October 26, 2025 • 12 mins
Yemi Akisanya is Vice President of JEDI and People Experience at Axon
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, during COVID we had the whole work from
home or hybrid for some companies, but work from home
proliferated and then over the last six months a year
or so, we have, you know, kind of a return
to office approach many companies are embracing. And when we
did the work from a home, we had a lot
(00:21):
of black people who felt like they were free from
the microaggressions that you know, happened in the office, and
a lot of for a variety of reasons, a lot
of workers appreciated that work model. However, it came also
with it downside in that, you know, sometimes proximity to
(00:42):
leadership is where you get elevation, and when you're not
seeing Tom at the water cooler or Sarah at the
water cooler, it may be difficult to recognize that talent
that they're bringing in order to provide opportunity for them.
And so I want you to kind of set a
landscape of what the next you know, twelve twenty four,
(01:03):
thirty six months look like for black people trying to
find elevation, and some of their companies are going back
to the office, some of them are remaining hybrid or
work remotely just what does it look like and how
should we position ourselves considering even AI is coming for
a lot of these jobs.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, no, for sure, thank you for that. And let
me talk about the AI part. You know, I heard
somewhere that you know, AI is not going to steal
jobs from people. However, people who know already use AI
(01:42):
and use AI is going as two people's jobs, right,
And I thought that was a really interesting difference there.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
But I would say, I gotta pollause you that because
I've heard that also. But I'm like, yeah, I've there
are certain roles. I have not hired four because I didn't.
I have AI now, so it may not for buy
and large. You may not lose it, but you may
not have got it. Awesome, for sure, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I think I think you're right. And here's how I
interpret that. Right, let's just draw some fake numbers. Listen,
it's one hundred jobs before AI came into the picture.
One hundred jobs exists pre AI. I do believe, like
many people believe that out of those hundred jobs, about
maybe sixty percent are going to be are going to
(02:30):
be gone because AI is now being in the picture.
But I do believe another one hundred jobs will be
created by people who want to use AI. So now
you're going to see one hundred and forty jobs. However,
you lost sixty. Does that make sense for me? Yes,
without a doubt, Like you know you're hearing companies or
(02:52):
you talk about Hey, listen, how can AI make a
job you know, more efficient?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
How can you eliminate certain roles? How do you listen?
We're not gonna be gonna be on the hiring freeze.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
If if you have a job to get done, I
think you think about how AI can be doing right.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So, yes, these things are happening.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
But without a doubt, I still think that knowing how
to utilize AI, it's going to make you so valuable
in this market. And I think black folks, we must,
we must become experts. We must become the users of it.
We get creative with it, make music with it, make
movies with it. Like let's bring it into our culture
(03:29):
where when I talk to you, well, if I send
you an email or a text message, I run it
through AI. Hey, we write this because I want to
talk to Lucas about this, Like, let's make it our
habits because I think what that allows us to do
is develop the competencies right for this new building industry,
right that the market is begging for. I mean, I'm
(03:49):
sure you've seen the news around Meta and all this.
Other big companies pay millions of dollars for telling, right,
why can't we be that?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Because we go get this, go get this if we're
the ones holding the skill sets.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I mean, and before I get like your other question,
you know, I'm passionate about this because I remember and
you remember this because we're old enough.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well like the dot com era when the Internet was
just becoming big. I remember AOL.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
You know you've got mail where someone calls your mom
the in and of a cut off.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I used to be so made like mom, jet uf
this phone calls.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
So I'm gonna lie like right, like thousand days of
dial up in X, Y and Z, and I wish
I would have invested in building skills as a software
developer or a design because you think about the nineties
to two thousands, that's who made all the big money huge,
right and thankfully when you think about who came into
the industry at the time, think about India. India caught
(04:46):
on quickly and invested tremendously. Their high schools, their universities. Right,
they built software developers. Look around most tech covering today,
who's leading them?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
We can do the same exact thing with our community,
Like we just need to make sure we put pus
alseolf in a place early on, and it's not too
late to do that. So so my point about about
AI is and I love that Morgan Morgan and or
Glavity is doing with building a community abound AI.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Is exactly what we need everyone to do.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Like we all, like my daughter is eleven years old,
listen with jack question, I don't know. I'm like that,
tell me what it says, like we have to do
this because I think that's a way for Okay, Now
what was the question, because that was the question?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, yeah, talking about like this the whole work from
home model. You know that COVID spurred on and then
return the office and what that means dynamically for.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Sure, for sure. Here here's here's the truth is this
is that we are seeing.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
There a strong wave of RTO in the next three
to four years, maybe even five years, the majority of
confidence will be back in the office.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
That's just the wave. Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
And to your point earlier, the way you introduced a question.
I appreciate it because you're right. You know, many of
us have found a sense of safety being away from
an environment that maybe produced a ton of microaggressions or
biases or what have you. Like that is that is
a very very fair statement to make without a doubt.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I think what we have to.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Remember is that being isolated, being outside of proximity does
have unintended impacts on our careers. It really does, and
we have to be careful of that. Not because we're black,
or not because we're white, or what have you, just
in general, it's just the way that it is. Like
(06:43):
you know, proximity builds relationship, and relationships is what makes
a difference in corporate America. Those who have strong relationship
with people, they're the ones that get the opportunities.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Think about you and your friends. You know, the best
friends get the best of you. Your best siblings get
the best of you.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I know, you know it shouldn't be favoritism at the point, right,
It's no, It's a human nature thing. It's no different
when it comes to work, and so you know, I
encourage and again, for example, my role is fully remote
and so but.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I do seek every opportunity to.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Get in the office, because I do know now one's
better for me selfishly. I think it also is better
for others to be able to see me and for
me to see people and learn from people. And it's
easy to talk to me walking across the hallway than
sending me a zoom meeting to talk for thirty minutes, right,
And so these are the things that I think we've
we've lost some of those things, and I think our
(07:38):
community needs to, you know, gabblize together and say, hey, listen,
how can we find a bridge where we're able to
get back into forgive me for the sake of this example,
into this war zone where there's my proggressions and biases happening,
Like sure, those things are real, but how can we
create carbon space where we could be effective and to
slip out right or if it's happened at a rate
(08:01):
that's a bit much, maybe consider that we're in the
right organization and can we start to look and find
companies that maybe will provide less of that kind of
environment than we'll we currently have. So I do think
there's a sense of like self bootstrapping that we must do.
But I also do think that we also have to
be very keenly aware of what is a trend, what's
(08:23):
the market shifting to its and allto Again, it's gonna
be something that and ALLTM has studied for a return
to to office. It's something that a lot of companies
are doing across the nation. And again, the next five
to ten years, I think this will look like pre
COVID days.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, you said something there. I'm going to attempt to
eloquently formulate the question because you just had something that
sparked my interest, and that was, you know, these thirty
minute meetings. And I've heard this is kind of more
like a you know, just a way of working that
is efficient, you know historically at least in my experience,
my days in corporate which were not for me, but
(09:01):
people schedule our long meetings and and you just easily
said thirty minute meetings. And that made me think about
the way I work now, Like I do not accept
meetings over forty five minutes. I'm just I'm gonna ask
you to resend the calendar invite because I'm not doing that.
And it just made me think about the relationship between
(09:22):
your office and HR and how you work with people
and the I don't know if it's an integration between
the two or collaboration between the two departments, But how
does it work with your office and with people operations?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, and so it's so d I comes in many
different forms, right. There is the I that does community facing. Uh,
there's the I mean customer and community facing. There is
the I that is people I mean employee facing. And
so at Axon, I JEDI is.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
All of the above.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But the largest part of where we find the most
opportunity in our company is through our talent acquisition. We
want to hire the best talent in all communities. We
also want to make sure that once that talent comes
to Axon, they have a culture is able to harness
(10:27):
their diversity of thought and perspective and produce betterformance. And
the last piece is to make sure that we have
colleagues and managers and leaders who have the capacity and
intellectual understanding on how to lead diverse individuals globally. And
this is not just about color or gender. This is
(10:47):
like folks who work from a different tree who have
different communications hos high context, low context, right, And so
for us that work is done within people operatings. Like
my role is president of Jedi and People Experience, and
so I have to be under the people operations and
under older Elizabeth who leads people operations here. That's on
(11:10):
because my day to day partners are head of Transition,
our head of culture, our head of internal communications, our
head of talent management, ahead of L and D. These
should be my partners on a day to day basis,
where our conversations I'm able to influence your thinking vice
versa and build something that is integrated in all that
we do and it not be like I'm this independent
(11:33):
third party like the CIA that has to work with
the state police. Some people do that in my work
for them, but for us, we find that unity and
collaboration in terms of being colleagues allows us to kind
of have a single strategy that has embedded work, and
(11:54):
for me, that seems to work a lot right. For example,
in my former company, I reported into the chief marketing
officer right now. It was great because I was really
really customer focused and community focused. Alls about like how
do we get small business doing better? How do we
make sure that black businesses are getting highlighted just.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
As much as any other businesses.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
How do we make sure that women own businesses are
gammed opportunities that other business are happening, right, So it
was very and I still also have the employee piece,
but the biggest piece of my budget was spent around
community and our partners, Whereas here it's a bit different, Right,
our customers are law enforcements and so for that they're
(12:34):
focused more on how to recreate a sense of safety
in our communities. And so that's a type of conversation
that I think it depends on the organization the product
and Sertagy provide or solutions you provide, and with that
information begin to align where you can make.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
The most impact. And for us here as people operations
You know, during COVID we had the whole work from
home or hybrid for some companies, but work from home
proliferated and then over the last six months a year
or so, we have, you know, kind of a return
to office approach many companies are embracing. And when we
did the work from a home, we had a lot
(00:21):
of black people who felt like they were free from
the microaggressions that you know, happened in the office, and
a lot of for a variety of reasons, a lot
of workers appreciated that work model. However, it came also
with it downside in that, you know, sometimes proximity to
(00:42):
leadership is where you get elevation, and when you're not
seeing Tom at the water cooler or Sarah at the
water cooler, it may be difficult to recognize that talent
that they're bringing in order to provide opportunity for them.
And so I want you to kind of set a
landscape of what the next you know, twelve twenty four,
(01:03):
thirty six months look like for black people trying to
find elevation, and some of their companies are going back
to the office, some of them are remaining hybrid or
work remotely just what does it look like and how
should we position ourselves considering even AI is coming for
a lot of these jobs.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, no, for sure, thank you for that. And let
me talk about the AI part. You know, I heard
somewhere that you know, AI is not going to steal
jobs from people. However, people who know already use AI
(01:42):
and use AI is going as two people's jobs, right,
And I thought that was a really interesting difference there.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
But I would say, I gotta pollause you that because
I've heard that also. But I'm like, yeah, I've there
are certain roles. I have not hired four because I didn't.
I have AI now, so it may not for buy
and large. You may not lose it, but you may
not have got it. Awesome, for sure, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I think I think you're right. And here's how I
interpret that. Right, let's just draw some fake numbers. Listen,
it's one hundred jobs before AI came into the picture.
One hundred jobs exists pre AI. I do believe, like
many people believe that out of those hundred jobs, about
maybe sixty percent are going to be are going to
(02:30):
be gone because AI is now being in the picture.
But I do believe another one hundred jobs will be
created by people who want to use AI. So now
you're going to see one hundred and forty jobs. However,
you lost sixty. Does that make sense for me? Yes,
without a doubt, Like you know you're hearing companies or
(02:52):
you talk about Hey, listen, how can AI make a
job you know, more efficient?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
How can you eliminate certain roles? How do you listen?
We're not gonna be gonna be on the hiring freeze.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
If if you have a job to get done, I
think you think about how AI can be doing right.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So, yes, these things are happening.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
But without a doubt, I still think that knowing how
to utilize AI, it's going to make you so valuable
in this market. And I think black folks, we must,
we must become experts. We must become the users of it.
We get creative with it, make music with it, make
movies with it. Like let's bring it into our culture
(03:29):
where when I talk to you, well, if I send
you an email or a text message, I run it
through AI. Hey, we write this because I want to
talk to Lucas about this, Like, let's make it our
habits because I think what that allows us to do
is develop the competencies right for this new building industry,
right that the market is begging for. I mean, I'm
(03:49):
sure you've seen the news around Meta and all this.
Other big companies pay millions of dollars for telling, right,
why can't we be that?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Because we go get this, go get this if we're
the ones holding the skill sets.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I mean, and before I get like your other question,
you know, I'm passionate about this because I remember and
you remember this because we're old enough.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well like the dot com era when the Internet was
just becoming big. I remember AOL.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
You know you've got mail where someone calls your mom
the in and of a cut off.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I used to be so made like mom, jet uf
this phone calls.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
So I'm gonna lie like right, like thousand days of
dial up in X, Y and Z, and I wish
I would have invested in building skills as a software
developer or a design because you think about the nineties
to two thousands, that's who made all the big money huge,
right and thankfully when you think about who came into
the industry at the time, think about India. India caught
(04:46):
on quickly and invested tremendously. Their high schools, their universities. Right,
they built software developers. Look around most tech covering today,
who's leading them?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
We can do the same exact thing with our community,
Like we just need to make sure we put pus
alseolf in a place early on, and it's not too
late to do that. So so my point about about
AI is and I love that Morgan Morgan and or
Glavity is doing with building a community abound AI.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Is exactly what we need everyone to do.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Like we all, like my daughter is eleven years old,
listen with jack question, I don't know. I'm like that,
tell me what it says, like we have to do
this because I think that's a way for Okay, Now
what was the question, because that was the question?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, yeah, talking about like this the whole work from
home model. You know that COVID spurred on and then
return the office and what that means dynamically for.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Sure, for sure. Here here's here's the truth is this
is that we are seeing.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
There a strong wave of RTO in the next three
to four years, maybe even five years, the majority of
confidence will be back in the office.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
That's just the wave. Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
And to your point earlier, the way you introduced a question.
I appreciate it because you're right. You know, many of
us have found a sense of safety being away from
an environment that maybe produced a ton of microaggressions or
biases or what have you. Like that is that is
a very very fair statement to make without a doubt.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I think what we have to.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Remember is that being isolated, being outside of proximity does
have unintended impacts on our careers. It really does, and
we have to be careful of that. Not because we're black,
or not because we're white, or what have you, just
in general, it's just the way that it is. Like
(06:43):
you know, proximity builds relationship, and relationships is what makes
a difference in corporate America. Those who have strong relationship
with people, they're the ones that get the opportunities.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Think about you and your friends. You know, the best
friends get the best of you. Your best siblings get
the best of you.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I know, you know it shouldn't be favoritism at the point, right,
It's no, It's a human nature thing. It's no different
when it comes to work, and so you know, I
encourage and again, for example, my role is fully remote
and so but.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I do seek every opportunity to.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Get in the office, because I do know now one's
better for me selfishly. I think it also is better
for others to be able to see me and for
me to see people and learn from people. And it's
easy to talk to me walking across the hallway than
sending me a zoom meeting to talk for thirty minutes, right,
And so these are the things that I think we've
we've lost some of those things, and I think our
(07:38):
community needs to, you know, gabblize together and say, hey, listen,
how can we find a bridge where we're able to
get back into forgive me for the sake of this example,
into this war zone where there's my proggressions and biases happening,
Like sure, those things are real, but how can we
create carbon space where we could be effective and to
slip out right or if it's happened at a rate
(08:01):
that's a bit much, maybe consider that we're in the
right organization and can we start to look and find
companies that maybe will provide less of that kind of
environment than we'll we currently have. So I do think
there's a sense of like self bootstrapping that we must do.
But I also do think that we also have to
be very keenly aware of what is a trend, what's
(08:23):
the market shifting to its and allto Again, it's gonna
be something that and ALLTM has studied for a return
to to office. It's something that a lot of companies
are doing across the nation. And again, the next five
to ten years, I think this will look like pre
COVID days.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, you said something there. I'm going to attempt to
eloquently formulate the question because you just had something that
sparked my interest, and that was, you know, these thirty
minute meetings. And I've heard this is kind of more
like a you know, just a way of working that
is efficient, you know historically at least in my experience,
my days in corporate which were not for me, but
(09:01):
people schedule our long meetings and and you just easily
said thirty minute meetings. And that made me think about
the way I work now, Like I do not accept
meetings over forty five minutes. I'm just I'm gonna ask
you to resend the calendar invite because I'm not doing that.
And it just made me think about the relationship between
(09:22):
your office and HR and how you work with people
and the I don't know if it's an integration between
the two or collaboration between the two departments, But how
does it work with your office and with people operations?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, and so it's so d I comes in many
different forms, right. There is the I that does community facing. Uh,
there's the I mean customer and community facing. There is
the I that is people I mean employee facing. And
so at Axon, I JEDI is.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
All of the above.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But the largest part of where we find the most
opportunity in our company is through our talent acquisition. We
want to hire the best talent in all communities. We
also want to make sure that once that talent comes
to Axon, they have a culture is able to harness
(10:27):
their diversity of thought and perspective and produce betterformance. And
the last piece is to make sure that we have
colleagues and managers and leaders who have the capacity and
intellectual understanding on how to lead diverse individuals globally. And
this is not just about color or gender. This is
(10:47):
like folks who work from a different tree who have
different communications hos high context, low context, right, And so
for us that work is done within people operatings. Like
my role is president of Jedi and People Experience, and
so I have to be under the people operations and
under older Elizabeth who leads people operations here. That's on
(11:10):
because my day to day partners are head of Transition,
our head of culture, our head of internal communications, our
head of talent management, ahead of L and D. These
should be my partners on a day to day basis,
where our conversations I'm able to influence your thinking vice
versa and build something that is integrated in all that
we do and it not be like I'm this independent
(11:33):
third party like the CIA that has to work with
the state police. Some people do that in my work
for them, but for us, we find that unity and
collaboration in terms of being colleagues allows us to kind
of have a single strategy that has embedded work, and
(11:54):
for me, that seems to work a lot right. For example,
in my former company, I reported into the chief marketing
officer right now. It was great because I was really
really customer focused and community focused. Alls about like how
do we get small business doing better? How do we
make sure that black businesses are getting highlighted just.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
As much as any other businesses.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
How do we make sure that women own businesses are
gammed opportunities that other business are happening, right, So it
was very and I still also have the employee piece,
but the biggest piece of my budget was spent around
community and our partners, Whereas here it's a bit different, Right,
our customers are law enforcements and so for that they're
(12:34):
focused more on how to recreate a sense of safety
in our communities. And so that's a type of conversation
that I think it depends on the organization the product
and Sertagy provide or solutions you provide, and with that
information begin to align where you can make.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
The most impact. And for us here as people operations
Host
Will Lucas
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