EP 137: Humanity First — AI, Leadership & the Future of Work with Stephanie Sylvestre

In this episode of Thriving in Intersectionality, Dr. Lola Adeyemo sits down with technologist, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and Avatar Buddy co-founder Stephanie Sylvestre for a conversation that goes far beyond artificial intelligence.

Growing up in Belize, Stephanie imagined one day returning home to help build her country's future. But when an unexpected political shift changed those plans, she found herself on a different path—one that led from corporate technology leadership to entrepreneurship, community impact, and ultimately building AI solutions designed to empower people rather than replace them. Along the way, her experiences across cultures, industries, and communities shaped a leadership philosophy rooted in one belief: technology should always serve humanity. 

Together, Dr. Lola and Stephanie explore how our identities, lived experiences, and values influence the way we approach innovation, leadership, and the future of work. They discuss why the most valuable skills in the age of AI are still deeply human, how organizations can embrace emerging technologies responsibly, and why curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking will remain essential as workplaces continue to evolve.

This conversation isn't simply about AI.

It's about the people who build it, the values that guide it, and the humanity that must remain at its center.

In This Episode, We Discuss

•  Stephanie's journey from Belize to technology leadership 
•  How identity and lived experience shape innovation 
•  The role of AI in transforming—not replacing—the workplace 
•  Why human skills matter more than ever in the age of AI 
•  Responsible AI and the importance of human oversight 
•  Resourcefulness, creativity, and critical thinking as future-ready skills 
•  Building technology that amplifies people instead of replacing them 
•  How AI can expand access, opportunity, and social impact 
•  Leading organizations through technological change 
•  Practical advice for professionals preparing for the future of work 

About the Guest

Stephanie Sylvestre is a technologist, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and Co-Founder of Avatar Buddy, an AI company helping organizations eliminate bottlenecks—not people—through human-centered artificial intelligence. With more than three decades of leadership experience spanning technology, operations, nonprofit leadership, and innovation, Stephanie has held executive roles with organizations including The Children's Trust, Burger King, Subway, Hewlett-Packard, and Avatar Buddy. Today, she helps leaders and organizations embrace AI responsibly while ensuring people remain at the center of innovation. 

Learn more about Stephanie and her work:

🌐 https://avatarbuddy.ai

Reflection Question

As technology continues to evolve, what uniquely human quality do you believe will always remain essential to great leadership?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast. A podcast that explores the real experiences of professionals navigating the workplace with layered, leaded identities. I'm your host, Dr. Lola Ademo, the CEO of EQI Mindset and founder of the nonprofit Immigrants Incorporate Inc. I'm also an author, speaker, and a workplace inclusion strategist. I work with organizations to build communities of belonging through strategy, storytelling, and systems change. This podcast amplifies the voices of professionals from intersectional backgrounds, immigrants, ethnic minorities, first-gen professionals, veterans, working parents, individuals with disabilities, and so many more. Through solo reflections and guest conversations, we'll uncover the eating challenges, celebrate the wins, and offer insights to help you thrive, not just survive, in the corporate world. Because in today's global workforce, belonging isn't just a bonus, it's the catalyst for real growth and impact. Let's dive in. Alright, welcome. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast. Let's ground it in the word intersectionality itself. Intersectionality is a framework that recognizes our multiple aspects of identity, such as race, gender, profession, lived experience, culture, personal history, among so many other things, how they all overlap and interact, creating very unique experiences that shape how each one of us navigates the world and how we lead. And I love to say it could be barriers, it could be privileges. The intersection is what makes our stories uniquely us, and it can be separate from the work we do and the leadership that we practice. And that's what this conversation is all about. I came into the word intersectionality through the work of Kimberly Crenshaw, and she's still very much doing that work. She coined that term when she was doing her social science research uh a few decades ago around the experiences of Black women. And a lot of other researchers have explored different intersections over the course of time. And so definitely recommend checking out Kimberly Crensure on YouTube. If you want to learn more about our work, I love to give her that credit because that's how I found out about that word, and she coined that term. And she's somebody I definitely follow a lot. So thank you for being here today. I have with me my guest, Stephanie. Hi, hi Stephanie. How are you doing? Hi, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. I'm going to read a little bit about Stephanie before I bring her in to, in her own words, introduce herself through our lenses. So Sylvanis, Stephanie Sylvester is a technologist for the real world. I love that. And a human potential advocate. And I was sharing with her before we came on here that I love those two phrases together because we are in this phase where people talk about AI so much. And one of the things that we run the risk of missing is the human connection. So I love that Stephanie is a technologist, uh, AI storyteller, but she's also a human potential advocate. And she she's an entrepreneur, she's a corporate leader, she's on a mission to empower professionals and organizations to thrive in the age of AI. A unique blend of technical expertise, leadership experience, and passion for human development is exactly why I love having her here today, and I'm looking forward to learning more about the work she does and the path that has led her here. Thank you so much for being here, Stephanie.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate being here today.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

All right, okay, so let's dive in. Let's start with getting to know you a little bit more beyond the bio. We'll talk a little bit more about your work in a bit. But when you hear the word intersectionality, what aspects of your identity have most shaped who you are today?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Um, when I hear that, um, I think about the fact that today I'm able to work on all the things that are important to me. So there's the giving back and making the world a better place, also known as um volunteering and philanthropy, uh leveraging technology to solve business problems now, leveraging technology to solve both business and social problems, um economic development. I have a master's in economic development and Latin American studies. So, how do we help people have economic up um economic mobility in a positive direction? And then the understanding that being a leader is less about a title you hold and how you show up in the in the space that you occupy in this grand universe. And Avatar Buddy allows me to work on all those things at the same time. Before Avatar Buddy, I would during the day be using technology to solve business problems, and then nights on weekends, I'd go do volunteer work, and then I might do some leadership development for my team, but as from the perspective of how do I get them to produce at a greater level and faster. And so being able to put all of that together at once and not having to pick and choose has been a very um enlightening piece. And I think whenever I get a little frustrated, I think about the fact that I'm living my own dream and my own life and my own intersectionality, and that makes me feel better.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I love that. I love that, and I love especially the way you said it. Like living your own dream doesn't mean that you know it's all rosies all the time. Some moments you might like struggle with some things, but you always remind yourself and are grounded back in that. Okay, it's working. That's encouraging for me. I I used to be in corporate America, I'm not anymore, and I I joke about it sometimes, like you know, some days I just want to go back to corporate America so that I can quit work at four o'clock and go home. And I'm always reminded that did you ever really used to leave work at four o'clock?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah, it's it's a little bit easier on certain aspects, but on other aspects, are you fully fulfilled? That's always a question. Am I fulfilled?

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. So, do you have um when you think about your, you know, all of your experiences shaped together, though, do you think there are certain areas of yourself, of your um identity, or of your experience that have most shaped how you show up in the world today, um, just as a leader?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Yeah, I think that um the way I show up in the world is definitely aligned with how I grew up. And when I was growing up, my dad used to say, You're a Sylvester, you can do anything. And when you're five or six years old, your interpretation of that is not correct. It just means like I'm a Sylvester, I can do anything, and then my mom would say, You can't do something, and then I would say, but I am a Sylvester, so I can do anything. And my mom's like, that is not what that means. That is not what that means. No, you cannot do that.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

No, that can be true and not be true. Hey, I I believe that statement.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

And and so as I as I it as I go through life, if there's a problem, I just uh why not fix it? I'm always fixing things. And if we had this conversation last week, I probably would have given you a different answer. But this week I I I can see where I always want to fix things. Um this weekend I went over to one of my friends' house and we were hanging out and we're playing with the kids, and and then they're from the mom's from Pakistan, and her mom was here, and she's about to leave. So my mom and I said, we should give her a little gift, and we're what do we give her? And we don't we we try not to be materialistic, so we we are we're very like what do we give somebody? And so my mom makes these crochet um things and she had this little crochet bag, and so we took that to to to give to her, and she was she's like, Oh, you crochet, so she brings out this dress that she's knitting for her granddaughter, and then my mom, and she asked my mom to help her with something, and next thing you know, my mom's fixing the dress, and then I want I was it's time to go. And my mom's like, but I'm not finished yet. And and and that's just I was like, that's that's that's that's why I do what I do. It's it's the time. Um something needed to be fixed, so we'll just fix it, and we we we won't leave before we finish. And so she she went through and she fixed the dress. It was a beautiful little dress, and the mom was happy, she liked some new things. We we were there way, way, way longer than we were scheduled to be. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Well, you saw yourself mirrored through that, right? Like, this is what I do too.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

It it it's it's and and that's why I do like, oh, we want to do something, and you're asking me to fix something, and I get like so in involved in it, and I and I go, wait, and then I just reschedule everything else afterwards because I'm now consumed with fixing this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

I love it. Um, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I I love especially I'm I'm having a visual image of you watching your mom and just thinking, oh my gosh, this is what I do.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

It is, it is, and then asking the dad had said he was gonna go to the museum. I said, I think that your museum trip is done for today.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I think what this is where we're gonna be until this is done.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

I love it. So, um, I of course I've I've had multiple guests over over the years, and one of the things, a common threat that people always talk about is the invisible things. You know, people can see your bias, see the work you're doing, people can see visible expressions of what they think of your identity, and we all fall into that trap. You know, we we see people and we think the things we think we know. Um, so throughout your career, what what identities or experiences do you think people most often overlook about you when they look at your accomplishments?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

People will I will say based on the feedback I've gotten over the years, people will look at me and say, You don't look like somebody that works in IT. What does a person that works in IT look like? And they're like, No, but like you're you have this air to you, and um uh I I think people underestimate my technical acumen. The and people underestimate my um economic acumen and the ability to take those two things and merge them together and really dissect what's happening in the world and come to an alternative view that's probably more close to reality. Um and I think that because I'm like always talking or it looks like I'm not paying attention, people are always surprised when I when I know something or repeat something they said because they're discounting me. I get discounted a lot, and and so I've turned that into my superpower because when people discount you, they don't pay attention to you, they dismiss you, and it's so much better when people dismiss you because then you have the freedom to make mistakes and course correct, and no, and so when you come out, you come out on point.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Wow, I love that, yeah, the superpower. Thank you for sharing that, and so maybe a little bit more about your career journey now, because I mean the the the tech side, the journey, and we'll we'll probably end and end end up discussing um avatabody, but can you walk us through your professional journey a little bit and uh how you got here?

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Sure. Uh I'll start with college. So I went to University of Southern California. I was supposed to um go back to Belize and help the government of Belize develop Belize. And two months before I was supposed to graduate, there was an election in Belize, and all my job in my life that was waiting for me vaporize. So I moved to Miami and I got a master's in economic development and Latin American studies. Because I mean, people are like, you you you're getting the master's degree in the same thing you studied in in undergrad. Like, why not? Is there there's they said nobody does that, and I said, Well, I do, so and then I was waiting for the next election cycle and just stayed in Miami. And then when it was time for me to go back, I I was already having a good time in Miami because when I graduated, I got a job as an intern at Sheila Packard. And at Shewlett Packard, Latin American Headquarters, there was this gentleman that was one of the original coders of the Unix. And if you know anything about computers, Unix doesn't break. So he was supposed to maintain the using Unix code, so he really didn't have anything to do. And so he would talk to me. I was I had a master's degree and I was a secretary. I would file. I could file. I could go real. I got paid by the hour, so I was staying there for eight hours a day, even if I could finish my job in about four hours. And the rest of the time I just hung out, and he gave me a master class in computers, computer science, and we back then the internet was just coming out, and we used I would use notepad to create websites, and then I was using graphics, and there, I mean, there were just like a lot of stuff I just would play with because we're at Hewlett Packard, so we had the access to the technology early. And then um I became a boutique consultant, and that was really cool. And I tell everybody what you want to do is you want to start out as a boutique consultant, not um one of those big companies, because then you're just a cog in the wheel, but any small consultant firm, you get exposed to everything, and your knowledge grows faster. And then you have so many different companies you're working with that you get exposed to the culture that you want. So you can try on companies before you decide which company you want to go work for. You know what's good, what's a good culture, what's not a good culture. And then I got a job at at Burger King because I was consulting at Burger King and I thought, I like this culture. This culture is fun, we get really cool things done. I mean, I loved working at Burger King. I campaigned for like a year and a half before I got hired at Burger King. And I was there for six years. I did IT, then I moved over to to UPS. And then, you know, to as we were talking about earlier, right? You're now in corporate and you're you're you're you're doing work and it's fulfilling. I had fun with my uh colleagues. I still hang out with my Burger King colleagues. And I I think Burger King was one of the one of the great places to work. But I was I was like, is this is this it? Is it like I'm in my 30s, and I'm like, this cannot be the my life for the next 30 years. So I took a sabbatical right in the middle of uh I took a sabbatical in uh 2008, just before just before the the the bubble um burst. And and I was lucky though because I had to I was financing my sabbatical on my 401k, so I I I took out all of my money out of my 401k and um locked in uh a nice return. Wow, that was talk about timing. Yeah, exactly. Unfortunately, I didn't I didn't have enough money in my 401k to sustain me. I miscalculated. So I had to go back to work. And at the height of the recession, I just reached out to my network and I said, Hey, can you can you help me help me find a job? And I got a job paying the same thing I was paying uh before I left on my sabbatical in 2009. And I I I say I say that, I point that out because people were saying they couldn't get a job, and and I'm not trying to make anybody wrong or make them diminish anybody and their experience or anything like that. But I had always been in a space of learning and trying new things and like let's see what happens, and pushing the envelope. So I was able to continue, continue, continue my education even though and my learning and my skill building, even when I was on sabbatical. And while I was on sabbatical, I did this, I I started this, uh restarted Habitat for Humanity Woman Build, which is a program that where they have homes only built with women volunteers. So we had started, we had built this home with just women volunteers. And it's just kind of like the weirdest thing, right? So I built this home with women volunteers. I got um made the cover of the neighbors. Miami Herald used to have this, I don't know if they still have this, but used to have this thing section called neighbors and on Sunday, and I was on the cover and I was like in the in the middle spread talking about why this is important and giving back is so important. And so this the CEO, the CIO of the company that hired me, had seen this and was in trawl. Like, who does this? And I had seen their job, their job offering, and I was like, this is twenty thousand dollars less than I am making. I might as well just like continue and not take such a big pay cut. And my friend's like, Stephanie, you just just go go interview for the job. So I go interview for the job, and I said, I'm not, I'm I'm not taking anything less than just go YouTube. Go interview for the job. And I the job's like 15 minutes, like it was like 15, 20 minutes from my house. I didn't even get home yet, and they were already calling me, like saying they want to hire me. So I go in, I have to go back in now to meet with the C. CIO and I'm sitting there like going to meet the CIO, and the CIO opens the paper, the newspaper. And he's he's like, Is this you? And I said, Yeah, that's me. And the whole interview was about why I did this. And he was just so enthralled by, and so he was very supportive of my efforts. So we built seven homes over three and a half years just with women volunteers in Miami Dave County.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Wow. Okay. You know, so many things I love about our story. Because we we talk about what we are passionate about, what we care about, and the job search and all of the compartmentalizing our lives. You know, never really understanding where they are all going to connect.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Yeah, it was just like a perfect storm of this young reporter trying to get a story, somebody saying, Hey Stephanie, you want to do the story? I'm not sure. And then it was it was a that's an example of when you live your life focused on helping other people and not caring what you get in in return.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

And Habitat for Humanity had been like such an important, such an important um organization for me. Um and I um with Avatar Buddy, I like stopped giving to every organization except that one. Um because I had to focus, obviously, every last penny needs to go into Avatar Buddy. And and it's an organization that speaks to me because it comes from a position of dignity. It says that um you are you you are you are capable, you must be on the bill site helping the volunteers build. Nobody's doing anything for you, they're doing it with you. It's a different thing. It's a philanthropy centered on dignity. I am not poor because something is wrong with me. I am poor because I live in a system designed to marginalize me. So I am not the problem. And so if you give me an opportunity, I can show you how I can transcend. And that's what I loved about habitat. And I was like a big habitat person. I would I remember I when I first moved to Miami, I would I'd go out on I was in my 20s, so I was doing what 20-year-olds do. Go out partying on Friday night, and I'd get home like at three, four o'clock in the morning, and then I'd get up at six o'clock and I'd go to the drive to the bill site and I'd work all day in the Miami heat. I did that once a month. There are some like this is insane. Once I had to do roofing, like, man, this is this is not feeling, but I did. I did because it it was about the importance of having your own house. I I think that um the best way you can hold you can help somebody is giving them a safe and secure place to live. Because if you have a safe and secure place to live, you can overcome anything else. But it but all those other interventions become so much harder to take root if you don't have a safe, secure place to live. And and and two years after I graduated from UM, I got my first condo. And I was just like, no, nobody's telling me about their raising the rent, nobody's telling me about I have to move out, nobody's telling me about what I can and can't do in my house. Well, condos in Miami, to a certain extent, they people want to try and can control what you do. So I bought a house. Nobody can tell me what I can do with my house. I can paint my house future pink if I want, and nobody will care.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

I love it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that now. I'm gonna I knew subconsciously what Habitat for Humanity does, but I I love hearing you talk about why you do what you do there and and what it really means to people because I don't think we ever really stop to think about that. Um, especially now with the housing crisis just going on right now. I mean, I'm in California and homelessness is just a big, big issue here right now. So thank you. Yeah, all right. Um, checking the time. I I want us to take a few minutes to talk about Avatar Body, and I know you know that's your passion right now. So could you take a little bit and share with us uh what is Avatar Body? And then um what do you do? How can people get in touch?

SPEAKER_00 27:09

I I have been talking about Avatar Body the entire time. Avatar Buddy is it's a company that that helps people be the best versions of themselves, and the way we do that is by removing bottlenecks, not people, in corporations, small, mid-sized businesses. And and the idea is AI can magnify and amplify. But if you have garbage and you're incompetent, it will magnify and amplify that. If you're great, uh you will it'll mag it'll magnify and amplify that. And lots and lots of people are great and you're just overwhelmed because they don't have the right support system, they don't have the the right resources. Same thing with habitat. I mean, I was building houses, I'm now building AI. It's the same thing. We're building dignity, we're creating a space for people to be safe and secure, and so our AI helps people do the work. We our AI does not do the work for the people, so we're not automating anything, we're not doing any agentic anything. Um, we are here's an AI agent that works alongside of you, and depending on how complex your job is, you might need three or four AI agents, and those AI agents are configured with your know-how. So, how you work, not how some person on TV or some person at some conference, how do you do your job? We configured AI to do that, and then we say using your whys and your data, why do you want to do it this way? Judgment free. That's how you want to do it, that's how we're doing it. And we put your data in the data vault, we put the why in it and the data in the data vault and the know-how configured an AI agent. And we know that it's very expensive. I mean, if you were to build out a very small AI team at the current price rate, you're talking half a million, $750,000. We're nowhere near that cost. You get pretty much the same services. Um, and so we are helping remove bottlenecks, and we're doing it in a way that people are optimized. And when you optimize your people, you don't need to replace them. What you need to do is you need to give, you need to allow them to grow and flourish and feel fulfilled because people that are fulfilled at work are fulfilled at home, and when you're fulfilled at home and you're fulfilled at work, you're more willing to go and look and see what's happening in your community. And community engagement is how you preserve social order. People don't care about their community, what happens, and so I mean, I just that's avatar buddy. We're helping people not directly, indirectly, care about their community because I care about the community. I've spent my entire life helping my little minuscule piece of the universe look good.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

I love it, and I like how you put it, it's all connected, it's not a home and uh work and community, and you're leaving exactly as we described, is how do we leave the whole self, like my whole self, bring everything um that I care about into one. And if people want to learn more about avatar buddy, how to work with you, what is the best place to reach out?

SPEAKER_00 31:06

So you can look us up avatarbuddy.ai, Stephanie at avatarbuddy.ai, or look us up on LinkedIn. Um, if you say that you you heard about us on this podcast, then we will happily do a half an hour consult with you, complimentary, to just kind of help you. And you know, obviously we want customers, but we we we spent a lot of time struggling with what our our ideal customer profile is, and now that we know what our ideal customer profile is, we're being very judicious about it, but it doesn't mean that we can't help you. There's there's other tools that we recommend that are that have the same architecture that we do, and that you can have you if you want to d do a DY DIY because whatever reason we say this is how you do it, it's safe, it's simple, it's fast, you don't have to worry about um blowing up your computer, or worse yet, inadvertently turning your computer into a bot for some nefarious actor to exploit. And it's really at the end of the day, um, where about a human digital handshake? How do we inter have human and technology intersect in a way to make the world a better place?

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Yeah, I love it. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. All right, as we start to wrap this up, I I I do think the the unique piece that you brings into this, you bring into this is also your background in tech as an entrepreneur and and as a person who cares. Like most of the time those things are not being used in the same conversation. Somebody that cares about the community, that cares about human, and there's like a tech tech enthusiast. So um if you could, you know, like speak to leaders these days, you know, with this age of AI taking over everything. Um how do leaders embrace AI and what are some of the things you can think about for the future of leading better and embracing AI as you think about your culture?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

So, very quick. First of all, you have to know what what problems are you trying to solve with AI, what bottlenecks are you trying to remove? If you have no clarity on that, everything else is just gonna be a mess. Um, once you understand what what you need to address, do you have the data to to have the AI do it? If you don't have the data, then you have to create the data, who owns the data, how clean is the data, and and a clean data is Stephanie Sylvester, right? Some people might say, Oh, I have five donors in my database. You go you look, you're it's like Stephanie Sylvester. Sylvester is spelled in five different ways, what the same person that is dirty data because you don't have five people, you have one person. So clean out your data, even better yet, creating a framework so you can collect the data in a clean manner to begin with. Yeah, and then once you've done that, configuring the AI in a particular way, it's what role do you want AI to play? What tasks do you want it to complete, and how should the output look? That's it. And if you understand what problem you need to solve, everything else gets that's your AI training. Boom. I just I just did it. I love it, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

That's the AI training, yeah, straight to the point. All right, so maybe a word for a word for individuals too, you know, forgetting about titles and leaders right now, individuals in this day of AI. Um, I know you've also done a lot of technology use in storytelling and community and mentorship for individuals or solopreneurs or just people in this age where AI seems very overwhelming. What are some tips and advice on using AI?

SPEAKER_00 35:28

The exact same thing. Why do you want to use AI? I mean, like I I went to I went to a presentation, and this person was demoing a solution, and I was just sitting there thinking the amount of time it took you to build this and the amount of time that you have to reset it to make it work. You could just do the work yourself. No, that's I mean, like, let's be practical. Like, do some like do build things that are of value. And and I I will say, if you're a leader, you should be boning up on your critical thinking, your problem solving. You need to be resourceful and creative. And and this is where people from the global south, people from low risk communities are gonna clean the floor with people from high resource community. Because if you're from those communities, you already know how to be creative and resourceful. The problem now is to change the narrative. So we've been told if you're from a low resource community, something's wrong with you, you can't do this, people are trying to take away your agency. So so we b and we believe that hype. And so we have to stop believing that. And that's gonna be the hardest thing. Because when we stop believing the hype, then we we are able to do things with with AI and leverage AI in ways that just transcends us. I mean, just crazy. I I I was just in Cape Town last month in in May. I was talking to this person about how they're using AI to integrate it into WhatsApp to bring commerce to where people are at. And just in South Africa, there's 11 different languages and dialects. So you got a language. I mean, you're not gonna create 11 different solutions, so you gotta have a solution that can flex across all of these. So just really interesting ways that they're solving that, you know, uh using the WhatsApp, the WhatsApp audio. So you and I speak the same, we both speak Casa, so both of us can talk to each other via the WhatsApp. Don't need any translation. I speak to you, speak to that, then me and somebody else is speaking English. I'm just recording. It's it's my it's mind-blowing, and and the stuff that they were asking me if my AI can do, I was like, I never thought about that.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

But we will be able to be building solutions from use cases, solutions.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

But we will be implementing some of that this summer.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

All right, I love that. I know WhatsApp is also a tool that has become so well adopted across uh African countries. Um I'm from Nigeria and it's a huge part of my life. Our communities are all like, I don't know anybody's number anymore. We WhatsApp call, WhatsApp community ourselves. So I think that would be huge. Um thank you. I I love I love the what you're sharing around AI and how we use it because I think I think of my recent experience trying to find some systems to support my business and going through AI to like research, and all of the top recommendations I was getting were crap because they're based on some, I don't know, some research. And so I had to like dial back to like, no, this is what my day-to-day looks like, this is what I'm looking for in the tool. This is my cost, you know, this is my no-no, this is the cost, this is the budget I have, right? Like, you can use AI to work for you, or you can just go by whatever AI pushes at you, and then it doesn't solve your problem.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Yeah, and it that's we were we were doing a palette, and this woman says to me, Stephanie, um, your solution is better than Chat GPT. I said, of course, because your our solution is tailored. She's she's like, I'm asking the same questions to she has this like really cool solution set that we built out for her that helps people um that want to run early childcare centers in the state of Florida. And I mean, I'm impressed because what we did was we loaded her her data and her IP into the system, we configured the AI based on how she told me to, and and what it does is like it blows my mind as well. And and and that's that's the beauty of it, right? Because this AI, these AI agents are grounded on clean data, um, intellectual property that that um is comes from people that know what they're doing. And so it just becomes just like a whole different experience. Yeah, and um I'm like impressed. I'm just well impressed with what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

Well, in the age where everything is a buzzword, I'm so glad I got to chat with you, Stephanie. If you learn more about why you got into what you are doing, and a little something that I can trust more and gladly share more about. So, for everyone listening, um, I'll have links for you in the show notes on uh uh where to contact um Stephanie and learn more about Avatabody. So, watch out for that. Well, thank you so much, uh Stephanie, for being here. Thank you for your just insightful conversation today. Oh, I almost forgot my signature question. Before I ask you my last signature question, do you have anything else you'd like to say or share with my audience?

SPEAKER_00 41:41

Um it's it's if you have if you have a um as a um well-configured AI agent, it will work well. Stay away from these agentic things unless you're a developer and you know what you're doing. Automated AI is like giving a 15-year-old unsupervised access to your bank account or your most important customer. You wouldn't do that. Don't give your AI that access.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, my final question: if you were to share a meal with your co-workers, what would you pick and why?

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Oh, well, uh we usually um whenever we we have meals and we have people come over to our house, we usually cook something from Belize. Just expose them. I'm from Belize. We want to expose them to Belize and culture. We have a rich, diverse culture. Most people don't know how how cool it is, and so we we dive, we we expose them to some Belize and culture.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

I love it. Thank you. Now I'm gonna come see you when I come to uh Miami and learn more about Belize.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Absolutely, absolutely. You're more than welcome. We have a guest room.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Oh, thank you. It's so nice to meet you. Thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for helping keep humanity and sanity in the world of work. Uh it's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate the time and the opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

Yes, yes. For everyone listening, uh, please share your feedback. We have a way for you to engage through Boss Crowds now so you can share your feedback on this specific episode. I'd love to know how it lands, what are your thoughts, what are your takeaways, and please rate to review this episode wherever you get your podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being part of today's conversation on thriving in intersectionality. If you're an HR or DEI leader and you need employee resource group or business resource group resources, let's connect and LinkedIn and help organizations build inclusive cultures through inclusive workplace communities, strategy, and storytelling. Immigrants and first-gen professionals, join our free community at www.immigrantsincorporate.org for career support, networking, and resources in community with peers who understand your journey. Tag our podcast page on LinkedIn or connect with me directly to continue the conversation. Please don't forget to rate and review to help others discover these discussions. Keep thriving in your intersections. Your story matters. I'm Dr. Lola Adeyemo, and this has been Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast.