sustainability startup.
“My husband and I started a sustainable home improvement company called Low Impact Living,” she said. “We raised some money and we were really duking it out. We say we were married 38 years in a three-year period.”
The effort collided with the home equity crisis, but the experience shaped her long-term commitment to building change for women. “I am on the feminist marathon,” she said. “Women like you both inspire me greatly.”
Dr. Sapna Poti shared her own journey, beginning as a premature baby raised in an incubator for two months. “One needs to learn to survive at any cost,” she said. She grew up with a father who constantly reminded her, “The boys will come to your level at some time,” something she later found reversed in the workplace. After roles in Grundfos, Deloitte, ITC and Toyota, she completed her PhD at IIT Madras, where she discovered her purpose and eventually moved into government policy.
Jensen responded warmly: “I was also a preemie. I was also in an incubator for three months.” She spoke of the nurse who raised her, who continued to visit her for years. The exchange set the tone for a conversation rooted in honesty rather than corporate polish.
AI as an Equalizer in Hiring
When the discussion turned to AI and inclusion, Jensen was clear: the technology can dismantle long-held biases if built with intention.
“AI can be a great equalizer in hiring. It doesn’t care where you went to university or if your name is Robert Jones III,” she said. “We focus on skills and skills matching. Anyone from any background can have a skill.”
For LinkedIn’s hiring ecosystem, she said, this means gender and racial bias drop sharply. “Gender bias flies out the window. Racial bias flies out the window.”
She also discussed the AI-powered job search tool LinkedIn has rolled out.
“You just use natural language. What is your experience, what are you looking for, what are you interested in? It will give you full-time, part-time, gig. It’s a widening of the aperture of the definition of work.”
India’s AI Leap: “My country looks asleep”
Jensen underscored how India’s grassroots adoption of AI is outpacing most global markets.
“The adoption of AI by small businesses in India makes my country look asleep,” she said. “Over 90 percent adoption of tools in hiring, marketing, sales. Indians are grabbing the technology and making it work at a very local, small and big scale.”
She added, “I’m going to try to bottle some of that spirit and sprinkle it home.”
Data, Inclusion and the Trust Challenge
Dr. Poti highlighted the systemic challenge of creating inclusive AI without representative datasets.
“Government data is the biggest data. And if that is missing, then it is very difficult,” she said, describing failed attempts by private players to collect data at scale.
An audience member raised concerns about bias in training datasets. Jensen acknowledged the importance of addressing foundational bias and reiterated that the future of AI depends on the quality and diversity of the data it learns from.
A Conversation Rooted in Vulnerability and Vision
The event blended personal storytelling, policy nuance and technical insight. Jensen’s reflections stood out for their honesty and immediacy. From parenting in the algorithmic age to building AI that expands equity, her message to India’s tech and marketing ecosystem was clear: opportunity is enormous, but awareness, empathy and responsibility must keep pace.
“We have to teach our children to be critical consumers of media,” she said. “And we also have to teach them to use these platforms to create the future.”
Her final takeaway echoed the theme of the evening. Inclusive AI is not just a technological project. It is a human one, built through courage, clarity and collective intent.