It’s our 10th episode and our first guest! Dr. Kristine Gentry (cultural anthropologist and founder of Culture Grove) and co-host Monica M. Smith (intercultural leadership expert and founder of Tradewinds Career Consulting) sit down with Madhuri Kumar, a global talent executive who has led culture, change, and people strategies across Fortune 500s (GE, Halliburton), tech and health tech, nonprofits, and higher ed (UT Austin, University of Houston). With a Wharton Global CXO certification and doctoral work in leadership of change, Madhuri helps enterprises architect human-centered AI adoption that fuels growth, resilience, and innovation.
What we cover
- Why this AI wave is different: GenAI is employee-led and pervasive. Policy, trust, and enablement must catch up.
- Culture as the multiplier: High-trust, resilient cultures experiment, learn fast, and adapt together.
- Leaders’ playbook for AI change: Transparent comms, clear timelines, shared language, safe experimentation, and real feedback loops.
- Resilience over fear: Treat AI as a people and trust challenge, not only a tech rollout.
- A practical model in the wild: How broad AI fluency and employee autonomy (e.g., weekly share-outs, hackathon rituals) accelerate adoption.
- Jobs & skills are shifting: Entry-level tasks are automating; upskilling and role redesign can move people into higher-value work.
- Quality & ethics: Prompt engineering, bias checks, and data validation are new must-have capabilities.
- HR tech reality check: Messy, bolt-on data stacks meet a moment where AI can finally help clean and personalize (e.g., adaptive L&D).
- ROI truth: Many orgs use AI; far fewer see returns. Culture and clarity of use-cases make the difference.
Chapter guide
- 00:00 Welcome, milestone 🎉 & intro to our first guest
- 03:20 Madhuri’s origin story: learning the “math of change” across cultures
- 08:17 How AI differs from past transformations (employee-led, faster, broader)
- 14:00 Resilience & trust as the real adoption currency
- 17:30 Building shared language & autonomy (AI fluency programs, show-and-tell rituals)
- 28:28 Prompting as power; where humans stay superior (for now)
- 31:32 Bias, ethics, and responsible AI in people practices
- 38:37 Rituals that scale learning: demos, hackathons, open houses
- 42:12 Adoption ≠ ROI (yet): why culture bridges the gap
Join the Collaborative Culture community
New episodes every other Wednesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen. If today’s conversation sparked ideas for your team’s AI journey, connect with Kristine at Culture Grove to explore an AI-ready culture audit or leadership session. Or connect with Monica at Tradewinds Career Coaching to obtain training, guidance, and coaching for global leaders and their culturally diverse teams
Thanks for Listening!
We’d love to hear from you.
Kristine Gentry, PhD
kgentry@culturegrove.com
🔗 LinkedIn: Kristine McKenzie Gentry
Monica M. Smith
tradewindscareerconsulting@gmai.com
🌐 www.tradewindscareerconsulting.com
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