Kepler's Literary Foundation, the nonprofit, events-focused arm of Kepler's in Menlo Park, Calif., has entered a partnership with software company SAP to bring writers, artists and other speakers to SAP's in-house training program, the SAP Academy for Engineering.
As part of the six-month Academy for Engineering program, SAP brings a cohort of engineers to California for a total of three months. While in the program, the engineers learn coding and business skills and also explore art, culture and the humanities, with the Kepler's Foundation speaker series being an instrumental part of that.
"They're bringing people who are three to five years into their careers and seen as the rising stars at SAP," explained Jean Forstner, executive director of Kepler's Literary Foundation. "These are people they believe will shape the future of SAP or any other company they may go to work for."
According to Forstner, the initial group for this fall consists of 55-60 engineers, and SAP plans to grow future cohorts to include around 100 people. Kepler's has already done two author events for the current cohort, which featured Silicon Valley historian Leslie Berlin and Tamim Ansary, author of The Invention of Yesterday. For each event, a member of the cohort conducts the on-stage interview and SAP buys a copy of the book for everyone in attendance. Kepler's plans to include both touring authors as well as authors local to the area.
Praveen Madan, CEO of Kepler's, explained that as SAP began designing the program, company leadership came to the conclusion that they "really need to reinvigorate the culture of the company," and when they considered what leaders of the future might look like, they realized that "teaching them coding would not be enough." They needed to understand history and philosophy, issues of ethics and morals and art and storytelling.
When asked how the partnership came about, Forstner answered that people from Google, Facebook, SAP and other tech companies often attend the Foundation's events or shop at Kepler's. Ferose V.R., SVP and head of the SAP Academy, knows the store and has attended a number of events, and he approached Kepler's about partnering with the Academy of Engineering.
Madan added that one of the reasons Kepler's is so excited about the partnership is that for a number of years, he and his colleagues have been trying to figure out how to start partnering with these big companies and bring literary events to the "tens of thousands of people on these corporate campuses." He said: "It's a new relationship, a new partnership, a new way of bringing books to people."