In this insightful interview with Forbes senior editor Maggie McGrath, Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, reflects on her decade-long leadership journey transforming the company from a small startup with under $50 million in annual recurring revenue to a publicly traded AI powerhouse. When she took over, PagerDuty was a founder-led, venture-backed company focused on helping developers manage tech emergencies through a self-serve platform. Jennifer envisioned leveraging the vast proprietary data PagerDuty collected to automate incident diagnosis and resolution using AI, a vision that has evolved alongside rapid technological advancements and the growing complexity of digital operations.
Jennifer emphasizes that chaos and technological emergencies are inevitable in today’s complex enterprise environments, especially with the rise of agentic AI. PagerDuty’s platform is designed to detect anomalies early, diagnose issues quickly, and automate resolutions to minimize business and customer impact. She highlights the critical importance of enterprise resilience and trust, noting that customers hold brands accountable for failures regardless of the underlying cause. The financial stakes are high, with major incidents costing companies on average $800,000 each, underscoring the need for proactive operational resilience and leadership preparedness.
AI has been integral to PagerDuty’s strategy from the start, initially through machine learning to automate workflows and now through generative AI and agentic tools that assist in incident response and operational tasks. Jennifer shares how AI adoption within PagerDuty has extended beyond technologists to functional teams, transforming productivity and workflows across marketing, finance, and HR. However, she also stresses the importance of human judgment, ethical guardrails, and a culture of care to safely harness AI’s potential while managing its risks as a new operational risk layer.
Leadership and continuous learning are central themes in Jennifer’s approach. She describes her evolution from fearing mistakes and over-preparing to embracing transparency and vulnerability with her team. Her leadership style values curiosity, adaptability, and direct communication about strengths and weaknesses. Jennifer also openly discusses the importance of prioritizing health and sleep as foundational to executive performance, challenging the stereotype of CEOs sacrificing well-being for work and advocating for personalized resilience strategies.
Jennifer’s career path—from her start at Procter & Gamble to roles in supply chain automation, telecommunications, and eventually tech leadership—illustrates her commitment to innovation and customer-centricity. A memorable anecdote about using M&M’s to make a life decision highlights her pragmatic and experimental mindset. As she looks ahead, Jennifer aspires for PagerDuty to be recognized as the essential AI operations platform that enables enterprise resilience and trust in an increasingly complex and fast-paced digital world.
