“College graduates recently booed commencement speakers -- former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, real-estate executive Gloria Caulfield and music mogul Scott Borchetta -- who promoted artificial intelligence as a positive force.
Young people have big feelings about their new reality, but they are missing something. AI is disrupting the traditional way of doing things, but it is also creating opportunities for junior employees.
At 46, I'm at the midpoint of my executive marketing career. I want, and am required, to use AI at work -- yet I fear that my hard-won institutional knowledge is replicable by any entry-level employee who builds an agent to do the things it took me years to learn.
Early in my working years, I earned access to resources, relationships and insights gradually, so the people handing them over could vet me along the way. Major productivity aids were tied to seniority. The C-suite had assistants, and senior employees had institutional knowledge. My access to these boons was limited by how high I was positioned on the organizational chart. The gatekeeping was practical and cultural: I won the trust of my employers by proving myself.
That architecture is falling apart. Anyone can use AI to do the basics: summarize meetings, draft briefings and manage calendars. It is like having an assistant directly reporting to you on day one, not in decade two.
The opportunity to slingshot yourself onto the radar of upper management will be limited only by curiosity. My colleague's 23-year-old assistant fed a multimillion-dollar media plan into an agent she trained on industry ad-spend benchmarks, seasonal cost fluctuations, and past performance audits. It flagged a significant overcharge. In her first six months on the job, she never sat in the boardroom, yet she saved the company more than her annual salary.
On another team, a 20-something junior employee built an AI agent that scans restaurant options in destination cities, cross-references them against a client's preferred wine varietals, and flags the best spots for a tight travel budget. If he hadn't built this tool, I might not have known about him. Now he's on my radar -- proof the balance of organizational power has shifted.
Despite these new opportunities, recent graduates are concerned that AI will jeopardize their career prospects. A recent poll found that nearly 9 in 10 members of the Class of 2026 worry AI will eliminate entry-level jobs. They underestimate AI's ability to elevate motivated workers at every level.
Organizational success still relies on trust, hard work and human connection. AI hasn't changed that, even if it's widening the access points.
Recent graduates can meet this moment by recognizing that AI in 2026 offers the same sort of resources that Google in 2002, email in 1995 and Excel in 1992 all did. Early success with AI tools may favor the inexperienced and unjaded. It requires minimal training, allowing newcomers to move at the speed of business.
Today, ambitious rookies aren't constrained by bureaucratic red tape or the strictures of office hierarchy. That is something I would have cheered for when I moved into my first cubicle at 22.
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Ms. Javor is a Chicago-based marketing executive.” [1]
1. AI Is a Boon to Ambitious Recent Grads. Javor, Andrea. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 22 June 2026: A15.
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