Both Artificial Intelligence and Generous Leadership:

When organizations put AI to work, they change more than how tasks get done. They also shape how people connect, develop, contribute, and trust their leaders. The choices leaders make about people are every bit as consequential as the choices they make about technology.In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, host Brian Gorman speaks with Joe Davis, author of The Generous Leader and former Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group. They explore why generous leadership becomes even more important as organizations integrate artificial intelligence into the workplace.Generous leadership isn't simply about being kind. It means investing in the growth of others, offering honest feedback, listening to understand, acknowledging what we don't know, and recognizing capabilities that might otherwise go unnoticed.In this Episode: Brian and Joe explore several challenges that deserve greater attention as organizations embrace AI:Trust in times of uncertainty. Why transparency, vulnerability, and authentic human connection matter when people are unsure about their futures.Developing tomorrow's leaders. What happens to learning and leadership development when AI takes over work through which people have traditionally gained experience?Listening beyond the data. Why leaders need unfiltered conversations with people on the front lines rather than relying exclusively on increasingly polished information.Looking beyond immediate efficiencies. The second- and third-order consequences of AI adoption for relationships, employee development, organizational knowledge, and belonging.The conversation challenges leaders to look beyond what AI makes possible and consider what their decisions make possible for people. As intelligence becomes increasingly accessible, the capacity to lead with generosity, wisdom, and genuine concern for others becomes more important, not less.About Joe DavisJoe Davis served as Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG. Joe spent 37 years with BCG, he led BCG North America, co-founded the Washington DC office, led several BCG office systems, started BCG’s NA Public Sector business and founded and chaired BCG’s Center for Inclusion and Equity.  Joe published his first book, The Generous Leader, 7 Ways to Give of Yourself for Everyone’s Gain in April 2024. The paperback version will be released on Dec 1, 2026. Joe is a two-time Ted Talk speaker. Joe earned his BA from Whitman College and his MBA from Harvard Business School. Joe is currently serving his second term as Whitman’s Board Chair. Joe has been married to Sarah for 45 years, has four children, and nine grandchildren.   About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation or a question you want to explore, reach out.JoeEmail: [email protected]: +1 301 529 2622Website: joedavis.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joedavis1313/ BrianEmail: [email protected]: +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

In this solo episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman challenges a familiar way of talking about artificial intelligence: AI is making us lazy. AI is weakening critical thinking. AI is making us work longer. AI is taking meaning out of work.When we say AI is doing these things to us, we surrender human agency. AI creates possibilities and makes some choices easier. What we do with those possibilities remains ours to decide.That leads to a more consequential question. What will we do with the human capacity that AI releases? If work that once took 40 hours can be accomplished in 30, the gain is not simply ten hours. Work handed over to AI may also release attention, mental and emotional energy, creativity, and capacity.One answer is simply to produce more. Sometimes that may be exactly what is needed. But if every gain in productivity automatically becomes another demand for output, technology capable of reducing human workload could leave people working harder and longer than ever.This is where purpose and passion matter. Purpose provides direction: What matters? What deserves our finite time, attention, energy, creativity, and care? Passion provides the energy we bring to that purpose. As AI expands what becomes possible, these human questions become more important, not less.The opportunity is not simply to use AI to become more productive. It is to intentionally reinvest some of the capacity it releases in the work that requires us — deeper thinking, learning, relationships, creativity, discernment, difficult questions, and meaningful contribution.In This EpisodeWhy “time saved” is too small a way to think about what AI can releaseHow purpose and passion help determine where our human capacity belongsWhen doing the work ourselves still matters—because it develops us, deepens understanding, or carries human consequences that require human involvementThe leadership choice between turning every efficiency into more output and reinvesting capacity where human contribution matters mostThe episode ultimately asks us to look beyond what AI makes possible. The more intelligence and capacity become available through AI, the more important it becomes to discern where our time, attention, energy, and wisdom are most worth investing.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation or a question you want to explore, reach out.BrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

Artificial intelligence can synthesize information, surface possibilities, and accelerate work. But some of what matters most still lives in people: experience, relationships, intuition, and an understanding of what is actually happening.In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman speaks with Tim Lidman, co-founder and CEO of Clyde, about what it means to deliberately bring artificial intelligence and human wisdom together. Clyde is one example of a larger leadership question: what should technology do, what do people still need to contribute, and how can the two strengthen one another?Tim and Brian explore how curiosity helps leaders move beyond the problem as first presented and uncover what is actually going on, how AI can help leaders examine multiple perspectives without replacing human discernment, and why complex leadership challenges often require both/and rather than either/or thinking. They also turn to the realities of continuous change. As organizations introduce AI into the work, success requires more than deploying the technology. It requires involving the people doing the work, drawing on what they know, and helping them build the capacity to use AI well.In This EpisodeWhy some of the knowledge that matters most still lives in peopleThe role of curiosity in getting beneath the presenting problemHow AI can support multiple perspectives without replacing human discernmentWhy both/and thinking matters in complex leadership decisionsWhat continuous change means for traditional approaches to changeWhy AI adoption requires participation, not simply direction from the topAbout Tim LidmanTim Lidman is the founder and CEO of Clyde AI, an enterprise AI company focused on helping teams think, decide and work together more effectively with AI. Before founding Clyde, Tim spent four years as a Managing Director at Accenture, following its acquisition of ThinkTank, where he served as President and helped scale the business globally. Earlier in his career, he held leadership and commercial roles at companies including Cisco, SAP and SuccessFactors. His work has centered on how technology changes the way organizations collaborate, make decisions and deliver complex work. At Clyde, he is now focused on bringing AI directly into the flow of client delivery, combining firm knowledge, methods, human judgment and AI in a shared working environment. He has worked extensively with large professional services organizations and enterprise teams navigating the practical realities of AI adoption. Tim is based in Denver, Colorado.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation or a question you want to explore, reach out.TimLinkedIn: Tim LidmanWebsite: Clyde       BrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

This episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work does not spend much time talking directly about artificial intelligence. That is why the conversation matters now.Brian Gorman speaks with Stephen Baer, author of Stickology, about what causes people to connect, contribute, innovate, and care about the organizations they work for and buy from. Drawing on examples from Trader Joe’s, Ritz-Carlton, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and Home Depot, Stephen makes a consistent point: people do their best work when they are trusted, empowered, and encouraged to contribute creatively.AI raises the stakes of those choices. As organizations automate more tasks and pursue greater speed and productivity, leaders have to decide what they are trying to create. Technology can remove friction. It can also strip away the human interactions through which trust, loyalty, belonging, creativity, and discernment develop.Stephen argues for workplaces where people throughout the organization are empowered to think differently, contribute ideas, and act rather than simply follow scripts. As AI takes on more predictable and repeatable work, the opportunity is not simply to do the same work faster or with fewer people. It is to create more space for the distinctly human work that strengthens organizations.AI does not determine which future we create. Leaders do. The question is whether greater technological capability will make work thinner and more transactional for those inside our organizations and their customers or create more opportunity for people to connect, contribute, and thrive.In This EpisodeWhy human connection becomes more important as more work is automatedWhat Trader Joe’s, Ritz-Carlton, Delta Airlines, and Southwest Airlines teach us about employee empowerment and customer loyaltyHow trust, collaboration, and belonging support stronger business performanceWhy innovation depends on giving people throughout the organization permission to contribute and think differentlyHow leaders can use AI to create a more human and humane workplace rather than simply pursuing more speed and productivityAbout Stephen BaerStephen Baer is a leadership expert, entrepreneur, investor, speaker, and author of Stickology: How to Build Unbreakable Connections with Employees and Customers for Life. For more than 30 years, his work has focused on connection, motivation, engagement, and the relationship between employee experience and customer loyalty. He is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Engagency and previously co-founded and led The Game Agency, which was acquired by ELB Learning. Earlier in his career, Stephen held sales and marketing leadership roles at Atari and General Electric. His work today centers on helping organizations build cultures where people feel valued, connected, and empowered to contribute—and where those human connections translate into stronger business performance.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation or a question you want to explore, reach out.StephenEmail: [email protected]   Website: stephenbaer.comBrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in how work gets done, leaders face a question that goes well beyond efficiency. What kind of relationship with AI are we designing?In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman speaks with psychotherapist and executive coach Marina Tudor about creating workplaces in which artificial intelligence serves human beings rather than quietly creating new forms of dependency, friction, and burnout.Marina argues that effective AI integration requires more than choosing the right tools. Leaders need to think about where decisions belong, which work technology should take on, where human wisdom remains essential, and how the entire system affects human agency and dignity. AI brings speed and scalability. People still provide meaning, direction, and discernment.That distinction has implications for organizational design. Brian and Marina explore what happens when routine work can be handled differently and decisions can move closer to the people with the knowledge to make them. Instead of funneling more decisions upward, organizations have an opportunity to rethink responsibilities, reduce leadership bottlenecks, and create greater autonomy throughout the system.Their conversation also challenges assumptions about the traditional workweek. If AI meaningfully reduces friction and unnecessary work, simply filling the reclaimed capacity with more tasks misses the larger opportunity. The question becomes what leaders choose to do with the capacity that is created.Ultimately, Marina offers a practical test for the systems we build. Do they increase autonomy or dependency? Strengthen agency or manipulate attention? Reduce friction or simply move it somewhere else? Those questions may tell us more about wise AI adoption than another measure of productivity ever could.In This EpisodeWhy AI systems should be designed around human agency and dignity, not just usability and performanceHow AI can help move decisions closer to the people with the knowledge to make themWhy speed and scalability without the right decision and execution pathways can produce worse outcomes fasterHow reducing routine work could lessen leadership bottlenecks and burnoutWhy leaders should ask whether AI is creating greater human autonomy or greater dependencyAbout Marina TudorMarina Tudor is a psychotherapist and executive coach whose work explores human behavior, decision-making, identity, and change. In her work with leaders, she brings a human-centered perspective to questions of technology, organizational systems, and how people navigate increasing complexity.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation or a question you want to explore, reach out.MarinaEmail: [email protected] Website: https://www.marinatudor.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinatudor/ BrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

In this episode, Brian Gorman speaks with Jonathan Schaeffer, founder of Synsira Software Solutions, inventor of Kind, and an AI pioneer who has spent more than 40 years working at the forefront of artificial intelligence.For Jonathan, the arrival of ChatGPT was not the beginning of AI. It was the moment when decades of largely invisible development suddenly became visible to everyone. He sees enormous potential in what comes next, from advances in medicine and education to safer transportation and greater access to knowledge. But he is equally clear that the technology we have today remains imperfect, and that its rapid advancement is outpacing our ability to fully understand, govern, and use it responsibly.At the heart of the conversation is a different way of thinking about our relationship with AI. Jonathan prefers augmented intelligence to artificial intelligence: using AI to extend what people can do rather than simply using it to automate work away.His metaphor is powerful. Make AI the apprentice.Let it gather information, surface possibilities, summarize data, and offer perspectives you might not have considered. But stay in charge. Understand the context. Question what comes back. Verify the facts. Decide what matters. And take responsibility for the outcome.Brian and Jonathan also explore what happens when people turn too much of their thinking over to AI. If technology takes on work that once developed analytical ability, writing skills, and leadership capability, organizations have to become more intentional about how those capabilities will be developed. The answer is not to reject AI, but neither is it to unquestioningly accept whatever AI produces.The conversation closes with another dimension of staying in charge: the data we give AI access to. Jonathan discusses privacy, accuracy, environmental impact, and why those concerns led him to develop KIND, an AI tool designed to work locally with a user’s own data.AI can do extraordinary things. That does not make it the expert, the decision-maker, or the accountable party. Stay in charge. Make AI the apprentice.In This EpisodeWhy ChatGPT represented a seismic shift after decades of largely invisible AI developmentHow augmented intelligence reframes AI as a resource for extending human capability rather than simply replacing workWhy treating AI as an apprentice keeps context, discernment, decision-making, and responsibility with the humanHow leaders can use AI without allowing important human skills and capabilities to atrophyWhy accuracy, privacy, data ownership, and environmental impact matter in deciding how and where we use AIAbout Jonathan SchaefferJonathan Schaeffer is the inventor of KIND and has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence for more than 40 years. An AI researcher, entrepreneur, and inventor, he has spent his career building practical AI systems designed to solve real problems with greater accuracy, transparency, and trust.KIND was first conceived in 2017 while Jonathan was teaching full-time and responding to hundreds of student emails. He created an AI system that interacted only with documents he explicitly provided, giving him a way to generate reliable, explainable answers grounded in trusted information. After years of personal use and refinement, that system evolved into KIND, a downloadable desktop application that allows users to curate their own data, interact with it in depth, and uncover insights without sacrificing privacy.Today, Jonathan is focused on advancing a more trustworthy model for AI that gives users greater control over their information and reduces dependence on opaque, cloud-based systems. Through KIND, he is working to make AI more private, accurate, and useful for individuals and organizations alike.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation or a question you want to explore, reach out.JonathanWebsite: https://kind.synsira.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-schaeffer-phd-frsc-aaai-fellow-3318015/BrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

AI adoption is often treated as a technology challenge. Choose the right tools, train people to use them, and improve the workflow. But resistance to AI runs deeper than the resistance that accompanies most workplace technologies.In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman speaks with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, founder of Disaster Avoidance Experts and author of The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results, about the psychology beneath AI resistance.Gleb identifies three forces that distinguish AI adoption from more traditional technology change: fear, threats to professional identity, and shame. Employees may fear that using AI means helping train their replacement. They may resist handing over work that has long been part of how they define their professional value. And even those who use AI may hide that use from colleagues, limiting the ability of teams and organizations to learn from one another.Brian and Gleb explore why successful adoption begins by involving people rather than imposing solutions on them. One practical starting point: use AI first to take away the work people find frustrating, repetitive, or burdensome, not necessarily the work they value and want to keep doing. As people experience the benefits and organizational norms begin to change, adoption can expand.The conversation also looks ahead to how roles themselves may evolve. Gleb argues that middle management will remain important, but its work will change as employees increasingly supervise AI agents. Coordination, collaboration, guardrails, and governance become critical leadership responsibilities. And because the technology continues to evolve, continuous learning and unlearning become essential.Ultimately, AI adoption is not simply about what the technology can do. It is about understanding how people experience the change and creating the conditions in which they can move through it.In This EpisodeWhy fear, professional identity, and shame can drive resistance to AIHow “shadow AI” can increase individual productivity while limiting organizational learningWhy involving employees in deciding where AI can help creates stronger buy-inHow the role of middle managers may shift as people increasingly supervise AI agentsWhy continuous learning, unlearning, and human wisdom become more important as AI capability growsAbout Gleb TsipurskyDr. Gleb Tsipursky, called the “Office Whisperer” by The New York Times, helps leaders turn AI hype into measurable results as CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the author of eight books, including the forthcoming The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results from Georgetown University Press, and his work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Time, Forbes, and The New York Time.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out. GlebEmail: [email protected] Phone: +1 614-407-4016Website: Disaster Avoidance ExpertsBrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman speaks with Michael Privat, Chief Data and Engineering Officer at Availity, about a question reaching far beyond software engineering. When AI can perform more of the tasks that once defined our jobs, what does the work become?Michael challenges the assumption that the task itself is the profession. In software engineering, writing code has long been central to professional identity. But as AI becomes increasingly capable of writing that code, Michael argues that the opportunity is not simply to produce more, faster. It is to focus more deeply on why the work is being done, the value it creates, and the human beings it ultimately serves.The conversation also explores Michael’s concept of “talent density”, having sufficient depth across multiple neighboring skills rather than deep expertise in only one. While Michael illustrates the idea through software engineering, its implications reach across the workplace. AI can bring enormous depth to a task very quickly. The human challenge is having enough breadth to understand that depth, connect it to adjacent areas, recognize where it fits, and carry the work from task to meaningful outcome. As AI takes on more specialized tasks, the ability to work across boundaries rather than remain narrowly defined by a single expertise becomes increasingly important.Brian and Michael also examine one of the less visible consequences of AI adoption. What happens to human development when machines take over the work through which people once gained experience. Michael’s distinction between the “map” and the “territory” points to what AI cannot provide. It may give us access to enormous amounts of accumulated knowledge, but it has not walked the territory. Wisdom still develops through experience, accountability, reflection, and ownership.Rather than eliminating opportunities for people early in their careers, Michael argues that leaders need to rethink how those people learn. AI output can become something to examine, challenge, understand, and ultimately take responsibility for, not simply something to accept.Ultimately, the conversation moves from efficiency to purpose. The question is no longer simply, Can AI do this task? It is: What are people now free, and responsible, to contribute?In This EpisodeWhy AI forces us to separate a profession from the tasks historically associated with itWhy “talent density”, sufficient depth across multiple adjacent skills,  matters more as AI provides specialized depth on demandWhy AI amplifies what already exists, including complexity, weak processes, and poor qualityWhat organizations risk losing when AI removes the work through which people develop experience and wisdomWhy understanding, ownership, lived experience, and creating something “lovable” remain distinctly human contributionsAbout Michael PrivatMichael Privat is a Chief Data and Engineering Officer leading a global team of 500+ engineers. With 25 years in tech, he helps organizations unlock speed, clarity, and accountability. He turns stalled engineering teams into high-performing systems built on ownership, discipline, and modern AI-driven workflows through his “accountable autonomy” model.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out. MichaelLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelprivat/Substack: https://michaelprivat.substack.com/BrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

AI is rapidly expanding what individuals and organizations are capable of doing. But greater capability raises a deeper question: What are we going to do with it?In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman speaks with Jeff Westphal, author of A Work Life Worth Living and former chairman and CEO of Vertex, about meaning, purpose, and the distinctly human choices that become more important as artificial intelligence grows more powerful.Jeff describes AI as a force multiplier for intelligence. It can research, analyze, synthesize, and help us make better-informed decisions. But it cannot decide what we should care about, what risks are worth taking, or what purpose all that intelligence should serve.Their conversation explores what makes work meaningful and why meaning differs from one person—and one stage of life—to another. Jeff shares how his own experiences with mentors, leadership, family, and recovery taught him that wisdom is formed through lived experience and human connection, not analysis alone.As AI increasingly becomes the smartest presence in the room, the traditional leadership advantage of having the answers begins to disappear. What remains is something more demanding: creating the conditions for people to bring their intelligence and wisdom together, deciding what matters, and resisting the temptation to turn AI into the decision-maker.Ultimately, the opportunity AI presents may be larger than greater productivity or economic growth. With more intelligence and capability available than ever before, we have an opportunity to ask what kind of work, organizations, and world we actually want to create.In This EpisodeWhy meaningful work is deeply personal and why meaning can change throughout our livesWhy AI can multiply intelligence but cannot determine what we should care aboutHow greater technological capability makes purpose more important, not lessWhy leadership increasingly depends on bringing human wisdom together rather than being the smartest person in the roomThe need to recover our ability to choose what matters instead of allowing institutions, or AI, to choose for usAbout Jeff WestphalIn the mid-1990s, Jeff Westphal worked his way up to run his father’s upstart sales tax software business and, over the next two decades, built it into a dominant industry leader with nearly one thousand employees. Under Jeff’s leadership, Vertex became an essential cog in the commerce machine, relied upon by more than ten thousand of the largest companies in the world.In July of 2020, after Jeff’s retirement as CEO in 2017, Vertex went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange and is now valued in the billions. It is a great American success story—but telling that story is not the purpose of this book.Behind this success story is another, more complex story of how a leader found, then lost and found again, meaning in his life and work—and how, by helping his employees create meaning in work as seemingly mean­ingless as sales tax software, he helped his company survive challenges and thrive.Today, Jeff is a seasoned executive, entrepreneur, philanthropist, corporate culture enthusiast, and conser­vationist. In addition to leading Vertex for two decades, he has founded two new ventures—MeaningSphere® and Mosaic™—as he continues to give back and encourage others to create meaning in their learning and working lives.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out. Jeff WestphalWebsite: www.jeffwestphal.orgBrian GormanEmail: [email protected] Phone: +1 917.653.5198Website: https://TransformingLives.Coach

Artificial intelligence is often presented as a tool that will make expertise more widely available. But what happens when people can produce expert-looking work without ever developing the expertise behind it?Bo Young Lee, CEO of AI4ALL, joins Brian to explore why the future of AI depends on more than broader access to today’s dominant models. It also requires a wider range of people, cultures, experiences, and worldviews shaping the technology itself. Bo explains how concentrating AI development within a small number of frontier models can embed cultural assumptions into tools used around the world. The conversation also examines what organizations lose when AI removes the demanding early-career work through which people learn to think critically, recognize patterns, exercise discernment, and eventually become experts. The risk, Bo argues, is not simply a deskilled workforce. It is the emergence of a “never-skilled” society, one in which people are asked to evaluate AI-generated work without having developed the experience needed to judge it.Brian and Bo also consider what this means for education. When intelligence becomes increasingly accessible through technology, schools and workplaces will need to place greater emphasis on the human capacities that AI cannot supply: emotional intelligence, ethical understanding, critical thinking, communication, synthesis, and wisdom.Finally, Bo raises a provocative concern about the growing wealth surrounding AI. As technology companies direct more philanthropic funding toward nonprofits and public institutions, whose worldview will that money advance, and how might it shape the conversations society is permitted to have about AI?In This EpisodeWhy the people creating AI should better reflect the people whose lives it affectsThe cultural and business risks of relying on a small number of dominant AI modelsHow automating junior-level work may interrupt the development of future expertsWhy AI could create a “never-skilled” society rather than merely deskill workersHow education must change when intelligence is no longer the primary differentiatorA Question to Carry ForwardAs AI makes intelligent output easier to produce, how will we ensure that people still develop the experience, discernment, and wisdom required to recognize whether that output is worth trusting?About Bo Young LeeBo Young Lee 이보영 is a globally recognized Workplace and AI/Tech Ethics, DEI, and ESG executive and widely sought-after public speaker and leadership coach. Bo serves as CEO of AI4ALL, ensuring the next generation of AI leaders represents humanity. Prior to her role at AI4ALL, Bo served as President of Research & Advisory for AnitaB.org, the leading mission-driven organization advancing women and non-binary technologists. Bo also served as Uber Technologies’ first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, where she was tasked with leading the total transformation of the company’s culture, values, and equity environment. Bo is currently pursuing a Master of Studies in AI Ethics and Society at the University of Cambridge/Leverhulme Center for Future Intelligence (UK) and has an MBA with distinction from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a BBA magna cum laude from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out.Bo Young LeeWebsite: https://ai-4-all.org/Brian GormanEmail: [email protected] Phone: +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach