From Money to Molecules: Taylor Murphy '16 on Leading AI Transformation in a Global Enterprise
Watch on YouTubeVideo summary
Taylor Murphy '16 describes her professional journey as a transition from the world of finance to pharmaceutical innovation, effectively bridging fintech rigor with molecular science at Sanofi. After graduating from The High School at Syracuse University, she built a career that took her through financial services and technology consulting before leading digital transformation initiatives in life sciences. Her path highlights how foundational skills learned early on—specifically the blend of technical knowledge with effective communication—are critical for navigating complex global enterprises. Murphy emphasizes that her time at the high school provided not only coding experience but also essential public speaking abilities, which she leverages daily to translate intricate technological concepts into clear business impacts and foster strong connections within a supportive alumni network.
At Sanofi, where she now partners with product leadership to design an AI-powered operating model for global R&D, Murphy explains that becoming "AI powered" is less about simply adding new tools and more about fundamentally shifting organizational mindsets and behaviors. She notes that true transformation requires rewiring neural pathways through repetition and consistency, moving away from legacy waterfall approaches toward agile, iterative ways of working where teams can pivot quickly when solutions do not work initially. A key component of this shift involves upskilling staff to embrace a digital-first mentality while maintaining strict ethical governance frameworks like the RAISE framework to ensure patient data security across multiple international jurisdictions. The goal is to cut drug discovery cycles in half by embedding AI into every aspect of daily operations, allowing scientists to focus on their core mission rather than administrative logistics.
However, Murphy stresses that technology alone cannot drive adoption; it requires a human-centric approach centered on psychological safety and clear communication. For change initiatives to stick, leadership must cascade goals effectively while creating an environment where employees feel safe asking hard questions and making mistakes during the learning process. She advocates for "first principles thinking," encouraging organizations to break down problems to their most basic truths before building new processes from there. Furthermore, she advises students aspiring to work at this intersection of AI and strategy to cultivate a solution mindset that leverages creativity rather than fearing displacement by automation. By doubling down on what makes them uniquely human—such as creative problem-solving and authentic personal branding through platforms like LinkedIn—they can differentiate themselves in an evolving job market where the ability to collaborate globally with diverse cultures is paramount.
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Hello, I'm Jeff Hemsley and this is
another episode of Infoiversity from the
High School at Syracuse University.
Today we're joined by high school alumni
Terry Murphy, Taylor Murphy, sorry, from
2016, a digital transformation leader
working at the intersection of strategy,
technology, and human- centered change.
After studying information management
and technology and global enterprise
technology at the high school, Taylor
began her career in financial services
at Fidelity and moved into technology
consulting at EY and now partners with
product leadership at Sani. How do I say
that? Sanopoy.
>> You can say Sani or Senhi.
>> Seni. I like Senhi. That's
>> okay. Great. to design and
operationalize its global digital R&D
operating model as the company works
towards becoming an AI powered
pharmaceutical enterprise. And we're
going to talk a lot about AI and stuff
like that. She describes her path as
going from money to molecules, which I
think is very clever, blending fintech
rigor with pharmaceutical innovation.
Alongside her enterprise work, she she's
also the founder of a leadership and
strategic clarity advisory,
Taylor A. Murphy Coaching, supporting
professional women navigating career
inflection points and personal
transformation.
Today we'll talk about what it really
means to become AI powered, how to
translate big ideas into actionable,
scalable processes, and what leadership
looks like during periods of
transformation, which I think is very
relevant at the moment.
So you study the information management
and technology here at the high school.
What foundations from that experience
still show up in your work today?
>> Yeah, thank you Jeeoff. And again, thank
you for having me on the podcast. It's
an honor to be here and to support um
and hopefully serve the high school
community at large. Um so I think
there's so many things that I learned
and experience at the high school that
I've really carried forward into my
career. Um, I think not only just the
technical concepts that I learned in
classes and the coding experience that I
had while serving in class, but also the
ability to be able to communicate very
effectively has served me quite a bit.
And I think that's a very underrated um
part of the curriculum that the high
school really provided me. Um, we were
not only learning, you know, the the
hard technical skills in class, but we
were also practicing our public speaking
and communication skills by being being
forced to public speak in class and um I
think for me also serving as an high
school uh board of advisor for the
students and being able to serve as a
panelist for the IT girls retreat
program as well um also allowed me to
hone my communication skills. And I
think that has really served me very
incredibly in my career. Um because a
lot of my career has not only been you
know supporting technology teams but
it's also been serving as that liaison
between the technology organization and
the business that we support to be able
to translate really technical concepts
into business impact so that we can
share you know the huge technological
impacts that we're having and how it
relates to the business in which we
support. So, I really think that piece
has really served me well. And I think
in addition to that, just the the
community, the close-knit community that
we have in the high school and those
connections that I've made have really
served me in a lot of job opportunities
in a lot of just opportunities in
general where not only, you know, for
internships and jobs, but just also to
foster, you know, close community and
connections outside of graduating from
college. for instance, like I don't
think a week goes by without me
communicating or connecting in person
with somebody that I met either at the
high school or Syracuse University. Um
that that community has been a huge
impact on my career. Um and so I think
those three things, not only the the
technical concepts of course and the
coursework that we do, but then also the
blend of the technical concepts with
being able to communicate them
effectively has really served me well.
You know, I love hearing that. I I love
hearing that you're plugged into the
alumni network. I think if there's one
thing that I want to communicate to
people that are thinking about the high
school or students that are already
here, it's that look, the Syracuse
Alumni Network is incredible and very
active and there's just all sorts of
opportunities that can come there and
you know, you're in some class with some
person and you never know that person
may hire you someday. Exactly.
>> So those kind of connections are
invaluable.
>> Totally. Totally.
>> So how did your career evolve from
Fidelity to EY and into leading digital
transformation? Yeah, that's a it's a
great story and I and I've talked about
it on other podcasts before, but I'll
try to keep this somewhat succinct and
brief, but um so gra so upon graduating
from the high school, I had the
opportunity to work at Fidelity
Investments um and go through their
their Bleep program, which was basically
their kind of technology upskilling
program um for new graduates out of
school to then be embedded within the
organization. And so I was in Raleigh,
North Carolina for about a year um going
through that sort of postgrad upskilling
program where again we did a lot of
public speaking too. So it kind of it
was like a beautiful blend and extension
of like a lot of the things that we did
in the high school which I thought was
really awesome. Um, and then I worked
out of our Marramac New Hampshire office
and I did a lot of different techni had
a lot of different technical roles which
really laid the foundation of like
understanding like global enterprise
technology and then I was able to go
into more of our product model where I
was supporting applications mobile
applications in in this instance for our
uh Fidelity brokerage technology. ology
division. So I was helping build mobile
applications for broker dealers and
registered advisors to be able to
support their clients. And so I I
learned I started off more back-end
infrastructure technology. Now I'm
working more client front end where we
have endusers that we're supporting. Um
and so that was a fun experience to kind
of see the going from sort of that
backend enterprise technology to front
end. And I think in that period of time,
agile and scrum were really hitting the
scene. And they they were starting to
talk about it more within our
organization. And I was really learning
kind of what it meant to work in a agile
product management kind of organization.
Um because again, we had very ambitious
goals. We wanted to uh be able to push
and ship out features very quickly to
our end users. So I felt like that was a
great ex hands-on learning experience
for learning like what it means to work
in a very agile environment. So I was
able from that experience to get scrum
master certified, product manager
certified, working with developers,
business sponsors, you know, and being
that liaison kind of like what I said
before of translating what we're working
on technologically to how it's going to
be impacting the end users that we're
supporting. So I was able to serve at
Fidelity for roughly four years in that
capacity. And then I knew I wanted to
get just more experience working across
staying within the financial service
industry but working across a lot of
other enterprises. And so that's when I
made the transition to actually move
into consulting and working at Ernston
Young, which also has a tremendous
amount of Syracuse and high school
graduates that that work there. So, I
was able to really expand my, you know,
Syracuse and high school network going
into EY, too. Some of the some of the
the um some of the employees I had met
while I was while I was um attending
Syracuse, but I I met so many more
people that I didn't necessarily cross
paths with at Syracuse. So, it was
really great to um feel connected back
to Syracuse and feeling like, you know,
joining this huge organization, I wasn't
really alone cuz I had so much support
from others. And so, in my four or five
years at EY, I was able to take a lot of
the hands-on experience that I had at
Fidelity and be able to scale that to
other enterprises. And I think that's
where I really learned about how to
craft really efficient operating models
because my niche at EY not only working
in our f supporting our financial
services industry but being a technology
consultant who had actually lived and
breathed and work in an agile product
organization and a lot of organizations
at that time were really trying to
transform their organizations to become
more of that agile scrum product
organization because they wanted to be
able to compete effectively in the
marketplace and be able to ship out
products at scale. So I was able to
really leverage that hands-on experience
at EY and be able to scale that out. And
then towards the end of my career at EY,
I had been supporting at that point the
financial services financial services
industry for about 8 to nine years. And
I knew that I wanted to make a change to
a different industry and see what the
opportunities were there. And health and
wellness and health care have always
been a big passion of mine. So I
considered moving over into you know the
life sciences and pharmaceutical
industry. Um so at the conclusion of my
time at EY I actually um decided to take
a little bit of a career break to make
sure you know kind of what I wanted my
next step to be. And during that time
during my my brief career break I was
also able to upskill myself in AI
because that's when we were having these
conversations around okay generative AI
a lot more people were adopting chat GBT
and other GBT technologies. So I really
decided to take a step back to upskill
myself so that I could also be effective
wherever I decided to pivot to next. And
so during that career pivot, I was able
to again upskill myself um take a t take
a muchneeded break and then also emerge
in this new opportunity that I have at
Santa Fe with clarity, clear mind,
leveraging past experience, but also now
embedding AI into my day-to-day as well.
So I joined Santa Fe about a year. It's
almost been a year. It feels much longer
just with how much fast-paced change has
occurred over this past year. But I
joined Santa Fe and have been supporting
our digital research and development
division in creating a global scalable
you know AI forward operating model to
be able to support those teams to
effectively build out products to help
patients. So that's that's my current
journey today.
So that sounds really big like when
companies say that that sounds massive.
What's actually involved in that and and
what is your role in making that all
happen?
>> Yeah. So I when I was hired my they
really liked the fact that I had worked
also in a different industry too. I
didn't necessarily have that legacy
understanding of pharmaceutical and life
sciences and I thought initially in my
career pivot that was going to be a
blocker for me to be able to go into a
different industry but I think that
actually served me well because again I
don't necessarily have that historical
business context but I have the
experience of building out these
operating models again with that agile
product mindset at the heart of it to be
able to help the teams be able to
organize themselves effectively because
I think when when companies and
especially Santa Fe they talk about AI
it's really not necessarily laying AI on
top of already existing systems it's
like how do we keep AI top of mind and
how do we like almost self-organize
ourselves differently so that we can
leverage this incredibly powerful tool
in order to enhance our processes and
systems. How can we think about problems
and technologies differently? Um with
the sole intent of always keeping in our
case the patient and patient centricity
top of mind. How can we leverage AI to
solve our problems? How can we and in an
ethical way too of course and we can
probably talk a little bit about that
later too but it's like how do we
organize ourselves differently to and
leverage this technology for us to go
faster and be able to solve our problems
faster and I've it's insane how much has
changed since again like I started la
last year how much has changed um within
our organization and how we've organized
ourselves differently how we operate
differently ly and how we're just able
to ship things out so much faster and at
scale than we have in the past.
>> So, um, so a couple things you said.
One, you talked about you talked about
essentially keeping things top of mind.
That's a people problem, right? Like
that's not a technology problem,
>> right?
>> I'm wondering if you can because a lot
of companies are struggling with exactly
this.
In a lot of cases, something has to
change internally for adoption to take
place,
>> right?
>> Do you have any concrete examples of how
that's being facilitated in your
organization?
>> Yeah, for our organization, a lot of it
had to do with upskilling our our staff
to these generative AI technologies and
other AI technologies. I also think I'll
take a step back. It's also a huge
mindset shift. Well, it's not just an
internal organizational change. It's an
internal to the person change as well.
>> Yes. Exactly. because it's AI is
fundamentally shifting how people
view the world and see problems that
it's an internal shift and adopting kind
of this digital first AI mindset to be
able to adopt it easier because I think
a lot of people are very comfortable
with how things were and how things have
operated in in the past that AI has been
so disruptive of a technology that you
almost have to take a step back and kind
of go to first principles thinking and
like build it up from there. First
principles being like breaking something
down to its like most truth point and
then kind of building processes,
procedures, mindsets from there. And a
lot of I think on top of that too, it's
also how people show up in their
day-to-day roles. Um in the past I
remember when we were talking about um
kind of shifting to a agile product way
of working the old legacy kind of
operating model was more of a waterfall
approach and that was a hu in those
transformations that I was supporting at
Fidelity and EY that was really all a
mindset and organizational change too
because it's a very fundamentally
different mindset to work in an agile
way and being able to iterate and stop
when things aren't working and reassess
assess and measure and like adapt from
there that I think it just requires
people to be able to drop something
that's not working very quickly and
being able to pivot and shift and being
okay with something not working the
first time around and being able to
measure what is working and kind of lean
into that a bit more. So I think
organizationally we've also had to
upskill people not only on the techn
technological side but then also like
what does their role look like? A lot of
people have been moving from being a
project manager into more of like a
product owner. What does that look like?
How is that different? Um what are the
expectations around that role? Who who
are the new stakeholders that you work
with? Do you have an understanding of
what the business problem is? How does
that necessarily translate to the
technological products that you're
supporting? Are are the things that
we're building actually moving the
needle towards our overall grand vision?
So, it's a lot of these different ways
of thinking that I think are the hardest
to overcome. Not overcome, but the
hardest to adopt and adapt as we move
forward. Um, and that's been I think the
biggest struggle that I've seen um
across the organization and that's
across any organization. It's a the
change is happening so quickly. Um the
the the rate of tech the technology and
the and the different tools that are
available for us to leverage. I feel
like a new one pops up every day. And I
think I can lean back to my consulting
experience where a lot of the
fundamental core things as being a
consultant is like being able to ramp up
and understand something really well
very quickly and being able to ramp down
and kind of pivot into whatever your
next client assignment is too. So I
think I've developed that skill set of
being able to kind of ramp up and ramp
down on information and being able to
pivot if something's not working. And I
think that's also a very entrepreneurial
way of thinking about things too. My
organization I feel like we feel like a
startup within this large larger global
enterprise. Um and I think again just
the mindset piece is it's going to be
challenging and I've seen that be
challenging for people. And then also in
my role, how can I show up to support
the organization to make sure that they
have the information, the skill set, the
training, the upskilling that they need
in order to be effective in their roles,
too? Because people really in times of
change and transformation, people really
lean towards clarity and direction in
those moments of extreme transformation.
>> Yeah,
I'm going to pause this just for a
minute and close my door.
>> Sure, go for it. They have noisy people.
>> Yeah, we had a street sweeping earlier,
so
made sure to close my window beforehand.
>> Yeah, I should have thought of that.
It's usually pretty quiet around here.
It's
>> all good.
>> Sorry, Anya.
Okay. So, um
I guess another thing that kind of comes
to mind for me is how do you help
organizations turn their blue sky
thinking into clear structures, roles,
and direction?
>> Yeah, I think it really all centers back
to creating a really effective operating
model because again, we can have these
large sweeping strategic directions, but
it's like that's great. How does that
drill down to how does that affect
people in their particular roles? So, I
think we do a lot of communicating to
the organization through kickoffs and
town halls and making sure that
everyone's very clear where the
strategic direction of the company is.
And then also for our organization, we
also clearly explain, you know, what our
overall goal is. In this case, we're
really for from an R&D perspective,
we're really trying to cut the drug
disco discovery life cycle in half.
Right now, it's around 14 years. We
really want to try to get it down to
seven years, which is a very ambitious
goal. And we want to make sure that
everybody within the organization knows
that goal, know that it's, you know, a
large a large goal that we're marching
towards. And how do we, you know, set up
our operating model? How do you know
what your overall strategy is for your
particular role in your particular
product line that you're supporting? And
making sure that two-way communication
between, you know, people and leadership
is effective and clear so that people
know what's expected of them and knowing
what KPIs that they're trying to hit in
order to to reach these goals, too.
That's a that's that's a massive goal
and I imagine that could save billions
of dollars and I also imagine that AI is
probably pretty key in that goal.
>> Absolutely. Yes. It's em everything that
we do is AI embedded and there's AI
embedded in everything. Um an example
that I can share is we as a company um
rolled out our own proprietary
generative AI tool. I think it was
around
It was 2025. is around like the
summertime and we wanted it was
important for the organization to do it
completely in-house so that it can be
totally trained in everything
proprietary for our company and making
sure that you know guard rails were in
place, governance was in place like all
the frameworks um and all of the
information within our company was was
train you know the tool was trained on
this to be able to support employees and
you know started working started working
with it and embedding it into my
day-to-day and it's insane how um
sophisticated that it has become in a
very short amount of time and how much
of a timesaver it has been for me in the
day-to-day role that I play um to help
you know with internal communications
stakeholder alignment um you know a
first pass of a slide deck to be able to
share out to executives like it's
incredible you know how much it enables
me to do my job better and really
sharing with the organ organization to
be able to adopt this tool effectively
so that they can you know more of the
the admin and the logisticals of their
day-to-day can maybe be taken care of
with the use of AI so that they can
focus on the science they can focus on
our goals of you know cutting this drug
life cycle in half um keeping patient
centricity top of mind as well so it's
been it's been great to see and adopt
these tools so are.
>> Yeah. So, you're you keep talking about
AI as tools or just tools in general.
>> And I think part of the the problem for
organization is training people up on
new tools.
>> But,
>> but, you know, once you start playing
with it, you start realizing other
things it can do. Like, we often think,
okay, a screwdriver, it's for turning
screws, but you know, we also use it to
pry things and to do other things with
it. And so I think as people use it more
and more, they're going to find more and
more interesting ways to use it.
>> Absolutely. Yeah.
>> So a lot of people are concerned about
ethics and I'm sure that's a I mean
you're dealing with patients, you're
dealing with all sorts of things around
implications that could really be
harmful for folks.
>> Yes.
>> So talk about that and talk about how
your company is thinking about that.
>> Yeah. I mean, I've come from two now two
industries that are incredibly
regulated. Financial services and now
life sciences pharmaceutical. And
especially for for us, we're dealing
with incredibly sensitive p patient
data, molecules, stuff that that the
scientists are working on in the lab. So
we have to always be incredibly
thoughtful and mindful about the
information that we are sharing and
using and making sure that we have the
proper governance and frameworks in
place to make sure that you know we the
the information is being used ethically
sensitively all the things. So I feel
like even before
people were upskilled on the tools that
that are at their disposal to leverage
in the company, there was already the
governance framework in place because
that's been something that I've been
working on, you know, for for almost my
entire tenure there, making sure that
the governance models are in place to
make sure that, you know, the
information is secure as well. And
specifically at Santa Fe and this is
public information we have something
called the raise framework which again
is making sure that the information is
being handled in a very sensitive
manner. Um and before anything's dep
deployed for production they have to go
through a very rigorous set and
standards. Um procurement's involved
legal is involved all of all of the
major stakeholders are in place. And I
think sometimes people can see those as
bottlenecks. But again, it's all about
having those [clears throat] checks and
balances in place to make sure that what
we're building not only is satisfying
the needs of our overall mission of, you
know, being being patiententric and
doing what's best for our patients, but
making sure there's no long-term
implications of some of these tools that
we're using both internally and
externally as well. So, we're we're very
mindful. um incredible amount of
governance in place. Again, it might be
seen sometimes as as a boon to to
development, but again, you need to have
those checks and balances in place to
make sure things operate effectively.
>> Can you give us a couple concrete
examples of what kinds of things are
non-negotiable?
I think anything that
is
specific to like that's outside of like
HIPPA compliance for patient data like
that's a huge concern and making sure
that nothing that's built is any way
harmful or exploitative of that
sensitive information and I think again
because we are a global company we also
have to satisfy the requirements across
multiple different countries as well and
for instance like a lot of the
government in Europe like is very um
sensitive to to a lot of that sharing of
data and and patient data that's being
shared and that compliance. So again, we
have a full team that is just solely
dedicated to making sure that that
information stays in house.
>> Great. Okay. So you've kind of been
through a bunch of different kinds of
transformational efforts.
>> Yeah. what what makes it stick and and
what kinds of things prevent it from
sticking?
>> Yeah, I think what makes it stick and
again change of any magnitude is is
challenging. You're you're rewiring from
a from a brain chemistry perspective,
you're rewiring neural pathways and
that's very challenging and it requires
a lot of repetition and a lot of
consistency and a lot of intention to be
able to make those sorts of changes. I
think
aspects that make change easier is
making sure that leadership is
communicating clearly what the overall
goals are and to making sure those goals
are being cascaded down to the actual
team that's boots on the ground to be
able to understand what's expected of
them from past transformation efforts
that I've worked on when that
birectional communication is not in
place and there isn't psychological
safety within the organization to be
able ble to ask hard questions and to be
able to pitch ideas and to be able to
share concerns. I think that's when
transformation really slows down because
people don't feel safe to make um to
make um to make mistakes and to be able
to iterate and learn from them. So what
we try to do within our organization is
really try to establish psychological
safety to be to make sure that people
feel comfortable to be able to voice any
concerns they have, any questions about
um how we're operating and what's
expected and kind of what our two-year
plans are and to be able to make sure
that this information for them is also
distributed effectively and that people
have access to it. A lot of what I do um
is to make sure my my role is almost
similar to like a chief of staff role.
So making sure that the organization has
all the information that they need, all
the support, all the tooling that they
need to be effective. And again, I think
when back to communication, I think
that's like the pillar of any
transformation is like being able to
communicate early, often, consistently,
have the same messaging because the
amount of repetition that needs to
happen in order for something to really
stick in your brain is a high amount
that most people don't realize. Um, and
again, not everybody's capacity and
appetite for change isn't is the same.
So being able to help shepherd other
people along in kind of where we're
going and making sure people are bought
in to where we're going is also
important too. Not only the stakeholders
within our technology organization but
also our business stakeholders that we
support. We directly support the
scientists in the lab. So making sure
you know that they have everything that
they need and that they feel supported
and that they feel the the feedback that
they're sharing with us about the
technology products that we're building
for their use as because we they they're
our main stakeholder that they feel
heard and recognized with the challenges
that they have to deal with in the lab.
>> Yeah. And I imagine that AI is one of
the tools that you're using frequently
to help you do a lot of that
communication.
>> Yes, definitely. Yeah. And I think and I
think there's like a a really awesome
quote that's actually embedded into our
generative AI tool that we use and it's
it's AI advises, humans decide. And I
think that is a beautiful representation
of how I internally view AI and how to
use AI. Again, AI is an incredibly
powerful tool. It distills down
information. It pulls information from
all these different disparit siloed
systems
um and being able to generate insights
from it. But again, at the end of the
day, humans are the ones that decide
what to do with that information and
making sure that we always have agency
and the appropriate guard rails in place
to be able to to use it for good.
>> Yeah, that's interesting. It it makes me
also think that um humans have to decide
to use AI.
>> Right.
>> Otherwise, companies aren't going to get
the kind of adoption they want to.
>> Totally.
>> Okay. So, let's talk about our students.
>> Yep.
>> The world is changing fast and AI is
just going to keep kind of nudging that
along.
>> It's going to change the workforce. It's
going to change the kind of jobs that
people have. people are going to have to
be in those kind of decision roles. Um,
and I guess I guess the question I want
to ask is if you could tell our students
one thing to help them in this new
environment, what would it be? I think
it's really adopting a solution mindset
because there's going to be so many
different challenges and problems that
you know that I faced even starting my
career and working in organizations too
and I think the reason why you know
people have enjoyed working with me for
instance is because I always am focused
on what the problem and the solution is
and being able to you know adopt tooling
AI whatever ever effectively to be able
to support me in creating that solution.
And I think with the amount of change
that's going on and and the new what
kind of this new workforce is going to
look like, it's going to be, you know,
autonomous being people being able to
leverage AI for different use cases and
being able to solve the ultimate
problem. And I think part of it too is
also coming at things creatively and
create coming up with creative solutions
that with embedding AI into those
creative solutions too. So I think like
the more we can also like double down on
like what makes us human and what makes
us creative as well to help with these
problems and these solutions would also
be a great mindset and skill set to
adopt as well,
>> you know. Um, so I like what you said
there. I think that a lot of people are
really concerned. Like there's a lot of
talk about uh well there's kind of two
schools of thought that I've heard. One
is um all AI is going to ruin all white
collar jobs. They're just going to
[clears throat] all go away. And then
other people are saying well actually
smart companies are going to find ways
to use um the workforce
>> to employ AI to become more productive
so they're more competitive with other
companies. Yeah.
>> And I imagine your company is in the
transition of figuring that out figuring
that out. [clears throat]
>> Um any observations about what that
looks like from your perspective?
>> Yeah, I think the people that are going
to be,
you know, top not only in the job market
but in these organizations are people
that are able to adopt AI in their
day-to-day as seamlessly as possible to
be able to allow them to do things more
quickly, efficiently, etc. And again,
give them that time freedom back to be
able to focus on cultivating create
creative solutions and and kind of like
I said earlier about like doubling down
on like what makes them human and what
makes them unique in their specific
skill set and gifts because everybody is
has been uniquely blessed with certain
certain gifts and almost just like lean
into that more and figure out like what
makes you you and what makes you unique
cuz I I think also in this AI age and I
see it a lot online. You know, I during
my career pivot, I also started building
like my own personal brand. It's
leveraging LinkedIn as well, which I
think would be another great tool for
for the high school population to use,
especially as they're emerging into the
job market as well. Um, LinkedIn's an
incredibly powerful tool. And I think
the more but I think the more that
everybody can double down on what makes
them unique while leveraging AI and the
and the the freedom and the power it
gives you to be able to scale ideas is
definitely something that's going to
differentiate people in the job market
and beyond in the future.
>> Okay, I'm going to change course now.
>> Sure.
>> Um because you you coach high performing
professional women. I do.
>> Navigating inflection points. talk a
little bit about what what does
inflection points mean in that case? And
then also because you've it kind of
looks to me like you're doing that at
two different levels like a personal
level and a and a corporate level.
>> Correct.
>> So what's the same and what's different?
>> Yeah. So I think right a lot of the
women that I coach right now are coming
to me because they are in the middle of
a career pivot very similar to my career
career pivot that I went through about a
year now ago and I think there's a lot
of people that may not be the most
fulfilled and purposeful in their
current role and you know they're
hearing all this news about AI and what
you said before like AI is going to
incredibly um impact and change the
workforce like what are the things that
I can do or h how can I leverage this
time to maybe switch into a different
career maybe start my own side hustle or
side business um or you know building a
personal brand on LinkedIn etc. So I
think for that again women are coming to
me really wanting that support because
they've seen me be able to do that and
take you know maybe something that
wasn't as as aligned for me any longer
to something that now I feel like I'm
I'm thriving. I'm really enjoying what I
do in my daytoday and I was able to make
that pivot successfully because I think
also people see how challenging the job
market is today and how challenging it
it can be to find a new role and I think
there's a lot of people um that frankly
have started panicking about it. But I
think back to what I said about like
doubling down on like what your unique
skill set is and being able to position
that in the marketplace so that people
can find you and and
find your unique gifts and like what you
bring to the table is like step number
one in being able to make that overall
career pivot and personal transformation
pivot too. The more that you can become
your most authentic aligned self too is
really you know it rip has a ripple
effect in your life and not only just in
your career.
>> Yeah. Neat. Okay. So for students who
want to work at the intersection of AI
which is going to be everywhere.
>> Y
>> project strategy and organizational
change.
>> Y
>> what kinds of skills and mindset should
they be holding on to to thrive in that
kind of place? Yeah, I think developing
solid communication skills, written,
oral ver all the all the things. Um, I
think something else that I always
remember is I took a consult almost like
a consulting 101 class when I was in the
high school. Um, Professor Michelle
Karst Brown was the professor in that
class and I distinctly remember um, in
that class she said, "In order to be a
top performer, you need to get really
comfortable at being effective and
working with people that you may not
necessarily be colllocated with." And
that's for whatever reason that always
stuck out with me especially as you know
the last three companies I've worked
with they're they're a global
population. So being being mindful about
working with people from other cultures
and other countries and being able to
collaborate effectively, communicate
effectively, um showcasing the work that
you're doing because I I can't remember
the last time I was physically
colllocated with my my direct manager.
um and still being able to showcase the
work that I'm doing uh showcase the
skill set that I have um and being able
to really have impact in the
organization and you know not again
working very closely with people who you
may not necessarily be colllocated with.
So really getting comfortable with that
reality in in today's current workforce
and I think again really developing a
you know problem solution mindset
developing your creativity and again
like really turning inward and getting
to know yourself and what your unique
skill set is because I think moving
forward personal branding and being able
to showcase who you are online whether
that's in you know the a corporate sense
like on LinkedIn or just you know I know
there's a lot of high schoolers who also
are very into entrepreneurship and maybe
wanting to work for a startup too. You
know, really showcasing that personal
brand because I've been able to get a
lot of um opportunities from being able
to have a public personal brand on
online too.
>> Yeah, I think that's really helpful. I'm
looking forward to hearing what our
students say about this podcast. I want
to thank you for joining us today. I
think we're pretty much out of time. Um,
and I hope that you and I can stay in
touch.
>> Absolutely.
>> And I guess that's it. Thank you very
much.
>> Thank you, Jeeoff. I really appreciate
the opportunity and I I hope this
podcast episode serves. So,
>> thank you.