AI in Marketing: Scaling Personalization Without Losing the Human Touch
BY Ade Akin May 04, 2026While other brands were racing to automate every email subject line, blog post, and social media caption during the height of the generative AI boom, Unilever, Vaseline’s parent company, took a different approach.Instead of using AI to accelerate the launch of new products, Unilever used it to listen to consumers, which led to an unexpected discovery that their base didn’t need a new product. Instead, they needed validation, and sometimes correction, on how they were using old products. These insights led to the “Vaseline Verified” campaign, an initiative that deferred a costly R&D rollout in favor of celebrating consumer “hacks.” The campaign went on to win 11 Cannes Lions awards, including the Titanium Grand Prix.This story, shared by Heather Bollinger, the chief revenue officer at Vurvey Labs, set the tone for a panel discussion focused on AI’s optimal role in marketing at From Day One’s Silicon Valley marketing conference. The conversation, moderated by Rosalie Chan, a senior tech editor at Business Insider, made one point clear: the most effective AI strategies focus on reimagining workflows and breaking down silos between data, compliance, and content—not replacing humans.The Augmentation MindsetThe panelists drew a sharp distinction between using AI to scale processes and using it to improve human capability. James Kessinger, the group VP of marketing at SolarWinds, says his team leverages AI agents for heavy data lifting, scraping funnel metrics from initial click to closed revenue, but remains cautious about removing the human touch in communications aimed at technical buyers.“You’ve got to humanize that, at least in our world, talking to engineers,” Kessinger said. “You’ve got to be able to give them relevance of somebody who’s actually doing this job. It’s hard sometimes for AI to capture that essence.” Panelists spoke about "AI in Marketing: Scaling Personalization Without Losing the Human Touch"AI serves as an editor for brand voice and trademark compliance at SolarWinds, freeing content marketers from tasks such as proofreading so they can focus on more important aspects of content, such as fluency and tone.Henrique Loyola, head of content & discovery for Play Games Go-To-Market, Google, echoed the theme of augmentation, describing AI as an enhancer. “If a task would take you a few hours to do, we think AI can have it done in a few minutes,” Loyola said. He highlights the use of AI to tag game metadata not just by genre, like “action” or “RPG,” but by emotional and behavioral traits like “engaging” or “long play session,” allowing Gemini to organize the Play Store in ways human curators never could, given how time-consuming it would be. Redefining Compliance and Generative SEOThe conversation shifted to a growing tension in the marketing industry: the rise of “no AI” disclaimers in consumer advertising versus the wholesale adoption of AI in B2B content creation. Kumar Rathnam, the SVP and head of global products, digital, sales & marketing solutions, at Dun & Bradstreet, says his employer has a pragmatic approach to AI adoption. “In B2B marketing, anything that is not human, we are absolutely fine,” Rathnam said, adding that the company draws the line only at synthetic human imagery and video. “The disclaimer doesn’t have to be there, as long as there are no humans involved.”However, the influx of AI-generated content is forcing a complete overhaul of how marketers approach search engine optimization (SEO). Rathnam described a shift from keyword stuffing practices to a “question and answer” architecture that’s designed specifically for AI crawlers and chatbots. “Agents are looking for people to answer questions fast,” he said. This means prioritizing FAQ structures and comparative content that allows large language models to easily cite and synthesize a brand’s authority.Kessinger says the way AI algorithms approach source citations is now evolving. While Reddit once dominated AI summaries, platforms like G2 are gaining ground because they offer verified, bounded audiences. “They get a higher citation because it’s a bound audience. We know who they are,” Kessinger added.Vibe Coding for MarketersA surprising trend emerged when the panel addressed the democratization of software development. The panelists admitted to embracing “vibe coding,” the practice of using natural language prompts to spin up quick, disposable software tools, to solve marketing bottlenecks.Loyola described using vibe-coded solutions for short-term curation problems, such as suppressing game titles related to sensitive global events. “It’s easier to get to a product team with a new feature you need if you have something ready,” Loyola said. “You can just bring them a product instead of 15 pages of technical requests.” Rathnam notes a similar phenomenon, where marketing operations teams build their own agents to analyze campaign data in real-time, bypassing lengthy customer relationship management change processes to prove a concept before scaling it.Yet, with this new power comes a warning about AI’s tendency to please its user. “AI has a bias towards completing the task as quickly as possible. It wants you to say, ‘Great, thank you,’” Loyola said. “It may start to hallucinate or lie just to get it across the finish line. You have to trust it, but you have to check.”The Human at the CoreThe panel’s advice for marketing leaders is to prioritize data integrity and human judgment over loyalty to any platform. Rathnam urges to avoid locking into monolithic “end-to-end” AI platforms that may be obsolete within a year. Instead, he advises focusing on the underlying data pipeline and feedback loops. “Get your data story right,” he said. “Anything you do around data, the accuracy, the coverage, the completeness, is going to help anything that changes in the future.”For Bollinger, the Vaseline story serves as a perfect metaphor for the current moment. Artificial intelligence is powerful enough to simulate human behavior, but its greatest ROI comes from understanding actual humans. “Don’t be afraid,” Bollinger said. “Dive in. There are so many opportunities to augment your teams, but the human has to be at the core of that.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Marketing at the Speed of Light: How to Get the Pitch Across When the Product Is Changing Fast
BY Ade Akin April 27, 2026What does it take to market a company that may not be a household name, but powers the technology people rely on every day—from Face ID in your smartphone to the undersea fiber optic cables connecting continents?When Dr. Sanjai Parthasarathi stepped into the Chief Marketing Officer role at Coherent in 2019, he expected a conversation about traditional market segmentation. Instead, he received a piece of advice that reshaped how the company thinks about marketing. He recalls being told that Coherent effectively serves two types of customers: those who buy its products, and those who buy its stock.The idea broadened the scope of marketing beyond end customers to include the investment community—emphasizing that the company’s story must resonate not only with engineers and procurement teams, but also with investors evaluating its long-term potential.Parthasarathi shared this and other insights during a fireside chat about, “Marketing at the Speed of Light: How to Get the Pitch Across When the Product Is Changing Fast” at From Day One’s Silicon Valley marketing conference. Parthasarathi offered a closer look at a company whose products are everywhere in a conversation with Steve Koepp, co-founder and editor in chief of From Day One. His mandate, he says, is to crystallize the story of technology quietly powering the AI revolution, data centers, and modern manufacturing, and tell it to two very different audiences.From the Periodic Table to AI Data CentersParthasarathi started the conversation by demystifying “photonics,” which he describes as “the science of light, the technology that goes into creating light and manipulating light and sensing light.” The examples were as tangible as they were ubiquitous. “When I wake up, the first thing I do is I look at my phone, and you know the magic of Face ID and the phone completely opening up by looking at your face,” he said. “That’s made possible in photonics.” Those signals don’t stop there. They travel from your phone to an RF tower, where an optical transceiver converts electrical signals into optical signals, sending them through fiber optic networks, including undersea cables, to reach a friend in Singapore.Coherent’s story started in 1971, in Pittsburgh, with a name so esoteric it requires a chemistry lesson. Originally called “II-VI,” a reference to the group's two and six on the periodic table, the company was founded on materials like zinc selenide and cadmium telluride, designed to shape and direct beams for the then-new carbon dioxide laser. Sanjai Parthasarathi, CMO at Coherent Corp., was interviewed during the fireside chatOver the decades, the company evolved into a diversified photonics powerhouse, acquiring Bay Area-based Finisar in 2019 and later adopting the name of its 2022 acquisition, Coherent, a brand synonymous with laser excellence. Today, Coherent’s technology is a cornerstone of the AI boom. As Sanjai put it, “Optical connections are rapidly growing inside the data center. Today all the connections between the racks and leaving the data center facility are 100% optical. Excitement in the optical community is around connections within the rack moving to optical.” One Portfolio, Two ExtremesMarketing for such a diverse company presents unique challenges. Coherent serves both “hyper-scale” data center customers, each of which, Parthasarathi noted, is “a market by themselves,” and then on the other end thousands of industrial and academic customers who buy standard products. “For our hyper-scale customers, it’s all a very high-touch, technical marketing activity that goes on,” he said. “We’re talking about long design cycles. We’re talking about partnerships and developing new platforms and technology.” On the other end of the spectrum, the team relies on more traditional demand generation and content campaigns.Dealing with this technical complexity requires a marketing team that can speak the language of engineers and scientists. While Parthasarathi jokes about his doctorate, he emphasizes that technical competence is non-negotiable. “You don’t need to be an expert in the technology, but you need to understand it deep enough that you can have a productive dialog with your customer,” he said.Coherent has centralized its marketing “brains” in a small Bay Area team to streamline its global operations, while a larger group in Malaysia handles content execution, a model that has proven efficient since its launch less than a year ago.The Next Optical FrontierOne of the most significant shifts underway in the tech industry is the migration from electrical to optical signals, even within the tight confines of a server rack. “When you need to go fast, and we need to go long distances, you have to go optical.” He paints a picture of future circuit boards with fiber traces instead of wires, a transformation that pundits estimate could multiply the market opportunity tenfold. This future is already being underwritten. In March 2026, Nvidia announced a $2 billion investment in Coherent as part of a multi-year partnership to advance optical technologies used for AI data center infrastructure. That early directive, to market the company to both customers and investors, has made investor communication an important part of Parthasarathi’s role. “Ours is a complex story, and trying to simplify it for the investor audience is something that I spend significant time on,” he said.While the messages differ, the fundamental task remains the same: crystallizing the company’s technological story for a specific audience. “It’s ultimately about taking the technology and taking the story and crystallizing it for the audience. That’s marketing, right, whether it’s an investor audience or customer audience or a supplier.”Strategy, Storytelling, and the Limits of AIParthasarathi offered a grounded perspective as the conversation turned to artificial intelligence’s role in marketing. Coherent uses AI extensively for content generation and demand creation, but it’s clear about its limits. “AI is not going to tell me a story that has not been written yet,” he said. “Us as marketing folks, we’re writing the story. AI helps us refine the story.” For Coherent, AI remains a powerful tool in a highly technical B2B industry, where understanding customer pain points and translating complex technology into value is paramount, but it’s not a replacement for deep market knowledge.He emphasizes that successful marketing at Coherent is fundamentally a strategic function, sitting at “the intersection of markets, technology, and strategy.” This approach has underpinned the company’s ambitious growth, from a sub-billion-dollar revenue base a decade ago to a consensus estimate of around $7 billion for the current fiscal year. “Strategy is not done in a vacuum by two people from the executive team,” Parthasarathi said. “It’s done with multiple functions, and it’s a long-term plan.”Parthasarathi left the audience with a simple but powerful reminder as the session concluded. “Ultimately, it’s about the customers—what are the pain points that they’re having, what are the challenges that they’re trying to solve. And the realization of that is perhaps the most important thing that you can do as a marketing professional.” Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Choosing the Right Problems to Solve: It’s Not AI for Something, It’s Something With AI
BY Ade Akin April 20, 2026In an era where many companies scramble to find uses for AI, Raman Achutharaman advocates for the opposite approach.“We always want to solve a business problem,” he said during a fireside chat at From Day One's Silicon Valley HR conference. “But you’ve got to find what value you’re going to generate, and then which tech comes along the way.” For Achutharaman, the SVP of operations, AI and productivity at Applied Materials, this problem‑first philosophy is the guiding principle behind a sweeping digital transformation at one of the world’s most vital technology companies.The Quiet Giant of the Semiconductor RevolutionApplied Materials doesn’t manufacture the tech gadgets that have become part of our daily lives, like smartphones and laptops; instead, it builds the multi‑million‑dollar equipment that manufacturers use to produce the semiconductors inside them. As Achutharaman said to Steve Koepp, co-founder and editor at From Day One, who moderated the conversation, a single advanced logic chip requires roughly 2,000 processing steps and three months to complete, despite being “a thousand times smaller than a human hair.” Founded in 1967, Applied Materials predates companies such as Apple and Intel in Silicon Valley and now employs more than 36,000 people globally. The company’s immense global footprint, supercharged by the accelerating AI revolution, makes digital transformation an urgent directive. To help meet this objective, Achutharaman’s role was created specifically to unify an organization that had grown “very global” and “very vertical.” He frames his team as an “internal consulting arm,” a nimble force that’s embedded in the middle to drive collective growth and navigate the friction of cross‑functional execution.Innovating the Way We InnovateWhen generative AI burst onto the scene, Achutharaman joined forces with the company's CIO and CTO to form a leadership trio that would charter the company's AI journey. Their guiding principle was to avoid using “AI for the sake of AI.” Instead, they focused on re‑engineering decades‑old workflows. They worked to “innovate the way we innovate,” Achutharaman said.Raman Achutharaman, SVP of operations, AI, and productivity at Applied Materials, spoke during the fireside chatThis mindset has led to a deliberate, problem‑centric rollout. The company established rigorous governance structures early on instead of unleashing every new tool on its workforce, addressing cybersecurity, intellectual property protection, and ethical concerns before any technology was deployed. “Almost the [entire] first year was really focused on making sure that anything we do doesn’t break,” Achutharaman said.The Cohort Program: From Office Hours to Change AgentsTraining 36,000 people on technology that evolves “every 15 minutes” requires more than a library of online courses. Achutharaman’s team launched a hands-on cohort program that pairs employees who have specific problems adopting artificial intelligence with mentors who are already advanced users. The program started small with weekly office hours where any employee could drop in with questions. It has since grown into a structured initiative. Last year, more than 1,000 employees applied to participate, and 250 were selected to work one‑on‑one with mentors.“When they solve their own problems using something, they start thinking about what else they can do with it,” Achutharaman said. “And they also act as the change agents going across the organization.” This peer‑driven model has proven to be far more effective than top‑down mandates, creating a self‑propagating network of AI champions throughout the organization.Data Quality and the Scientific RevolutionDespite all the excitement surrounding large language models, Achutharaman emphasizes that the real frontier lies in scientific and engineering data. The publicly available corpus of information, research papers, and technical articles is often biased toward positive results and lacks the calibration needed for rigorous scientific work. “You’ve got to generate your own data,” he added.To that end, Applied Materials is investing billions in a new research and development lab in Sunnyvale, California. The facility will help generate high‑quality data that will fuel the next generation of semiconductor innovation. “Having data at the right rate, using AI to be able to solve complex problems, needs not just AI. You actually need a whole bunch of other things: engineering, physical infrastructure, and actual experiments,” he said. Achutharaman also highlighted how Applied Materials' HR team is applying AI across the talent lifecycle. The technology is actively transforming every workflow, from analyzing Workday data to piloting AI‑powered manager coaching tools. Faster Insights, Better DecisionsAchutharaman remains firmly in the optimistic camp despite the accelerating pace of AI development. He sees the technology as a tool for gaining insights faster than a human ever could, enabling better decisions. He offered a personal example, using AI to digest decades of his aging parents’ complex health records, scattered across paper files and different doctors in India, to identify the right questions to ask their physicians. “Within five minutes, you’re able to at least find what questions to ask,” he said. “It’s not that you want the answers. The most important thing AI gives you is what questions to ask.” That perspective may be the most valuable takeaway for any leader navigating the AI revolution. The technology doesn’t replace human judgment; it equips people with faster insights, allowing for better decisions in an increasingly complex world. As Achutharaman put it, “It’s about faster insights and better quality decisions. It will give you insights that you would have missed.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Delivering Personalized Benefits for a Multigenerational Workforce
BY Ade Akin April 13, 2026Verlinda DiMarino didn’t spend hours researching her options when her 86-year-old mother asked for a getaway to New York to watch Broadway shows for her birthday. Instead, she called her company’s travel concierge, the same service she had previously used to plan a Harry Potter World excursion in London. “They take that work off the shoulders of our employees,” DiMarino, the Head of Benefits at Liberty Mutual Insurance, said. “So they can basically function and be more productive in their work as well as in their life.”DiMarino sat down with Wall Street Journal columnist Callum Borchers at From Day One’s Boston benefits half-day conference to lay out a vision for employee benefits that treats workers as whole people across a multigenerational workforce.Wraparound Benefits for a Multidimensional WorkforceThe old model for benefits packages, health, a 401(k), and dental, no longer cuts it. “Employees today, no matter where they are in their life journey, are looking for programs and benefits that support them holistically,” she said. “It’s really a part of the value proposition today.”Borchers, who also teaches at Bentley University near Boston, drew a parallel to the shift in higher education toward “wraparound services.” Just as students need more than classroom instruction to succeed at higher learning institutions, employees need other things besides a paycheck to thrive. Verlinda DiMarino, head of benefits at Liberty Mutual, spoke with Callum Borchers, columnist at the Wall Street JournalThe challenge becomes deciding what to offer a workforce that includes everyone from recent college graduates to employees in their 80s. DiMarino says the answer starts with data. Liberty Mutual uses employee surveys, focus groups, and employee resource groups (ERGs) to determine what workers really want. “We partner with them regularly in terms of understanding the needs of their community and the allies in their communities,” she said.Listening to employees led Liberty Mutual to expand its fertility program to include perimenopause and menopause support. “When women get to the top of their license, and they’re going full throttle and hitting all cylinders, their hormones start to kick in, and they’re starting to have some brain fog,” DiMarino said. “We don’t want to lose those women from the workforce.” The fertility program now covers more needs, such as family-forming fertility benefits, menopause support, and testosterone replacement therapy for men. One Program, Multiple Life StagesDiMarino highlighted Liberty Mutual’s retirement program as a prime example of benefits designed for everyone. It’s a standard 401(k) on its surface, but it also provides financial counseling, which includes unlimited, one-on-one sessions on budgeting, retirement strategy, and draw-down planning. The company also launched a student loan match package. “Some of our employees coming right out of school are challenged with some student loan debt,” DiMarino said. The program matches student loan payments with matching contributions, helping early-career employees to pay down their debt and build retirement savings. The same program offers mid-career employees an emergency savings benefit and support for home buying. “Within that one program, we are meeting the needs of early career employees dealing with student loan debt,” she added. “We’re helping our mid-career employees as they plan to buy homes, as well as providing support for retirement planning.”Where Artificial Intelligence Helps and Where Humans StayBorcher asked DiMarino about how Liberty Mutual navigates around AI in HR as an increasing number of workplace interactions become automated. “We don’t think of AI as a replacement. We understand that it’s generative, it’s not creative,” she replied. “That’s what our talent is. We’re creative.”Liberty Mutual uses AI for tasks like consolidating dense vendor decks or pulling salient points from documents. “That’s a great use case for AI,” she said. As for employee appetite for AI? That depends on the generation. “My daughter would rather never talk to a person if she could,” DiMarino said. “And then there are employees that want paper, they want to read something and see that it resonates and it makes sense, and then they want to call and clarify.”Covering GLP-1s as a Strategic InvestmentBorchers asked about one of the hottest topics regarding benefits today: GLP-1 coverage. He recalled that DiMarino had recently told a room of her peers that, “AI and GLP-1s were like the two big things on the bingo card.”Liberty Mutual covers GLP-1s for both diabetes and weight loss. “It really aligns with our philosophy that we want a healthy workforce,” DiMarino said. “If you’re at a healthy weight, you’re likely going to have fewer comorbidities. You’re going to be able to sleep better, you’re going to be more productive.”DiMarino acknowledges the high cost of GLP-1s, but frames it as a long-term investment in lower cardiac risk, reduced diabetes spending, and improved cholesterol management. Liberty Mutual built in wraparound lifestyle support when it moved to a new pharmacy benefits manager in 2026. “We wanted to give them the tools and the support around lifestyle management, being able to eat appropriately,” she said, especially for employees who want to titrate down or come off the medications.That coverage has now become a recruiting tool. “We do occasionally have employees. When they’re considering employment with Liberty, they’ll say, ‘Do you offer these medications?’” DiMarino added. “We’re happy to say that we do.”Benchmarking for Top TalentBorchers asked how much employers should keep an eye on competitors when designing benefits. “That’s important, because you want to be the employer of choice,” DiMarino said. Liberty Mutual benchmarks against a peer set that includes other insurance companies as well as “the most admired companies and the top 100.”Regarding hybrid work, which is another popular benefit, Liberty Mutual requires employees within 50 miles of an office to come in two days a week, allowing them to work from home on the remaining days. “That is extremely popular with our employees,” DiMarino said. The company also offers “virtual weeks” around holidays like winter break and back-to-school time, when everyone works from home.DiMarino’s message, delivered through stories of fertility benefits, travel concierges, and Broadway trips, suggests that the companies that invest in true wraparound support will be the ones employees remember.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Future-Proofing Benefits For A New Generation
BY Ade Akin April 10, 2026Claire Marrow had just stepped out of a driverless car in San Francisco when her smartphone buzzed with an urgent referral from her doctor. Two weeks earlier, Marrow, who was training for a marathon, had taken three six-hour flights in four days when her knee began to ache and swell. Her doctor ordered an immediate ultrasound to determine if her flare-up was the result of running or a blood clot caused by sitting in a pressurized cabin for 18 hours. When Marrow called the hospital to schedule the scan, the response was “fax us the details.” “I guess this really was shocking to me,” Marrow, the head of clinical consulting at Hinge Health, shared during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s half-day NYC benefits conference. “I’m riding in a driverless car, but I still need to own a fax machine. This doesn’t make sense.”The contrast captures the central challenge facing HR and benefits leaders today. Millennials and Gen Z now make up over 50% of the workforce as workforce demographics shift dramatically. That figure is projected to reach 74% by 2030 as employee expectations collide with healthcare systems still reliant on fax machines and CD-ROMs. The New Generation’s Healthcare ExpectationsMillennials and Gen Z generally expect a fundamentally different healthcare experience. They grew up Googling their symptoms before consulting with doctors, and want seamless digital access, remote communication with providers, online scheduling, and the flexibility to choose between in-person and virtual care. “Before I was at Hinge Health, I spent four years as a physical therapist at the on-site clinic at Google,” Marrow said. “For every exercise I gave them, they would say, ‘What is this exercise doing for me? Don’t you think I have this diagnosis?’ They had obviously already Googled their condition.” She notes that this trend has intensified with the rise of AI tools: “It’s not just Google anymore. It’s ChatGPT and other AI tools that they’re also using for that.”The Fragmentation ProblemDr. Claire Morrow, Doctor of Physical Therapy and Head of Clinical Consulting at Hinge Health, led the sessionThe healthcare industry remains stubbornly fragmented despite the tremendous technological leaps that have occurred in other industries. Marrow illustrates the problem with a personal story about a knee injury her husband suffered. “He was running when a German Shepherd ran into the side of his knee, dislocating his kneecap,” she said. The injury led to an odyssey through the system: urgent care, a two-week wait for an orthopedist, imaging at one facility, and physically picking up a CD of the MRI to bring it to a surgeon at another hospital.“The rest of the world is moving forward, and we need to think about moving forward with the rest of the world,” Marrow said. “Surgery and medications are often still chosen as quick fixes, but MSK [musculoskeletal] care can be incomplete. We tend not to always think about the whole person.”The Shift to Unified CareMarrow has watched the digital health revolution unfold as a physical therapist for over 13 years, including six years spent at Hinge Health. Digital tools now make it possible for patients in rural areas to rehab after knee replacement surgery without having to drive 45 minutes to a clinic in some city twice a week.However, the technological revolution has also created new problems, such as silos between digital and in-person care.“We need to move from fragmented care to unified care,” Marrow said. “I can’t believe I’m saying that’s the future, that we’ll all talk to each other, because it almost seems obvious. But we really need to choose digital solutions and healthcare solutions that speak to each other.”She says a unified care model would provide a digital front door where members can connect with care coordinators who can triage their condition, provide recommendations, and make warm handoffs to pre-vetted providers, digital or in-person.AI as the Enabler, Not the ReplacementAI is being deployed at Hinge Health to automate tasks to free up clinicians so they can focus more on connecting with patients.“We have an AI-powered care team assistant that we're naming Robin,” Marrow said. “There’s an art to naming your AI agents, and I think we nailed it.” Robin can triage pain flare-ups, gather information, and summarize it for physical therapists, reducing response times from days to same-day care plan adjustments. The automation has improved care team response times by 47%.“Our goal is to ensure that our highly skilled care teams have the time to provide the skill and compassion needed to support each member’s needs," she said. “We’re not replacing that in-person experience. We’re enabling it.”The company’s TrueMotion technology uses computer vision to guide members through exercises, while a recently launched movement analysis tool uses augmented reality to measure the range of motion in the lower back. “We’re starting to replicate some of those interactions from in-person care,” Marrow said. “That doesn’t mean we’re replacing that connection. We’re just making it so that the time a member is not with a physical therapist is much more meaningful.”Future-Proofing BenefitsMarrow’s recommendation for HR leaders looking to future-proof benefits packages is to embrace unified care models that meet the expectations of a digital native workforce.“You’re empowering members. They’re able to get information and make their own decisions,” she added. “You’re building trust in AI. This is really where the future is going. AI has tremendous potential for healthcare, but we need to build that trust.”The transition won’t happen overnight, but as Marrow says, the alternative—continuing to rely on fax machines while employees expect driverless cars—isn’t really an option.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Hinge Health, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Rethinking Early Career Talent in a Changing Hiring Landscape
BY Ade Akin April 06, 2026The challenge of preparing the next generation of employees has been a personal mission for Monica Green, the global head of early careers and talent pipelines at State Street. She doesn't just worry about the thousands of applicants her team vets annually; she also thinks about her son, a college freshman who is navigating the same competitive landscape.“I tell him all the time: You need to start working on an internship for this summer,” Green said during a fireside chat at From Day One's March virtual conference “It’s a tough market right now,” she said.The conversation, moderated by Paige McGlauflin, a reporter at Morning Brew, explored how one of the world’s oldest financial institutions is approaching early-career recruiting with an open and inclusive lens while adapting to a rapidly changing market that's now being reshaped by artificial intelligence.The Human Element in a High-Tech Job HuntOne of the main themes of the discussion was the dual role AI plays in the modern recruiting landscape. Green acknowledges that the “application waves” have become application tsunamis as candidates use AI to instantly apply to hundreds of positions. This forces recruiters to become more efficient with leveraging their own technological tools to filter the increasing influx of applications.Green emphasizes that efficiency cannot come at the cost of losing the human connection. While AI helps to manage high volumes, human touch is still required to evaluate each candidate. “Recruiters are still looking at resumes. They’re providing that insight and having interviews with candidates directly,” Green said. “We want to make sure that we’re leveraging the tools to support us, to be as efficient as we can be, but really enabling the recruiters to play the role that they do in assessing the talent.”This human dynamic has shifted in the era of virtual recruitment. Green notes a growing trend of returning to in-person interviews among her peers as candidates become increasingly “savvy with the use of technology to be able to answer questions in the midst of an interview.” This has created a troubling gap between a candidate’s virtual prowess and their in-person reality.“You can go through an interview process virtually, and that talent may seem great, and then you get them in the door, and it’s like, ‘Wait, we’re not talking to the same person,’” Green said. This challenge has led to a resurgence of on-site interviews and campus events to ensure authenticity.Beyond the Campus QuadBuilding sustainable talent pipelines means looking beyond traditional four-year universities for global firms like State Street. Green detailed a strategy that combines strong relationships with target schools and innovative partnerships with community organizations to reach underrepresented and non-traditional candidates.Monica Green of State Street was interviewed by Paige McGlauflin of Morning Brew (photo by From Day One)“Partnerships with schools are our bread and butter,” she said. State Street also places significant emphasis on local engagement. Green highlighted a partnership with the Boston PIC, an organization that connects Boston Public School students with real-world workplace experiences. A group of high school students in the program even pitched a nonprofit idea to State Street leaders a year ago and secured funding for it.Another one of State Street’s key partnerships is with My HBCU Matters, which connects students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities with corporate leaders for mentorship and mock interviews. These initiatives help enrich communities while creating a more diverse and robust pool of future applicants. “It’s an opportunity for us to just have more interaction with some HBCU students, but also to help support them as they navigate what areas they seek to pursue,” Green said. A Global Philosophy With Local NuanceOverseeing early careers globally means balancing an organization’s philosophy with on-the-ground realities. While the core goal of building a future workforce remains the same, the execution varies wildly from market to market.“In some markets, the focus is on scale and operational readiness,” Green said. “There are others where it’s more niche skills and regulatory requirements.” Cultural expectations around hiring also differ.Green described one market where students have come to expect full-time job offers after internships. While State Street doesn’t guarantee job offers solely based on that expectation, recognizing the dynamic allows the company to manage the recruitment process transparently, helping the firm to maintain its status as a top employer in the region.“We definitely allow for that flexibility to take place, while still keeping that consistency and that philosophy across, no matter the location,” she added.Advice for All SidesGreen advises human resources and talent acquisition professionals to invest in manager readiness. She says the success of early-career hires often depends less on programs and more on the daily environment they enter. “A lot of that is really dependent on the environment that the early career talent is a part of,” she said. Green’s message for students and job seekers confronting a competitive landscape was to be relentless but purposeful with their efforts. Network, persist, and do your homework. “Every role is imperfect,” she cautioned, as she urged job seekers to focus on roles that are aligned with their skills. “Just applying to a job isn’t good enough anymore. You have to take your time to network.”Green practices what she encourages, crediting her own career progression to networks she created, including one that started with a message on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a high school student in Boston, a college sophomore, or a seasoned professional, the common thread, Green argues, is the power of meaningful human connection—a force that no algorithm can replace.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by nd3000/iStock)
Beyond Generational Labels: Designing Benefits That Support the Whole Person
BY Ade Akin April 02, 2026“Don’t make assumptions about what a particular generation looks like,” said Susan Bridges Gilder, director of total rewards at Beiersdorf. “We need to get beyond labels and really need to get into what individual people need.”Gilder spoke on an executive panel discussion about this topic at From Day One’s NYC half-day benefits conference. Panelists discussed how they are supporting a workforce that spans five generations. The session, titled “Inclusive Well-Being Strategies for a Multigenerational Workforce,” quickly landed on a consensus to stop trying to put employees in a box.From Demographics to 'Moments That Matter'Tania Rahman, moderator and social director at Fast Company, opened the discussion by noting the breadth of needs in today's workforce. A Gen Z employee might be focused on student debt, while a Baby Boomer is more concerned about their pensions.“For me, it’s not even generations, it’s really about the moments that matter,” Maria Julieta Casanova, the global head of strategic HR business partners and talent acquisition COE at Corteva Agriscience, said. She notes that potential hires now ask more questions regarding their benefits, like fertility support or parental leave for dads, than about their salaries.“Those are the moments that we need to focus on,” she added. “It’s our job to make sure that people stay while they navigate through the complexities of life.”Sometimes the moments that matter exist within the workplace. Lesley Alderman, a Brooklyn-based psychotherapist, has a client who was miserable working in their company's open-plan office. Alderman offered a simple solution that was immediately rejected: wear headphones.“No one does that. I’m going to be stigmatized,” the client thought. This fear of standing out is one of the silent killers of employee well-being. It’s a problem no single benefit package can fit, but a culture of inclusive leadership just might, she says. Panelists spoke about "Inclusive Well-Being Strategies for a Multigenerational Workforce"Sarah Royal, the senior director of marketing at the family care platform Cleo, challenged the audience to consider the commonality all employees share beneath the surface.“We often get caught up in that generational conversation of saying they’re so different,” she said. “But I would venture to say that, for the most part, if we asked what are the top three most important things in your life, probably most of you would say somebody that you're caring for.”The Preventive Approach to Mental HealthAlderman says feelings of uncertainty are the primary reason many people seek therapy. Any benefits that make it easier for employees to navigate their world provide a sense of control, whether it’s financial planning, onsite services, or caregiving support.Casanova echoed this, sharing a story of a senior executive candidate who negotiated for more vacation time, a move she calls a “breath of fresh air” that signaled a cultural shift. “The more we can bring leaders and really encourage them to make good use of the benefits available, the more this will cascade and become part of the culture,” she said. Gilder highlighted the importance of preventive mental health. Companies shouldn't wait until employees are broken to offer support, she says. Beiersdorf has been working on a resilience series with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and joined an employers' collaborative in New York City to foster ongoing conversations.Gilder also championed the idea of a dedicated caregiving benefit, pointing to Cleo as an example of a service that acts as a guide for employees navigating life events, from raising children to caring for aging parents. “It’s not like the EAP where you just get a random person,” Gilder pointed out. “You have someone assigned to you, and you build that connection.”Building Trust Through Utilization and CommunicationYou can design the most generous benefits package in the world, but if your employees don’t use it, you’ve wasted your time and money. Michelle Randazzo, the total rewards retirement benefits lead at AlixPartners, says that the work doesn’t end with rolling out a great program. “Employees need to be educated on their benefits so that they can make educated decisions, and that still remains an issue," she said.To combat this, AlixPartners focuses on building trust through personal connection. To bridge the gap between benefits and utilization, Randazzo leads a neurodiverse employee resources group (ERG), and she’s candid about her experience with ADHD. She maintains a 25-page 401(k) FAQ that ends with a simple but powerful prompt to send her an email if they still have unanswered questions.“The magic actually happens when you meet your people in person,” she added. “They feel valued, and that builds trust, and when you build trust, they will then be part of the process.”Royal added that the most effective marketing for a benefit often comes from peers. “Have the people leaders, the managers, be human, use the benefits themselves,” she said.Ultimately, it was unanimously agreed that the most successful strategies treat employees as whole human beings who are navigating their complex lives. As Randazzo put it, “If all you care about is cost containment, then we are not dealing with humans. We are dealing with data, and people are not robots.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
The Autoimmune Blind Spot: How Employers Can Tackle a Growing High-Cost Population
BY Ade Akin March 27, 2026Ellen Rudolph was climbing the corporate tech ladder until she found herself battling a chronic health mystery that left her almost completely bedridden seven years ago. Instead of enjoying the prime of her health and career, she experienced a host of debilitating symptoms that doctor after doctor couldn’t give her any straight answers about. “After a long, winding journey, I eventually learned I had an autoimmune disease,” Rudolph, now the co-founder and CEO of WellTheory, said. “For me, it wasn’t until I really got to the root cause of my symptoms and embraced an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle that I was able to reclaim my health.”Rudolph went viral after sharing her story on social media, reaching over 25 million views. She cultivated a community of over 85,000 followers who were navigating similar journeys, which made it clear she wasn’t alone in her struggles with autoimmune disease. The Autoimmune Association states that approximately 50 million people in the U.S. have an autoimmune disease, a number that is quickly rising. People with autoimmune disorders represent roughly 15% of the workforce.During a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s NYC half-day benefits event, Rudolph made her case for why employers must pay attention to this costly and underserved patient population during, sharing insights from her personal struggles with an autoimmune disorder. The Autoimmune Disease Blind SpotAn autoimmune disease is a condition that leads to the body mistakenly attacking healthy cells, organs, and tissues, causing damage and chronic inflammation. There are more than 100 autoimmune conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, lupus, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Thyroiditis alone is estimated to cost U.S. employers over $70 billion annually. Autoimmune disease is the third most common cause of chronic illness in the U.S., even more common than type 2 diabetes today. Research suggests environmental factors play a significant role in the dramatic rise in cases. “The research points to the role that environmental factors, such as the Western diet, environmental toxins, stress, and viruses, play in triggering autoimmune disease,” Rudolph said. The prevalence of autoimmune conditions has seen “steady increases with no signs of abating.” To make things worse, 76% of people who have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder were misdiagnosed at least once, as was the case with Rudolph. “The reality of these conditions is that they are invisible. You don’t need to look sick to be sick, and so often, they can fly under the radar, both in terms of the claims data, but also in terms of just your workforce more broadly,” Rudolph said.One of the biggest challenges regarding diagnosing autoimmune disease is that, unlike other chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes, which fall under well-defined ICD-10 codes, autoimmune diseases are fragmented across different buckets based on the organ affected. This fragmentation creates what Rudolph calls “the autoimmune horizontal,” which increases the risk of misdiagnosis. The High Cost of Specialty Drugs Driving Autoimmune SpendAutoimmune disease is one of the fastest-growing areas of drug spend. Costs have increased 459% over the last decade, with specialty drugs for these diseases driving 50% of high-cost specialty drug spend.“The reality is that these are drugs costing about $45,000 per patient annually,” Rudolph said. “If you recognize a lot of these drugs, then autoimmune disease is already a top cost driver for your organization.”The autoimmune epidemic is also a women’s health crisis, with approximately 80% of patients diagnosed being women. Some conditions are as much as 16 times more common in women. Autoimmune diseases like lupus disproportionately impact minority populations, with Black and Hispanic women diagnosed at three times the rate of non-Hispanic White women.The current standard of care is failing these patients. They typically undergo lengthy diagnostic journeys that take five doctors over four and a half years on average just for an accurate diagnosis. The process includes batteries of tests, ping-ponging from specialist to specialist, and trips to the ER, creating tremendous waste in the system.Once diagnosed, the standard of care relies heavily on biologics, but about 40% of patients end up switching prescriptions due to side effects or lack of efficacy, leading to a trial-and-error process, which leads to more medication, more doctor visits, and more lost time at work.“One of the fundamental challenges with the standard of care today is that it’s focused on masking symptoms rather than treating the underlying root causes of these conditions,” Rudolph said. “So, to treat autoimmune disease requires this fundamental paradigm shift in how we think about these conditions and really looking at the underlying issues, rather than just trying to fix what's above the surface.”A Root Cause Assessment Approach to Autoimmune CareRudolph’s battle with autoimmune disease inspired the creation of WellTheory, a virtual care platform that's purpose-built for patients with autoimmune disorders. The platform provides evidence-based dietary and lifestyle interventions that address root causes. These offerings are packaged into specialized care management programs delivered in a digital, scalable format.The WellTheory experience starts with a root cause assessment that includes a deep dive into a member's health history, nutritional, and behavioral patterns to uncover underlying triggers. Each member is matched with a dedicated care team of autoimmune experts, including a licensed registered dietician, board-certified health coach, and care coordinator.Members receive continuous one-on-one care through video calls, unlimited messages, access to customized nutritional resources, whole-body care plans, interactive educational content, and curated community support. The program has been featured in four peer-reviewed, third-party published papers that demonstrate its effectiveness.“Our intent is not to disrupt or duplicate the care that they’re already receiving away from their providers, but really fill the gap of care that’s missing outside of the four walls of the doctor’s office,” Rudolph said.The results are compelling: 91% of members report meaningful symptom relief within 12 weeks, and 61% report a noticeable shift in symptoms of depression and anxiety. Members stay engaged for an average of 270 days, engaging with the platform 13 times per month on average.Employer Benefits: The ROI of a Root-Cause ApproachBeyond health outcomes, WellTheory delivers significant cost reduction. An independent third-party actuarial analysis found the program delivers $5,200 in savings per engaged autoimmune patient annually and $9,400 in savings per patient on biologics.“We offer a less expensive, lower risk, and more effective way to manage autoimmune disorders than the status quo,” Rudolph added. The analysis also showed a 71% reduction in imaging services, a 64% reduction in ER visits, and a 38% reduction in hospital stays. A case study with a Fortune 100 tech company revealed that autoimmune disease was driving 25% of their total medical and pharmacy spend. After implementing WellTheory, an independent actuary found a 2.2x net ROI in year one due to reductions in ER visits and hospital stays. Another partnership with a large school system delivered a 5-to-1 ROI.“So we know that employers are under mounting pressure to see that cost reduction in year one, and we really stand behind our outcomes by putting our fees at risk in that first year,” Rudolph said.Behind the data are members like Joanne, a retired school counselor diagnosed with Hashimoto's and Crohn's disease over 10 years ago. Joanne was hospitalized for over 100 days after a routine procedure went awry. She was still struggling with severe fatigue and muscle wasting that left her essentially bedridden when she came to WellTheory. Her goal was to reclaim her energy so she could chase after her grandchildren.Joanne went from barely being able to walk around the block to being able to stay on her feet for two to three hours straight in four months, allowing her to walk her daughter down the aisle.Joanne expressed her gratitude in a video shared during Rudolph's presentation. “Working with WellTheory has definitely impacted my quality of life for the better,” she said. “I definitely now have more energy. I feel like I’m able to do more things. It’s given me the confidence to get back my life.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, WellTheory, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: Using AI to Elevate Hiring Decisions
BY Ade Akin March 19, 2026Employees at BNY are not just learning to work with AI, they’re building with it. Johanna Bazos, the company’s head of executive recruitment, corporate and talent research engine, recently became “Eliza certified,” meaning she can now create autonomous agents on the firm’s proprietary AI platform.Since then, Bazos has built agents that assist with interview briefings, competency development, and feedback collection, all without writing a single line of code. “I am not, by any extent of the imagination, a techie or a coder at all,” Bazos said during an executive panel discussion at From Day One's NYC half-day talent acquisition conference. “But the tools that the company has provided all employees—and 98% of all employees have taken advantage of this—are really showing how leadership has democratized AI.”This grassroots adoption of generative AI was a recurring theme among the talent acquisition leaders gathered for the panel discussion titled “Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: Using AI to Elevate Hiring Decisions,” moderated by Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop.Redefining the Recruitment Process as a Human-Centric JourneyFor many organizations, the shift to AI-powered recruiting has prompted a fundamental rethinking of how talent acquisition teams operate. At BNY, this has meant moving away from viewing recruiting as a series of transactional steps and toward seeing it as a continuous candidate journey that prioritizes human connection.“The most important transformation at BNY has been around mindset,” Bazos said. “It’s thinking about talent acquisition as a journey, rather than specifically as a process where you’re filling roles.”Using a journey-based approach allows recruiters at BNY to identify the “moments that matter” in the candidate experience, such as the first conversation, the offer presentation, and the onboarding process, and deliberately inject human emotion into these touchpoints.“Many of us have the same available tools through AI like Copilot, ChatGPT,” Bazos added. “It’s going to be about that differentiating factor of how human-centric you can be.”Panelists shared insights on the topic "Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: Using AI to Elevate Hiring Decisions" at the NYC talent-acquisition conference At Macquarie Group, that human-centric focus means using technology to free recruiters to focus on what matters most: conversations with potential candidates. “The most important thing that they can be doing is talking to candidates and having an advisory conversation with hiring managers,” Marjie Howie, the head of talent acquisition for the Americas at the financial services firm, elaborated. “The more time that they can spend on the phones with candidates, the better.”To help achieve that goal, Macquarie has developed internal chatbots that answer basic recruiting questions for hiring managers, such as how to open a job or obtain headcount approval, so recruiters don’t have to. The company also created a prompt library with dozens of detailed prompts that help to reduce the administrative load on recruiters, such as drafting call notes or synthesizing market intelligence.AI Adoption Starts With Leadership AlignmentLeigh Miller, senior customer talent advisor at Gem, says a sense of ownership is vital for the successful adoption of AI. She has seen what happens when such ownership is missing in her work as she helps companies implement new technology. It turns change management into an uphill battle.“When implementing Gem with customers, we’ve actually slowed down the implementation because recruiters weren’t bought in,” Miller said. “If they’re not excited, they don’t know why they’re getting it, they don’t see a problem in the first place; they are absolutely not going to adopt it.”At Macquarie, Howie’s team has avoided pitfalls by creating working groups that give recruiters a stake in the hiring process, ensuring leadership alignment extends beyond members of senior management to the people doing the work required daily. “The team feels like they own the process. It’s not happening to them. They’re part of it,” she said. “And I feel like that’s exciting for them. It’s not scary.”Navigating Compliance and Regulatory Risks in a Global TA FunctionOrganizations in heavily regulated industries require a more measured approach for AI adoption. Cassandre Joseph, the global head of TA and R&D at Novartis, oversees a team of over 200 people across multiple countries, each with its own compliance requirements. “There are just so many different regulatory risks in every one of the countries,” Joseph said. “Data privacy, particularly in Europe, is huge.”This reality has forced Novartis to take what Joseph calls a more thoughtful approach to AI adoption, slowing things down as others speed up, asking thorough questions about what each tool achieves, and bringing leaders from legal, compliance, and global data privacy into every decision."We want to understand: What are the algorithms that went into it? How were the algorithms built?" Joseph added. "We're really [focused] on layering and ensuring that we can peel back the layers to truly understand: Will this tool, yes, it might make us move a little bit faster, but will it create further regulatory risks for the organization from a legal standpoint?"The cautious approach to AI integration at Novartis hasn't prevented innovation. The company has deployed an AI coach that is available to the entire HR team, helping members to become better advisors by practicing different scenarios and asking better questions. The AI coach allows recruiters to work through challenging situations, without inputting identifying candidate information, to refine their approach.Bridging the Candidate Experience Gap Through Technology IntegrationOne of the most pressing challenges facing talent acquisition teams today is the perception gap between what employees think they’re providing and what candidates actually experience. Social media is filled with candidate complaints about being “ghosted” by employers or sending applications into what feels like a black hole. These are clear indicators of poor candidate engagement.Contrary to popular belief, AI isn’t automatically screening out most candidates. “We screen every application,” Joseph said. “There are a lot of legal reasons why we don’t adopt that technology just yet.” For now, every resume is reviewed by a human at Novartis.The real challenge is the volume of applications coming in. “Last year, we saw a 20% increase in applications, and I know it’s probably going to continue to rise,” Joseph said. “So what do you actually do?” She says her team is now exploring how AI tools can help create more human-centric messages and deploy them at the right time in hopes of avoiding situations where candidates receive rejection letters a few hours after applying.At Macquarie, the applicant tracking system (ATS) doesn’t auto-disqualify any candidates. “There is a human in the loop for the entire process,” Howie said. The organization works closely with its employer brand team to craft thoughtful rejection messages and invites candidates to join its customer relationship management (CRM) system, where they receive content about upcoming events and other company news. “We’re hoping that we’re using AI to bridge this communication gap, not strengthen it,” she added, demonstrating intentional technology integration that's aimed at enhancing the candidate experience.Workflow Optimization Through a Human-Centric LensAll four panelists agreed that the fundamentals of talent acquisition remain intact despite the rapid technological changes unfolding. Joseph warns against simply layering tech stacks upon each other without closely examining whether the underlying processes are sound.“We really need to get back to the basics,” she said. “At the end of the day, as folks within talent acquisition, it is: How do we help leaders make the right decisions to bring the right people into the organization? How do we help candidates find the right opportunities that work for them?”Miller framed it as the interplay of people, processes, and technology. “AI in recruiting is having a moment, rightly so,” she said. Miller says effective workflow optimization requires balancing all three elements.For Bazos, it comes down to remembering that behind every application is a person. “These are individuals with careers, families, trying to pay for mortgages and schools,” she said. “Carry that [idea] through the entire talent acquisition journey, keeping it human-centric at every step.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.
Designing Leadership Development for a Rapidly Changing Industry
BY Ade Akin March 18, 2026For Mark Monaghan, the future is something he’s eagerly awaited since he was a child, bonding with his father while watching Star Trek. The popular science-fiction show painted a positive picture of what a technologically advanced future could look like, and Mark couldn’t wait to be a part of it. “I remember even my mom, growing up one day, told me, ‘Mark, stop wishing your days away,’” Monaghan said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s February virtual conference. “And now it’s here. The future is here, and it’s happening so fast.”Monaghan, now the VP of global organizational development at iQor, a global customer experience company with 47,000 employees across 11 countries, is uniquely positioned to help shape that future. He detailed how his lifelong passion for science fiction has informed his real-world mission to use technology to deepen human connections through innovative leadership development during the session. The Data-Driven Foundation of CoachingiQor’s journey with advanced technology isn’t a recent pivot. Monaghan says the company purchased a big-data firm called Key Metrics about 12 years ago, long before artificial intelligence (AI) became a boardroom buzzword. This early adoption allowed them to begin analyzing the massive amounts of data generated in their 50-plus call centers, transitioning voice calls into digital data to identify patterns and coaching opportunities.Mark Monaghan, the VP of organizational development at iQor, spoke with From Day One's editor in chief, Steve Koepp (photo by From Day One)This data-centric approach became the bedrock of their internal coaching systems. iQor’s technology team built a proprietary coaching database called SCAN, with a new AI-integrated version, Coach IQ, on the horizon. One tool, dubbed “coach to coach,” uses AI to audit recorded coaching sessions between managers and supervisors, pinpointing specific areas for improvement. “We also learned a lot about AI, learned how the different models learned,” Monaghan said. “It’s just kind of soaked into us. We can use this.”The iLead Program: Measuring the ImmeasurableThe core of Monaghan’s work is the award-winning iLead mentoring program, which has earned 49 learning and development awards, including a gold Brandon Hall Award and a silver Stevie Award. The program operates on a leadership competency model that categorizes leaders from “leading oneself” to “leading a vision.” Each level is tied to five key competencies.iLead’s ability to measure development makes it revolutionary. Monaghan partnered with Fidello to build a system where mentors and mentees complete competency assessments. If a mentee rates themselves a five on “managerial courage” but their mentor gives them a two, a dashboard highlights the delta. The mentor can then assign a curated learning journey from iQor’s Skillsoft library that’s tied directly to that competency.“In Trinidad five years ago, we were able to identify that resolving conflict was the number one competency for our supervisors,” Monaghan elaborated. “We were actually able to move the needle from ‘needs development’ to ‘developed.’ That’s actually the first time I’ve ever been able to measure learning within the work environment that was measurable.”iQor uses a tool called “iTrack” to ensure these mentoring relationships are productive. iTrack allows mentees to confidentially rate each session. If scores dip, Monaghan’s team can investigate trends and offer gentle course corrections, ensuring conversations remain focused on career growth, instead of solely focusing on daily performance metrics.The Next Frontier: AI Mentors and Second Nature SimulationsAlways looking ahead, Monaghan is now introducing an AI mentor bot into the iLead system. The bot analyzes past session notes, assessment gaps, and learning assets to generate a tailored, 30-minute discussion agenda for mentor-mentee meetings. “As far as I can tell, this platform doesn’t exist anywhere else,” he added.Similarly, iQor is leveraging a simulation tool called Second Nature to train supervisors. Instead of just listening to calls, new hires can now practice complex conversations with realistic avatars. After the simulation, they receive complete feedback on what they could have done better, which can also be reviewed by trainers. “It’s a completely different level,” Monaghan said.Despite his passion for technology, Monaghan’s philosophy is firmly rooted in servant leadership. He worries about the loneliness epidemic and the role recent tech advancements have played in pushing people apart. His motivation now, in what he calls the “fourth quarter of his career,” is about legacy.“If I can help my leaders become servant leaders, help them remove barriers from their own lives, give them the confidence, recognition, and support that they need, you can really, really help people,” he said. “Every few months, I’ll get somebody from somewhere in my career that reaches out, and thanks me for a conversation. I think about that. That’s really what motivates me.” For Monaghan, the future of work isn’t just about using technology like artificial intelligence to build more efficient systems; it’s about using these tools to build more connected, capable, and confident people.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by PeopleImages/iStock)
How AI Is Reshaping Talent Acquisition Without Replacing Human Judgment
BY Ade Akin March 09, 2026Meghan Rhatigan and her team at Marriott International discovered that candidates didn’t mind getting a text message to book their interviews after automating interview scheduling. In fact, many candidates barely noticed.“We’ve scheduled over 300,000 interviews through an automated process and saved thousands and countless hours,” Rhatigan, VP of global talent acquisition experience at Marriott International, said during a panel discussion at From Day One’s Washington D.C.conference. The impact of that decision has been substantial: the interview process that once took ten days from start to finish now takes only three. Rhatigan’s findings challenged a common assumption in HR spaces, such as the belief that high-touch hospitality recruiting required human coordination at every step. Instead, automation freed Marriott International’s recruiters to focus on building relationships with candidates and hiring managers.Rhatigan shared her insights during a panel discussion with three other HR leaders titled “Modernizing Talent Acquisition: Enhancing Efficiency, Outreach, and the Applicant Experience,” as part of a wider discussion on how artificial intelligence is redefining the recruitment process. Adam DeRose, a senior reporter at Morning Brew’s HR Brew, moderated the conversation.The Case for Keeping Humans in ChargeThe panelists agreed there is a firm line between automation and decision-making. Rhatigan says Marriott made an early philosophical decision early on as it started to integrate AI into its system: AI would never get to select which candidates move forward or get hired. “We’re a hospitality company. We have a business around human connection and travel and experiences, and the last thing that we want is for candidates to go through a hiring process where they never actually talk to a human,” Rhatigan said. “There are companies that are moving in that direction, and that’s fine, but we’re not that company.”Panelists spoke about "Modernizing Talent Acquisition: Enhancing Efficiency, Outreach, and the Applicant Experience"Shabrina Davis, head of manager enablement and inclusive hiring learning at Amazon, offered a counterpoint. She says AI can help identify and reduce bias. It can intervene when recruiters develop unconscious preferences, such as favoring graduates from their alma mater. “From a learning and development perspective, we can have a pop-up that says, ‘Hey recruiter, we see you have a preference for Arizona State, but have you looked at Utah, or Florida State, or Howard University?’” Davis said. “Instead of 30 days later looking at a report and saying, ‘Oh, these recruiters are only looking here,’ we can do it immediately and have an intervention that rewires the thinking.”Data-Driven RecruitingFor Bert Hensley, chairman and CEO of Morgan Samuels, AI’s most valuable contribution has been transparency. His firm conducts executive searches with unusual intensity, typically speaking with more than 250 candidates per engagement, and up to 500 for sales roles. The research required to identify the right people once took 20 minutes per company. Now, AI accomplishes the same task in about 25 seconds.Using AI tools to aggregate data gives recruiters an honest view of their own performances. Hensley cited his wife, a therapist, who observes that “everyone is just hardwired to believe better about themselves than they really are. We live in that myth until you have the data that you’re getting every single day that tells you, no, you’re not quite doing what you thought you were doing.”Hensley says that reality check has improved performance across the organization while reducing anxiety. “They’re living in reality, and they don’t have to worry about what’s happening. They know what’s happening every single morning,” Hensley said.Jason Long, senior HRIS analyst at G-P, framed the broader challenge as one of trust. His company encourages employees to experiment with AI tools, and some of those innovations have made their way into G-P’s employer-of-record platform, helping connect professionals with international opportunities.Long drew a parallel to the early internet. “Pets.com didn’t fail because they didn’t have a good idea. They failed because nobody wanted to put their credit card on the internet in 2000,” he said. “Now we have HTTPS and PayPal and a million ways to do that. So what is that key that will unlock trust and help people actually believe that what they're getting from AI is useful?”Doing More With LessExternal pressures are also reshaping how companies approach the hiring process. Layoffs remain in the headlines, and candidates are asking harder questions. Davis acknowledged that Amazon’s recent workforce reductions come up in conversations.“We’re transparent,” she said. “Candidates ask about it, and it’s the reality of the industry that we’re in.” For new hires, a mindset of adaptability is essential. “The role that you’re hired for today may not be the role that you’re doing in 30 days. With that mindset, when you walk in the door, that hopefully will allow you to weather the storms.”Hensley has observed the same trend, noting that search firms now evaluate candidates on agility quotient (AQ), alongside intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ). “If they’re afraid of AI, I can’t present them to a client,” he said. “They don’t have to be the master of it, but they need to be embracing it.”For Rhatigan, the pressure is more immediate. Talent acquisition teams are being asked to do more with less. Marriott recently brought its frontline hiring in-house after two decades of relying on a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) model. The company hired 50,000 U.S. frontline associates last year, despite having a team of only 20 people. “We would have never been able to do that without AI, ever,” Rhatigan said. “No one is going to be given a pot of money to add people anymore. But we’re all being asked to hire more. So the answer is technology.”Perhaps the most unexpected win came from Amazon’s learning and development team. Davis says AI has eliminated language barriers in training. A year ago, her team could only produce materials in seven languages due to translation costs. Now there’s effectively no limit. “If you’re in a small country on the continent of Africa, and your language is definitely not in the top seven, you’ll have the same experience as someone who’s in Italy,” she said. “It levels the playing field and makes it fair.”The lesson, panelists agreed, isn’t to chase grand transformations, but to find the small, repetitive tasks where automation can deliver meaningful impact while allowing humans to do what they do best.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Change Fatigue Is Real: How Leaders Can Keep Teams Adapting
BY Ade Akin March 04, 2026Jennifer Vardeman kicked off the panel discussion at From Day One’s Houston conference by asking the audience about their sentiments when asked to adopt something new, like a tool, system, or policy, and to rate their feelings by raising one, two, or three fingers. One finger signified excitement, two meant exhaustion, and three represented pretending to be excited while feeling exhausted.“I see a few ones, that’s good, but mostly threes and twos,” Vardeman, Ph.D., professor and director at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston, said. “So we’re in the right place at the right time.” The panel discussion moderated by Vardeman brought together HR leaders from four major organizations to diagnose the symptoms of change fatigue and discuss remedies. The Many Faces of FatigueFor Anand Mudunuru, global head of HR for software engineering at Stellantis, change fatigue looks less like resistance and more like weariness born of perpetual motion. Stellantis, the world’s third-largest automaker with over 250,000 employees, has undergone decades of acquisitions, leadership changes, and headquarters relocations.“What I see is that people are used to change,” Mudunuru said. “What happens is that people are exhausted. There is a never-ending story.” He says his teams are open to new things but crave “clarity of thought, focus, and clear timelines.”Clelia Cayama, the senior HR director at Vytl Controls Group, described a similar dynamic in her organization, which is built on continuous improvement and operational excellence. “Everybody over coffee is talking about what we can do better,” she said. “But then it comes, always a joke about, ‘Oh, new implementation, a new project. Who’s going to volunteer for that? Who’s going to lead it?”Panelists spoke on the topic, "Change Fatigue Is Real: How Leaders Can Keep Teams Adapting"Mindy Fitzgerald, the head of HR operational excellence at Air Products, offered a more visceral description. “I see a quiet depletion,” she said. “Discretionary energy into things. A sense of languishing, maybe the joy they got in a job, a task, or an activity. It just seems to be missing.”Brea May, head of HR for the Americas at Mahindra, painted a picture of organizational chaos. With three new product launches, two ERP systems to reconcile, and a host of strategic projects, the same “best and brightest” employees are tapped for every initiative. “It causes a lot of anxiety,” May said. “It causes a lot of burnout.”Communication Across Cultures and Time ZonesCommunication often breaks down first when employees are overwhelmed. Language barriers, cultural differences, and asynchronous work compound the challenge global organizations face.Mahindra, headquartered in Mumbai with over 200,000 employees across 100 countries, is familiar with this problem. Misunderstandings in written communication were once frequent, as only 10% of its employees speak English as a first language.“Somebody is taking in information, they’re translating it into English, and they’re putting it into a written form or speaking it out loud,” May said. “It caused a lot of tension for years.” Employees often interpreted direct, bullet-point emails as aggressive, while softer messages were seen as indecisive.The solution to that problem emerged organically. Employees began using a proprietary AI tool, Mahindra AI, to draft and refine cross-cultural communications. “Since everybody started doing it, it’s become this sort of adoption,” May said. “Hey, I’m not going to take offense to the email. I know that Mahindra AI wrote it.” Some employees even tag messages with disclaimers like “AI drafted this.”Stellantis took a different approach. Mudunuru, who built a 7,000-person software team across 30 countries during the pandemic, instituted monthly town halls as the single source of truth for major announcements. To ensure psychological safety, he introduced Mentimeter, an anonymous question-and-answer tool. “They’re able to bring out their concerns without being judged,” he said. “And most importantly, they’re being heard.”For Cayama, the key is intentional, empathetic leadership. “Our leaders are not afraid to say when they don’t have the answer,” she said. “To be there with people, to be empathetic, to relate themselves to what we’re going through.”The Leadership Behaviors That MatterAs the panel shifted from identifying the problem to addressing it, a clear picture emerged of the leadership habits that matter most: transparency, empowerment, and humanity.Cayama highlighted two of Vytl Controls Group's values: “trust to act” and “make it fun.” Trust to act means empowering people to make decisions and execute their work with the confidence that the organization has their back. Making it fun, she says, is about knowing when to pause. “Sometimes in the middle of a business review, to take the time to have some time to decompress, to make fun, not to talk about the work and the topic of the meeting, but to spend time together, connecting,” she added.Mudunuru emphasized customer centricity, passion, and a global mindset with regional execution. He also offered a more tactical tip that has been adopted at Stellantis: no meeting may exceed seven people, and every employee has the right to decline an invitation. “If you are invited, there’s a tendency just to add people,” he said. “Every employee has a right to reject the meeting.”Fitzgerald introduced the concept of “narrowing the field of focus.” She says leaders can create stability by establishing predictable rhythms when everything feels urgent. She stresses the little things, such as no-meeting Fridays, standing check-ins, or simply focusing on one thing during one-on-ones. “You’re creating a level of stabilization amongst all the churn,” she said.She also offered a mantra for leaders: “Our job as leaders is to prioritize the work for our people and our organization ruthlessly. It’s not to prioritize. It is to prioritize ruthlessly. Remember, all that work that you are unable to prioritize creates change fatigue and unsettledness for your employees.”AI as a PartnerThe panelists all agree that how artificial intelligence tools are introduced matters tremendously as they become ubiquitous. When used correctly, AI reduces overload instead of adding to it.Artificial intelligence is already reshaping the workforce at Stellantis. Mudunuru notes that the company has stopped hiring entry-level software engineers because AI systems now write much of the code needed. Experienced engineers are needed to validate and enhance the code, but the shift has forced a rethink of the talent strategy.Mudunuru created a chatbot trained on two years of town hall recordings for HR purposes. Employees in Poland can request vacation days using the system, while those in Brazil can contact their HR representative. “You don’t need to ask these questions,” he said. “Seventy to eighty percent of the questions are just for HR. They are not strategic questions.”Cayama’s organization uses AI to automate non-value-added tasks, freeing employees to focus on more meaningful work. Inside sales teams, for example, use AI to pull prior quotes, accelerating pricing and freeing up more time with clients. “It’s leveraging technology to do the non-value-added task so we can have more people-to-people interaction,” she said.At Mahindra, AI adoption is supported by monthly lunch-and-learn sessions. “It’s about getting them comfortable with using AI and showing how it could reduce the workload,” May said. “This is your partner. This is your assistant.”Learning From Failure to Keep Moving ForwardNo change initiative unfolds perfectly, and the panelists were candid about their missteps. May introduced a more unusual response to failure, the “smart failure award.” When a project fails despite meeting all deliverables, due to factors beyond the team’s control, the team presents lessons learned and receives recognition for the effort. “At first, people were saying, ‘I failed. This is hard,’” May said. But the award reframes failure as a learning opportunity and acknowledges the work that went into the attempt.As the panel concluded, Vardeman recapped the many strategies shared: clarity of thought, careful planning, listening, standing meetings, cultural onboarding, anonymous Q&A tools, values-based leadership, and ruthless prioritization. She highlighted the importance of seeing employees' lived reality, positioning AI as a partner, and creating space for fun.“Everything cannot be planned,” said Mudunuru. “Everything cannot be super structured. The best part is being on top of the list, prioritizing the list, and just keep executing.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Scaling Marketing With AI
BY Ade Akin March 03, 2026Carrie Teegardin kicked off an executive panel discussion at From Day One's Atlanta marketing conference with an iconic line from the original Spider-Man movie: “With great power comes great responsibility.” It was the perfect metaphor to kick off the panel about artificial intelligence and its impact across industries, particularly the marketing world. “There’s a lot of stuff you can do, but really, should we be doing that now at this time?” Teegardin, a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who moderated the conversation, asked, setting the tone for the discussion. The panel, titled “AI in Marketing: Scaling Personalization Without Losing the Human Touch,” brought together marketing leaders who are actively trying to find a balance between innovation and ethics. Allison Conrad, the managing director of technology at Accenture, immediately seized on Teegardin's Spider-Man analogy. “It really hits on one of the key things around leveraging AI,” Conrad said. She cited the results of a recent Accenture collaboration with Amazon Web Services that surveyed 1,000 C-suite leaders. About 72% reported they had halted an AI pilot or program because of responsible AI concerns.Conrad encouraged marketers to engage in the governance conversation early on. “Marketers need to be at the table,” she added. “Responsible AI gets real when you turn it to customers. And who knows the customers better than the people in this room? If you’re invited to that, I encourage you to go. If you’re not invited, I encourage you to invite yourself.”When Trust Requires Moving Slow to Go FastChristopher Merrill, the chief marketing officer for the digital platform at Synchrony Financial, shared how his company built a fence around the metaphorical AI playground before opening up access.“In financial services, just like any bank, [we] have your social security number and your bank accounts, and so you would probably not like that information to go out outside of my walls," Merrill said. “The beauty and also the danger of AI is once you submit things to ChatGPT, you ask things, you upload documents, it’s gone forever.”Synchrony initially blocked access to public artificial intelligence tools entirely. Instead, the tech team at Synchrony Financial built its own private ecosystem using open-source AI and dubbed it "SYF-GPT" after the company’s stock ticker. “So, yes, did it take longer? Obviously, you know, it took time,” Merrill said, “We were a little bit behind versus some of the folks that didn’t have that same kind of data constraints. But now it’s allowing us to go faster,” he said. The secure environment Merrill's team built now allows employees to upload sensitive documents and draft copies without fear of data leaks. Keeping the Human in the LoopThe panel unanimously agreed that human judgment remains more valuable than ever despite the rush toward automation. Aniket Maindarkar, the chief marketing officer at business process services company Firstsource, shared a cautionary tale about chasing AI hype.After receiving a provocative email from leadership about a competitor producing an ad video for a fraction of the cost, Maindarkar's team raced to produce its own AI-generated video. The quality wasn’t up to par, he admitted. The team eventually partnered with an agency to refine the story and ensure it resonated emotionally with viewers. “For marketers, the only moat that you have is authenticity. That’s it. That’s the only moat that we are left with,” Maindarkar said. “So tech does stuff, but in today’s environment, I think for marketers, the people aspect becomes so important, because without that, you’re probably lost.”Panelists spoke about "AI in Marketing: Scaling Personalization Without Losing the Human Touch" Conrad built on this, distinguishing between AI’s ability to drive efficiency versus its inability to create true distinctiveness. “The LLMs [large language models] that are out there, unless you’re very sophisticated in doing a lot of native work, they’re learning. They’re learning off of everyone else’s data and your data,” she said. “It’s going to be really hard to be distinctive if you rely too heavily on that. What is the human doing? The humans are the people in this room, making sure that you don’t lose your distinctiveness. AI is not really good at that. That emotional connection that you have been investing in your brand, that’s another thing that AI is not going to give you.”From A/B to Multivariate TestingThe panelists agreed that one of AI’s most impressive capabilities is the ability to optimize performance. “We all do some sort of A/B testing,” Merrill said. “Digital, for a long time, has made that so much easier with tools like AI. You can test not just three, four, or five multivariate models, but literally hundreds at the same time. It is an extremely powerful tool, if done correctly.”Maindarkar says AI is now helping dismantle internal silos, bringing together teams that previously worked in isolation and unifying the content-creation process. Now, teams collaborate on a single platform using shared briefs and templates, giving marketing leaders a direct line of sight into what really drives pipeline and brand perception.The Evolving Skill Set: What Happens to the Grunt Work?Teegardin posed a provocative question to the group: If AI eliminates menial tasks, how will junior employees learn the fundamentals?“How, as young employees, did we learn menial tasks?” she noted, reflecting on her days as a young reporter covering local government meetings. “If our people aren’t doing menial tasks, is that a problem?”Merrill suggested the skill set is simply shifting. “The real skill becomes, well, how do you take full advantage of these capabilities? Do I ask it just one very simple question, or am I asking 100 questions to get deeper at the source to figure it out?” He elaborated. “You can’t just take it and say, okay, this is what the answer is. I’m going to run with it.”Conrad acknowledged this is one of the biggest challenges she’s facing. “That apprenticeship, that mentorship, how do we cultivate that sixth sense? If you don’t have that experience, how do you get it?” All three panelists emphasized that AI adoption is as much about culture as it is about technology. Merrill’s team runs internal campaigns asking employees how they’re using AI, from writing code to creating bedtime stories for their kids. Maindarkar recently held an offsite event where 80 employees formed pods and were challenged to create a campaign ad in 20 minutes using only free tools. “It creates magic within the enterprise,” he added. “In an organization, you often have certain people whom AI is forced upon, but certain people who are experimenting and who are trying and are just waiting for the opportunity to showcase that.”As the session concluded, Teegardin circled back to the villains in the Spider-Man universe. What should marketers watch out forMaindarkar warned that CMOs must now think like a Chief Information Security Officer for their brand. “There is nobody else in the company who’s looking at that in terms of what parts of your brand are being leaked out,” he said. Merrill kept it simple. “I’'ll say just trust but verify,” he added. “AI is an awesome set of tools. But you can’t just take it at whatever it says. You’ve got to have the human in the loop.”Conrad’s final word was a call for robust infrastructure. “You can’t do point solutions,” she elaborated. “Laws are changing. You’re going to need an integrated platform that is constantly monitoring these programs. If you’re going to fight the bad guys, you need to be armed with a lot of automation and a lot of data.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.
Future-Proofing HR With AI: How to Lead, Adapt, and Keep the Human Touch in a Tech-Driven Era
BY Ade Akin February 12, 2026One key test of Matt Jackson’s leadership was determining the optimal way to support a team member’s return from maternity leave. “I’ve never been on maternity leave,” he said. “I don’t know what I should say. I don’t know what I shouldn’t say.”Jackson, the Chief Growth Officer at the mental health platform Unmind, turned to his company’s AI coach, which is trained on internal policies and empathetic communication. It took the AI only three minutes to provide the guidance he needed to start the reintegration process with care, he shared during an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s Atlanta conference. The session highlighted the need for organizations to establish metrics and key performance indicators to measure AI's impact on talent development, performance management, and employee well-being. Starting Where the Pull Is: AI in Career DevelopmentAt AGCO Corporation, a global agricultural equipment manufacturer, a common theme in engagement surveys was employees’ desire for clearer career paths and development opportunities. Creating static career ladders was impractical for a workforce of 25,000 employees worldwide.“Even if we created one tomorrow, it would be extinct the next day because jobs are changing all the time,” Lori Goldberg, the VP of global talent at AGCO said. The solution was an AI-powered career pathing marketplace launched in October. The tool analyzes employees’ current roles and identifies skills they likely possess, which employees can then validate or revise, says Goldberg. It then directs them to internal career opportunities aligned with those competencies. However, deploying AI-powered HR tools requires overcoming challenges such as employee resistance and ensuring proper integration. Leaders must anticipate and address these obstacles to drive successful adoption, Goldberg says.Coaching at Scale: Practice Makes ProgressOne of the most significant applications of AI in HR is in coaching and manager development. Providing consistent, scalable training is a monumental challenge for large, diverse companies. Yulia Denisova, the VP of talent and development at the global sports merchandise retailer Fanatics, joined the company to find a patchwork of performance management practices across its 22,000-person workforce spanning 15 countries. Creating a unified system was step one; building capability was the next.“We cannot run around flying on planes and be there to train 22,000 people. But AI can do that, and it can do it at scale,” Denisova said. Some new technology offers immersive scenarios where managers can practice difficult conversations, such as delivering tough feedback to an underperforming team member, using AI-powered avatars that provide real-time feedback, she says. Denisova notes how rapidly this technology has improved, going from basic simulations years ago to near-human holographic interactions today. Panelists spoke about how AI is reshaping HR, from coaching, to career pathing, and well-being“Back in the day, coaching was typically reserved for your senior executives, and it was often your frontline managers who really needed the coaching,” Robin Patton, the global head of employee relations at restaurant platform Toast Inc., said. AI coaching equalizes access. It offers judgment-free practice, which is particularly helpful for newer or anxious managers. The technology also allows companies to tailor scenarios to their specific values. Feeding AI tools a company’s cultural beliefs ensures guidance comes “in the language that we speak,” says Goldberg. AI as a Tool, Not a ReplacementThe panelists were unanimous in their belief that AI’s role in performance management is to assist, not replace, human judgment. Patton outlined how Toast is exploring the use of AI to help managers draft more consistent, structured, and actionable performance reviews. This helps reduce unconscious bias and reduces the vague or legally risky statements that often plague manual reviews.AI can also be helpful when utilized thoughtfully in promoting wellness. Unmind sits at the intersection of AI and mental health, one of the most sensitive human domains. Jackson addressed the elephant in the room head-on. “Whether we like it or not, AI is being integrated into mental health care,” Jackson said, citing a Harvard Business Review finding that in 2025, the second most common use case for generative AI was mental health companionship. There’s a severe global shortage of human providers, and artificial intelligence can offer 24/7, stigma-free support.Jackson emphasized the importance of using clinically trained AI systems with ethical guardrails in mental health support, addressing concerns about safety, bias, and trust in AI-driven mental health care. “AI is the latest member of a multidisciplinary team,” Jackson said. When designed correctly, these algorithms can support therapy between sessions, provide access in therapist desert regions, and deliver modalities such as cognitive behavioral therapy with consistent clinical precision. The human therapist’s role evolves to oversight, integration, and handling complex escalations.Navigating Anxiety and Building LiteracyThe rapid pace of change brought on by AI inevitably stirs anxiety. Session moderator Carrie Teegardin, a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, noted that employees’ questions about AI policies reflect widespread uncertainty about the future. The panelists offered strategies for leading through this transition.Jackson says leaders must frame AI as a friend and a tool for empowerment. “People will only be replaced by AI if they don’t learn how to use artificial intelligence in their role,” he said. Denisova also recommends people view AI as a team member to collaborate with. Goldberg described AGCO’s three-tiered approach: encouraging “citizen AI” for personal productivity, forming cross-functional teams to tackle large-scale business problems with artificial intelligence, and focusing on functional transformations, such as talent acquisition.Patton encourages viewing technological change in historical context and focusing on enduring human skills. “Communication is still paramount, integrity, respect, civility, all of those skill sets are still paramount,” she said. One lingering concern among many employees and employers about artificial intelligence taking over routine, menial tasks is how junior employees will gain the practice needed to develop their skills. Denisova raised this concern, asking whether the pursuit of efficiency might erase the 10,000 hours of practice required to master a craft. The answer, the panel suggested, lies in intentionally redesigning how we learn on the job.Goldberg urges human resources teams to partner up with information technology on strategic workforce planning and AI literacy for all. “Stay human, stay curious, and explore and experiment,” Denisova said. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.
How Does Your Brand Show Up in the New Era of GEO?
BY Ade Akin February 04, 2026Damien Slattery couldn’t help but notice how fast culture around him had changed during a recent commute on the F train in Brooklyn. The subway car he rode in would have been filled with people reading newspapers or magazines decades ago, but everyone now stared at electronic screens. For Slattery, the SVP of strategic growth and partnerships at Inc. and Fast Company, this observation highlighted the tremendous shift facing marketers today. The blueprint has been completely rewired, and AI is now directing its future. Slattery, a media veteran who has led marketing campaigns for major brands like Time and Sports Illustrated, discussed this technological shift and more during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s January virtual conference. We’ve now moved past the era of search engine optimization (SEO) into a new chapter that’s defined by answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO), he says. “The AI universe has just re-engineered and reimagined what search prioritizes,” Slattery told session moderator, Steve Koepp, From Day One’s editor in chief and co-founder. “Brand leaders today have to be thinking about these AI models working behind the scenes to cite, summarize, and trust your narrative, your product, your service.”The Rise of the Answer EngineThe transition from keyword-focused SEO to AI-prioritized AEO represents a fundamental change in how brands must approach content. Slattery recalls the early days of digital search, where the marketing goal was to rank high for specific search queries. Today, AI-powered search engines prioritize providing the best, most concise answer rather than simply listing links to potential answers. “I had CNBC on early this morning, and they had the OpenAI CFO on from Davos, and she said something that really kind of crystallized our conversations today,” Slattery said. “The best answer is no longer or not necessarily the paid answer, right? The best answer is going to be served.”Today’s marketing teams should aim to be selected as an authoritative source by AI. “It’s a new muscle we all have to build,” he said. “And it’s going to make us better marketers, better storytellers, and [help] leverage the power and might of AI more strategically.”Koepp noted this new landscape is fragmented among several competing AI platforms, unlike the Google-dominated era of SEO, where marketers mostly focused on learning the rules to rank high on Google’s search engine. Slaterry says brands must now ensure that their core narratives and data are trustworthy enough to be recognized as the best source of information across multiple “answer engines.”Building Trust in an AI-Driven WorldThe age-old concept of trust remains vital as AI transforms the marketing landscape. Slattery points to the Edelman Trust Barometer, which found in 2023 that businesses are more trusted than governments and institutions. That trust has gone local. “We have to be super rigorous,” Slattery said regarding building trust with targeted audiences. He emphasizes what he calls “trust signals,” which include verifiable reviews, professional credentials, detailed FAQs, and accurate product descriptions. Damian Slattery, the SVP of Strategic Growth & Partnerships and Inc. and Fast Company (Mansueto Ventures), spoke during the virtual session (photo by From Day One)In keeping and building trust, Slattery warns against losing the human element that makes up the core of branding as organizations rush to adopt AI. He referenced a new campaign from Equinox titled “Question Everything But Yourself,” which uses absurd, AI-generated imagery, like a woman biting a dog that’s really a cake to deliver its messaging. For him, it’s an example of how an organization can brilliantly leverage AI’s capabilities to deliver a profoundly human message.“Brands need to keep it real,” Slattery said. “That can become the thing that makes AI surmountable for those who feel like, where do I start? You start by keeping your brand human and then chipping away at these things that will make your brand discoverable and trusted.”This human focus connects directly to its customers, the ultimate targets of a company’s branding. “It’s customers who infuse the meaning into the brand,” Slattery said, recalling a colleague who was turned off by a poorly personalized message on her Starbucks cup. Every touchpoint, from social media to customer service, shapes that personal relationship, and a single misstep can alter perception.The Impatient, Agentic FutureSlattery also explored the near-future implications of AI and marketing, describing an “impatience economy,” where AI shortens the consumer journey from consideration to purchase into mere seconds. This raises a potentially disintermediating puzzle.“Once an agent knows the consumer well, the trust follows in the agent, not the brand,” Slattery said. “The agent is winning the relationship and the trust, as this intermediary with the brand.” The risk is that customer loyalty shifts to the AI assistant that knows their preferences, rather than the brand itself.For chief marketing officers, the mandate is clear. Brands must lean into the new reality of generative engine optimization by ensuring their content is structured for AI discovery, their data is impeccable, and their narrative is both grand and granular.The journey from the folded newspapers on the F train to the glowing screens of today took a few decades. The next leap will be into a world where AI agents do our searching and synthesize our choices at the speed of light, and that’s coming in the next several years.“What got you here won’t get you there,” Slattery concluded, echoing management guru Marshall Goldsmith. The work of adapting to the answer engine economy starts now for brands that wish to matter in the future.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Sandwish/iStock)
The Agentic HR Operating Model: Moving Beyond Chatbots to AI-First HR
BY Ade Akin January 02, 2026AI is generating both excitement and concern in the workplace, and especially in HR. Tools like Wisq’s AI HR generalist, Harper, promise to automate tasks and slash workloads by more than 80%, yet many organizations find their AI experiments deliver only incremental results instead of the transformative change they hoped for, says Clayton Holz, the head of product at the agentic HR platform Wisq.AI can transform HR departments if deployed pragmatically, Holz shared during a From Day One webinar about “The Agentic HR Operating Model: Moving Beyond Chatbots to AI-First HR.” Success requires proactively navigating around fundamental limitations, redesigning processes, and rethinking organizational structure, he says. “You are going to have to do work,” Holz said. “But I can clearly see a world in which, in the HR domain, AI is doing a lot of the tier zero, tier one, maybe some of the tier two work, and then augmenting your work further up the pyramid.”The Reality Check on AI AgentsTransforming HR departments with AI starts with a clear understanding of the technology’s current capabilities and limitations. Holz outlines several fundamental constraints HR leaders must work around. First, AI models are probabilistic, not deterministic. “A model with no supporting safety algorithm is going to be consistent anywhere from 60 to 90% of the time,” he said, adding that out-of-the-box AI tools like Copilot often perform worse on HR-specific tasks. Clayton Holz, the head of product at Wisq, led the webinar (company photo)Second, artificial intelligence struggles with complex, multi-turn instructions, sometimes leading to “hallucinations.” Models are trained to be sycophantic, which conflicts with HR’s need to be consistently fair and empathetic. “AI is more than willing to go ahead and make a decision on behalf of your organization that might not be present in the source material,” Holz said. Third, AI doesn’t magically drive behavior change. For example, AI can’t do much if employees aren’t motivated to create individual development plans. “AI is not suddenly going to change that motivational gap and change people's behavior,” Holz said. “It might make the experience of doing it different and better, but it's not necessarily going to change their behavior.”Holz advises that the best use cases for artificial intelligence are scenarios where “people just keep doing what they were doing before, and AI is there so they don’t have to change any behavior at all.”Building the Bridge With ITA major hurdle many HR teams face is getting their IT departments on board with the decision to give AI a larger role. Holz says HR teams should be proactive and data-driven when communicating with IT departments. “Vague asks are going to be difficult for them to prioritize,” he said. Holz advises HR leaders to articulate their needs to IT teams using three key dimensions: care (employee experience), compliance (risk reduction), and cost (time savings).He recommends building bridges by helping IT teams to understand the unique nuances of HR work, such as the rules governing a leave of absence. “The best examples that I’ve seen, honestly, are when someone in IT has recently gone on a leave of absence, because then they have empathy for some of the things that you’re dealing with,” Holz said.Redesigning HR Processes for AIThe core of Holz’s advice for HR leaders centers on the methodologies used to redesign processes for the implementation of AI. He suggests a hands-on workshop approach, starting with a subject-matter expert interview to map out multi-step processes like handling a request for promotion in detail, including the back-and-forth and waiting periods. Once that’s out of the way, the next step is to codify each step of the process. This systematic breakdown makes the workflow shape visible. “This is a great opportunity for redesign,” Holz said. “We’re looking for places where we can remove, combine, reorder, and standardize steps.”Finally, each step of each process should be evaluated and placed on a two-by-two grid. One axis measures the level of risk involved if the step is incorrectly done, while the other measures the amount of human judgement required. Doing so creates a clear opportunity map for applying AI to processes:Low-risk, low-judgment tasks: Examples include tasks like sending a reminder email or retrieving a standard policy document. These are prime candidates for full automation.High-risk, high-judgment tasks: These are important tasks like granting final approval on a sensitive employee relations case. Such tasks should be primarily handled by human experts, while AI serves as an assistant that helps to curate information or generate drafts. Tasks in the middle: These include tasks such as the initial assessment of a promotion request against set criteria. Most of these tasks can be handled by AI, but a human review step should be built in for quality assurance. For example, in the case of a promotion request, the approval routine might be automated, while a human communicates the final decision to the employee after evaluating the AI’s recommendation. Preparing Policies for an AI TeammateHolz says company policies must be AI-ready to operate the technology effectively. Ambiguous policies that are confusing to humans will be even more problematic for artificial intelligence. He highlights some of the most common issues organizations face, including outdated handbooks, over-reliance on jargon, and vast amounts of unwritten “tribal knowledge” governing discretionary decisions. Holz recommends archiving old policy documents, using plain language, and running policies by focus groups consisting of new employees to test for clarity. “If they don’t get it, it’s likely that AI is also not going to get it consistently,” he said. He also recommends codifying the unwritten rules that govern discretionary decisions, like what counts as a “close family member” for bereavement leave. This codification is essential to offload repetitive work to an AI agent. One of the most profound shifts in attitudes Holz proposed regarding AI is to view it as a team member, instead of a tool. “They’re going to need a manager, they’re going to need onboarding, they’re going to need supervision, they’re going to need performance feedback,” he said.Holz predicts the slow, consensus-driven policy management model will hinder the effectiveness of AI systems adopted and sees forward-thinking companies shifting toward a hub-and-spoke model with clear, centralized policy owners. “This is going to be a big [shift], allowing you to move much more quickly and get more out of AI going forward,” he added.The Future of HR Service DeliveryHolz envisions a not-too-distant future where AI handles the majority of HR service delivery, freeing humans up for tasks that require more human skills. “I think all of [those transactional requests] could be done in part or entirely by AI,” he said. The shift toward AI-driven HR may also encourage organizations to standardize policies that were once open to broad interpretation. “I could see policies becoming more black and white, candidly, or black and white for large shares of the population, so that decisions can be made in a more programmatic and consistent way,” he said.Holz’s message to HR leaders is that AI has the potential to transform processes, but that requires a proactive, process-oriented, and collaborative approach. The teammate of the future is waiting to be onboarded. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Wisq, for sponsoring this webinar. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by CL Stock/Shutterstock)
Cultivating Psychological Flexibility: Thriving Through Change in 2026
BY Ade Akin January 02, 2026“You can always count change as a constant,” Nicole Conley, associate director of employee experience at ibex, said during a From Day One webinar. But change doesn’t have to be a setback. Psychological flexibility is the skill that separates teams that crumble under the pressure created by disruptive technologies from those that successfully adapt to their new realities. Conley was joined by a panel of speakers during a session about “The Power of Adaptability: Thriving Through Change in 2026,” to share concrete ways leaders can cultivate adaptability in themselves and the teams they lead. Laura Magnuson, LAMFT and VP of clinical engagement at Talkspace, defines psychological flexibility as the ability to be present and open to difficult experiences, and take actions aligned with your values, rather than getting stuck in rigid, unhelpful patterns like avoidance or impulsivity.Magnuson traces the concept of psychological flexibility to acceptance and commitment therapy, pointing out shared philosophies like staying in the present, accepting uncomfortable feelings, and taking action. The Importance of Leadership Modeling Adaptability All four panelists agreed that leaders must exhibit the behaviors they want to see in team members. Jamie Smith Hubbard, the senior director of talent management at Compass Group, described three layers of connection her team uses: monthly company check-ins, weekly peer gatherings, and what she calls “Friday Focus,” a block of time designated for team members to catch up with each other or address personal needs. Sarah Begley, the VP of member content for Atria, moderated the session among leaders (photo by From Day One)“We use that time to really make sure that we’re taking care of ourselves,” she said, noting that such rituals help to normalize downtime without negatively impacting productivity. Tools for Navigating ChangeKristina Gardiner, the senior director of talent management at Help at Home, says transparency is the most effective tool for reducing change-induced anxiety. “A better informed soldier is a better performing soldier,” she said, borrowing from her military experience to explain how sharing the “why” behind decisions helps people connect the dots, making them more adaptable. Gardiner’s team replaced mass email blasts with conversations led by team leaders and small group sessions, so employees could ask questions in real time. It’s the small moments that matter, according to Conley. Psychological flexibility shows up in everyday moments, like checking in, naming what’s hard, and pausing before reacting, she says. She writes down everything to separate emotions from real issues when she feels overwhelmed, and returns to solve the problem with a calmer mind. That five-minute pause is what helps managers respond effectively to change instead of reacting irrationally.The panelists agreed that behavioral interviews using realistic scenarios best reveal adaptability, often more than personality tests. They also cautioned that chasing too many initiatives creates fatigue, urging leaders to push back and focus on the highest-impact changes.Navigating Generational Challenges and AI’s ImpactLeaders should be attuned to how different team members deal with change. Magnuson points out a Talkspace survey that found Gen Zers are uniquely self-critical when they fail. “As leaders, first being aware that this is something that might be happening with this younger group of employees, and figuring out how we can help to coach and support them to accept failure and take on that growth mindset is crucial,” she said.One major source of workplace uncertainty is artificial intelligence. While AI is expected to open up new opportunities, it also sparks fear. The panelists agreed that leaders should remain measured and human-centric when addressing these concerns. “We’re exploring different AI platforms and doing smaller pilots,” Hubbard added as she stressed how irreplaceable the human element is. Gardiner suggests transparent communication about industry “headwinds and tailwinds,” while Conley recommends empowering employees to see AI as a tool that helps them “work smarter, not harder.”Why Adaptability Drives Business Performance Psychological flexibility is often the difference between organizations that turn change into a ladder to propel growth and those that are hindered by it. Companies that can pivot quickly will capture opportunities at the speed required by technological change and shifting markets, while those that are slow to adapt will miss out on these opportunities, says Magnuson. “If you don’t have a team that’s really nimble and ready to move and pivot, you as a business might lose out on some opportunities,” she said. The demise of Blockbuster highlights the immense cost of failing to adapt. The defunct video rental giant once dominated its market with thousands of stores and a widely recognized brand that had become a household name. However, when confronted with the disruptions brought by digital streaming and a DVD-by-mail model pioneered by Netflix, Blockbuster’s leadership clung to its brick-and-mortar blueprint and once-lucrative late-fee revenue model. They even passed on the opportunity to acquire Netflix for $50 million. Netflix is now valued at around $435 billion, while many Gen Zers have never heard of Blockbuster. Ultimately, adaptability doesn’t just give companies a competitive advantage; it's necessary for their survival. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talkspace, for sponsoring this webinar. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by JuSun/iStock)
The Rules Are Being Rewritten: How Bold Leaders Win in the AI Era
BY Ade Akin December 22, 2025The time between technological revolutions has shrunk from 50 years to a couple of decades, and AI is now rewriting what work looks like faster than organizations can adapt. The rapid pace of new technologies that significantly impact how companies operate is creating massive skill gaps that traditional hiring and training methods are ineffective at addressing. Recruiting and learning divisions within organizations are now coming together to improve talent acquisition and address skill gaps from within. Tigran Sloyan, the CEO and co-founder of CodeSignal, urges companies to move beyond passive learning and resume screening, and embrace AI-powered, hands-on learning programs and scalable assessments. “You want to answer the question, ‘What can we do? How can we leverage this, and how can it be good for humanity?’” Sloyan said during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s LA conference. The Historical Pace of Change And Why This Time Is DifferentSloyan started his presentation by comparing the speed of technological breakthroughs since the development of the internet to the pace of tech advancement several centuries ago, when the printing press was invented. “It used to take us 50 years to experience a new, dramatic technological shift,” he said. “Forty years ago, we didn’t have web developers. Thirty years ago, we didn’t have cloud engineers. Twenty years ago, we didn’t have mobile engineers.” Each shift created new jobs and skills, but organizations had more time to adapt.Today, generative AI tools like ChatGPT, which has only been around for a few years, are transforming workplaces, garnering over 700 million active weekly users. Sloyan says the challenge is leveraging new technologies like AI to “transform how we find, discover, and develop skills that will shape this future.”Closing Skills Gaps With Hands-On, AI-Powered LearningTigran Sloyan, CEO & co-founder of CodeSignal, led the thought leadership spotlight Sloyan introduced CodeSignal as an “AI-native skills intelligence platform” built on the principle that people learn best when performing tasks. “Think about when you learn how to ride a bike, how you learn to drive a car. You get behind the wheel, and you actually try and practice,” he said. The same applies to job skills, but scaling hands-on learning programs has historically been challenging.Sloyan shared the example of Dropbox, which faced considerable AI skill gaps across its workforce. Dropbox’s executives recognized it couldn’t hire its way out of its problem because the skills required were too new to be widely available. The solution was to partner with CodeSignal to build a Gen AI Skills Academy. The academy offers employees three options: AI use lessons for non-technical roles like marketing, AI integration classes for building products using existing tools, and AI creation courses that teach how to build new AI systems. Sloyan says the key to the success of Dropbox’s Gen AI Skills Academy is its practice-based nature. He demonstrated a model where learners first practice prompting an AI model, then are tasked with teaching a simulated coworker named “Nova” how to do it. “Another way you learn well is by teaching other people,” he said.CodeSignal’s AI doesn’t only simulate conversations, it also provides personalized feedback through its “Cosmo” system. “Practice without feedback is not very helpful,” Sloyan said, comparing it to learning to drive a vehicle without an instructor. “With generative AI, we’re making it possible to actually scale this to an entire organization.” Dropbox applied this to thousands of employees, enabling them to learn, practice, and get feedback at scale.How AI Interviewers Are Opening Up the Hiring FunnelSloyan also shared how Coinbase created a more efficient hiring process thanks to CodeSignal’s AI interviewers that scale top-of-funnel recruiter screens to nearly 100% of its candidate pool. Coinbase had previously struggled sorting through a flood of applicants with its limited recruiting team, leading to as many as 95% of job applicants never hearing back from a human.“Almost every candidate that applies actually hears back and actually gets to have a conversation to talk about their skills,” Sloyan said. He showed a demo of “Milo,” an AI interviewer CodeSignal uses in its hiring process, interviewing a candidate.A common concern is that AI interviews might feel impersonal, but Sloyan says candidate feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “Candidates are saying, ‘This is one of the best interviews that I’ve actually done,’” he said. The AI can be customized for tone to align with an organization’s legal and brand guidelines. Sloyan says the next step is moving toward AI avatars to create an even more immersive experience. He playfully demonstrated the concept with a candidate interview conducted by an AI avatar of Santa for an “elf” position.A Future Built on Skills, Not Just CredentialsSloyan kept returning to a central theme during his presentation: The future belongs to organizations that can discover and develop new skills proactively. AI is the accelerant, but the solution is timeless; learning by performing tasks reinforced by feedback. It’s the necessary response to a world where new jobs are created by new technologies every decade. “Technology keeps on moving faster and faster. Humans do not,” Sloyan said. “We’re still the same humans, and it’s this technology that needs to help us go through this process faster and be on the winning side of history.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, CodeSignal, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
How AI Can Work as a Partner to Augment Human Capabilities, Rather than Replace Workers
BY Ade Akin December 16, 2025Imagine having a new team member who shadows your best salesperson to fetch data and learn unspoken rules, like why one client is more responsive to a direct approach while pitches have to be carefully framed for another. This apprentice never forgets a lesson and shares their nuanced understanding with colleagues. That’s the vision of AI that Ari Lehavi, the head of applied AI at Moody’s, is bringing to life, shifting the focus from task automation to capturing and scaling the institutional wisdom that companies are built on. Lehavi shared this idea and more during a fireside chat at From Day One’s December virtual conferenceThe transformative potential of AI lies in human-AI collaboration based on a continuous, two-way learning street that’s designed to augment human judgment rather than replace it, he told moderator Rebecca Knight, contributing writer at Harvard Business Review. Shifting From Automation to AugmentationAI-doomers often frame the technology as the worst thing that’s happened to job security in human history, but Lehavi sees it more as a collaborative tool that enhances human performance and encourages organizations to do the same. Ari Lehavi, general manager, head of applied AI at Moody’s, spoke during the fireside chat (company photo)“I do think that there’s been some orientation around thinking about AI as a way to generate efficiencies and automation, and I don’t think that’s the best use of AI,” he said. “Increasingly, I’m seeing a shift in the way that companies are thinking about it as an accelerant of performance, rather than as a way to generate efficiencies.”The central question then becomes how to increase productivity and work quality with AI. Lehavi says one of the ways that organizations can accomplish this is by using AI to handle simple, repetitive tasks, freeing up employees to focus on work that requires uniquely human skills, such as judgment, empathy, and innovation. “The hard cases, the edge cases, the complex areas, the mentoring of other people, the management, the development of skills in other individuals, the expansion of what’s possible in their role,” Lehavi added, pointing out what humans excel at. The Importance of Bi-directional DesignLehavi says “bi-directional design” is necessary to optimize human-AI collaboration. Most AI tools used today have a single directional design. You ask questions, and it answers. True partnership requires a feedback loop where humans teach AI context and nuance, he says. “AI has information that it can pick up from documents, from data that can help you assemble research faster,” Lehavi said. “But that has a very limited kind of lift that it creates.” The exponential gain happens when AI begins to understand how and why you make decisions. “It has to kind of almost get into your head.”AI provides value, like summarizing key points from a large text library, in a bi-directionally designed system, but it also identifies gaps in its understanding. It learns to ask questions such as “Why did you make that decision?” This leads to humans working with AI, explaining the nuanced instincts that come with experience. Capturing the reasoning behind human decision-making enriches the AI model's understanding, allowing it to provide more insightful recommendations in the future. The information learned by the AI can be packaged and shared, creating a “collective organizational wisdom” that other employees can access. A Concrete Case: Augmenting the Sales ProfessionalLehavi shared an example of how bi-directional communication between humans and AI works in the real world from within Moody’s sales department. A standard CRM stores data, but misses the subtleties that define a veteran sales rep’s success. Insights like the unspoken politics of a client company, the specific pain points a key decision-maker is sensitive to, or the historical context of a relationship. Moody’s built a system that starts by giving sales team members AI-generated leads, matching market pain points to the solutions it provides. The AI responds with questions such as. “Tell us what we don’t know, tell us, you know this person,” Lehavi said. “We know the general profile, but we don’t know this particular relationship in this particular instance, and what exactly is the dynamic that would make this deal move faster and closer.”The seller feeds the nuance context back to the AI, which then refines its recommended messaging and value propositions. The system also identifies patterns in these seller-client relationships and provides recommendations such as: “What you’ve told us about this individual and this company seems a lot like three others that we’ve encountered, and this framing of this message really resonated.” The sales team member tests the hypothesis, and the result, positive or negative, is fed back into the AI model, expanding its institutional knowledge. Lehavi views AI more as an apprentice than an intern. “Initially, the apprentice gets more value from you than you get from the apprentice,” he said. You invest time teaching the algorithm your ways, then the dynamic eventually flips. “You’re starting to get that much more value. And then you know that you have a true partner, so you can move up to the next level in your career.”With AI managing more of the administrative burden and research, sellers have more time and mental space to focus on the irreplaceably human aspects of their role: deepening relationships with clients and crafting persuasive value propositions. For leaders, it means scaling the impact of top performers, so other employees benefit from the institutional knowledge they help build. The Undocumented Layer of Human JudgmentThe critical insight Lehavi stressed throughout the conversation is appreciating the vast, often invisible complexity of most professional roles. He points to what he calls “the undocumented layer of human judgment” that exists in every position, from customer service to legal departments. Studies suggest that around 10% to 40% of what knowledge workers do is based on this tacit understanding.“Whenever I see enterprise implementations that end up where people kind of feel like they didn’t accomplish what they were supposed to accomplish, I often link that to the underappreciation of how much of the work that gets done is unwritten, and is based on judgment and experience,” Lehavi said.The routine portions of a job that knowledge workers spend 60% of their time on might be automatable. But the high-value edge duties, where crucial relationships depend on nuanced judgment, are where human-AI collaboration must focus. The goal is to design systems that bring the right information and context to the surface to help their human counterparts make faster, more-informed decisions. Lehavi advises companies to build systems that ask “why.” AI models that learn from human experience and improve the performance of their human collaborators. This allows organizations to move beyond simply automating tasks with AI, and start codifying, scaling, and institutionalizing their collective knowledge–their most valuable asset. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by KTStock/iStock)
Giving Your Team the Space to Be Creative With AI, While Using Guardrails Too
BY Ade Akin December 12, 2025A common frustration voiced by Spanish-speaking grandmothers and mothers across the country sparked a revolution at GE Appliances. Their question was simple: “Why can’t a washing machine understand us?” Answering that question led to the company reimagining its corporate culture, talent pool, and approach toward innovation. The story of GE Appliance’s Spanish-language washing machines began with an employee resource group and culminated in defining the organization’s new corporate philosophy. “We created it in a way that those cultural nuances would be recognizable when you spoke to it,” Rocki Rockingham, the chief HR officer at GE Appliances, said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Miami conference.For Rockingham, Spanish-speaking washing machines are more than a new product feature. It symbolizes a radical shift in how the organization approaches artificial intelligence and how it empowers the employees closest to customer issues to build solutions, valuing intellectual curiosity as much as technical expertise. From “Can’t” to “Can”: Redefining How Work Gets DoneCorporate functions, like human resources, were historically seen as guardrail enforcers, flagging processes that couldn’t be done with new technology, especially regarding data privacy. GE Appliances has a different approach. “We really took a different philosophy and said, ‘We’re not going to lead with can’t. We’re going to lead with can,’” Rockingham said. “We’re going to lead with ‘yes,’ then we’re going to work backwards,” she told moderator Tim Padgett, Americas Editor at WLRN-NPR News. Rocki Rockingham, CHRO of GE Appliances, spoke during the fireside chat This “work backwards” approach means giving teams access to new technologies and allowing them to experiment, ideate, and create without constraints. The goal is to push teams to be creative from the onset. “Don’t start the project thinking, ‘I can’t do this,’” she said. “Start the projects thinking ‘I can do whatever I want to do.’”Managing a Multigenerational Workforce Through Common GroundA significant challenge GE Appliances has faced as its new open philosophy is deployed is managing a workforce that spans five generations, from Baby Boomers to Gen Z. “They communicate differently, they think differently, they assimilate differently,” Rockingham said.GE Appliance’s strategy hasn’t been to force a single style on all these unique personalities, but to find common ground. “We look at what are the things they have in common, and try to create a crossroads and a balance there, and create a communication opportunity for them to then create together,” Rockingham said.This is vital when bringing teams with varying attitudes toward work together, from Baby Boomers' preference for traditional office spaces, to younger generations’ desire for flexible schedules and opportunities to work remotely. Generational gaps also exist regarding trust levels in technology, particularly newer ones. Rockingham observes that while younger employees aren’t more trusting of AI than their older counterparts, they’re “more willing to take chances. To try new things, to do things differently.” Gen Z employees, for example, grew up with advanced supercomputers in their pockets, which inherently influences their perspective on technology. GE Appliances encourages the use of technology like AI by giving everyone “permission to learn differently and to learn more.” Business solutions can then be created from the lessons discovered. The “Zero Distance” Philosophy and Micro EnterprisesGE Appliances uses a “zero distance” philosophy to formalize its culture of innovating by empowering employees. “We narrow the gap between where the work is done and the output, so between the customer and who creates,” Rockingham said. This encourages co-creation and gives employees a direct relationship with the outcomes of their work.The zero distance philosophy is structurally supported by breaking up the organization into micro-enterprises, which are small teams dedicated to a single product line, like washing machines. “We’ve pushed into that micro-enterprise to say, ‘Okay, you’ve got this AI technology. Now you, being subject matter experts in dishwashers, go and create an idea and tell us what AI can do within your business,’” Rockingham said. An AI Lab and an Emphasis on Intellectual CuriosityTo further support its zero distance initiative, GE Appliances created an internal artificial intelligence lab, staffed with experts who work solely on AI projects. Employees can consult with these experts for guidance, and partners from higher education institutions, like the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky, bring in professors for seminars and advanced students to hire and rotate through the lab, helping to address the challenges that come with the real-world application of AI. “What you want to do is you want to hire people who are curious,” Rockingham said. “You want to hire people who have an aptitude to think differently about how they work.” Doing so requires moving beyond traditional credentials and historically undervalued “soft skills.” “We’re having to dig deeper and look beyond just the credentials that are on the paper and say, ‘Well, how curious are you?’” she added.Humanizing Change, Not Just Managing It“The biggest thing I’ve learned is we have to stop managing change and start humanizing it,” Rockingham reflected when describing her experience helping to implement GE Appliances’ zero distance philosophy. This means creating an environment where people have the freedom to be creative and co-create, embracing the “zero distance” ideal.The change has helped Rockingham and her team to move beyond spreadsheets and rethink how they measure return on investment, focusing more on the talent profiles needed for recruitment and retention. The products that have been created under this new philosophy are the ultimate proof of concept. GE Appliances now uses co-creation centers, where the general public works alongside engineers and marketers to brainstorm and build. One such collaboration led to the creation of a small-batch mushroom grower that sold out within two months via crowd-sourcing, demonstrating a strong connection between public inspiration and commercial output. GE Appliances’ journey suggests that competitive advantages don’t always come from the best algorithms in the age of AI; they can also spring from a culture that asks grandmothers what they need from a washing machine, and addresses it head-on. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)