Meet MVP Jenna Saunders, IT Engineer, University of Phoenix

You’ve seen them quite often around the Pathfinder-verse, heard them speak at events or virtual meetings, maybe even dialogued with them in a forum thread—they’re our Most Valuable Pathfinders! They are the spark keeping the Pathfinder Community ablaze, so it was about time we took a beat to really get to know each one of our MVPs better and share their unique stories with you!

So without further ado, let’s get to know…

The Basics                                                                                                                                         

• Official Title: IT Engineer                   
• Connect with Jenna in the Community: ​@Jenna4321

I do IT work at the University of Phoenix. I build things that make everyone's life easier.

Jenna Saunders is a former teacher turned IT Engineer who found her calling in automation, driven by a genuine love of watching people discover what technology can do for them. Based in Oregon and working at the University of Phoenix, she brings curiosity, warmth and a knack for making the complex feel approachable to everything she does.

Fun Facts

• She originally trained to be a zookeeper and did a zoo internship to prove it!
• Her favorite animal is the giraffe, and her most adventurous dream? Riding one. Just hop on, hang onto the neck and go wherever it goes.
• She's a former teacher, and you can still see it in the way she lights up when a stakeholder's mind gets blown by automation.
• She's a single mom, a gardener growing vegetables and herbs and a devoted fan of learning from people.

Biggest Professional Achievement to Date

Winning the Automation Anywhere Agentic Bounty Challenge, a hands-on competition where Jenna used the full Automation Anywhere toolset to design a broad, real-world use case, orchestrating AI tools end-to-end and exploring the possibilities of agentic automation. Impressive for someone just two years into the field!

Jenna in the Community

Jenna is an active participant in Pathfinder virtual events, which she considers the standout feature of the community. What she loves most is that they don't just feel like a broadcast. There's real interactivity, and questions actually get answered.

"Most virtual events you go to, you can submit things to the Q&A and they may or may not get answered. But you really feel like you're a part of the event with the Pathfinder virtual events."

As an MVP, Jenna sees her role as being a light for others in the automation space, not as someone who has all the answers, but as someone who rallies the community around a shared belief: even if I don't know and you don't know, together we can figure it out.

What’s Next for Jenna

Professionally, Jenna is zeroed in on expanding her ability to push automations into the tools and platforms her stakeholders are already using. She believes that meeting people where they are, rather than asking them to come to a new platform, will be a game-changer for adoption.

She's also thinking big about the future of automation in higher education. In her view, the sector is full of multi-step, multi-department processes where things fall through the cracks, student externship tracking, program reviews, approvals, and automation is exactly the answer those institutions are looking for, even if they don't know it yet.

Thank you, Jenna, for letting us all get to know you better. And thank you for your continued contributions to our Pathfinder Community!