Lesson Learned: Reflections of a Corporate Activist

Determined from the beginning to put teeth into the idea of “doing well by doing good,” Barbara developed HP’s breakthrough programs for women and minority recruiting, mentored outstanding people throughout HP, and received Management Legacy awards from both the HP Technical Women’s Conference and the HP Deaf and Hard of Hearing Forum. She co-founded HP’s Sustainability Network, as well as e-inclusion, a business initiative and program to provide the four billion people at the bottom of the global economic pyramid access to the social and economic opportunities of technology. Barbara is currently a director for strategy and change in University Relations.

Presenter(s)

Barbara Waugh is the author of "The Soul in the Computer: the Story of a Corporate Revolutionary". A longtime radical activist, she joined Hewlett-Packard 20 years ago, and used her successive positions as company recruiting manager, and personnel director and worldwide change manager for the renowned HP Labs to transform HP's corporate culture. Along the way she invented and discovered a set of "radical tools" for introducing practical change and energizing altruism at all levels of the organization. The book has received enthusiastic reviews from Dow-Jones to Fast Company to the San Francisco Chronicle; and has been the subject of dozens of talk shows and interviews.

Barbara's work has been featured in many publications on organizational change, including The Dance of Change; The Rebel Rules; The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, Surfing the Edge of Chaos; Fast Company, Business 2.0, Strategy & Business and Fortune. In 2004, her work was featured in Fortune senior editor Marc Gunther's Faith and Fortune; Lisa Marshall's Speak the Truth and Point to Hope, and in the Stanford Innovation Review. In 2005, her work will be a chapter in the Linkage/Jossey-Bass Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership; and she will be on the cover and featured in Business Ethics magazine.

Barbara has a PhD in Psychology and Organizational Behavior from the Wright Institute in Berkeley (with honors), an MA in Theology and Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago (as a Danforth/Kent Fellow), and an MA in German Literature from Florida State University (Phi Beta Kappa). She has served on the Board of Directors for the State of the World Forum, the Board of Directors for the Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, and the Board of Advisers for the Global Fund for Women. She is currently in the founders' circle of Corporation 2020, on the Board of Directors for Engineers for a Sustainable World, on the Board of Advisers for the Global Women's Leadership Center, and a member of the Oxfam Leadership Circle.

She lives in Northern California with her partner, their two teenagers, and their grandchild.