November 7, 2023 • 50 mins
Join us in this enlightening episode as we sit down with LaToya Hodge, a multi-faceted professional who's made an incredible journey from a first-generation professional to respected storyteller that translates complex problems into digestible information for everyday users. LaToya's story is nothing short of inspiring, and in just five words - a storyteller, tenacious, persistent, a mentor, and a big thinker.
LaToya's favorite quote, start Where You Are. Use What You Have. Do What You Can,' by Arthur Ashe, and from there we coined a new way of looking at life which is summed up as Creativity is free and now we refer to that as LaToyism.
Her thoughts about Generative AI? It is an exciting tool that also needs guardrails to protect people against bad behavior. Robots won’t come and kill us. AI can make it impossible for people to have healthcare or a mortgage. We should embrace a quote that Walter Cronkite was infamous for “Trust but verify.”
Hashtags: #iHeartRadio #ApplePodcasts #GooglePlay #Spotify #Stitcher #Podbean #YouTube #Employers4Change #E4C #internships #radio #podcast #innovation #employers #smallbusiness #business #FutureOfWork #ValenciaCollegeRadio
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:19):
Hi, my name is Isabella
Johnston, the Intern Whispererand the founder of Employers 4 Change.
Our show is brought to youby Employers 4 Change.
And today's tip of the weekis about gender bias.
We want to thank built Intercomfor these tips that we share every week.
For the past, I don't know.
I think it's ten weeksabout unconscious bias.
(00:41):
So what is gender bias?
It's the tendencyto prefer one gender over another.
We all knowthat we would have a preference
whether we're going to work with maleor female.
Too often, men are given preferentialtreatment over women in the workplace.
And according to lean ends, Womenin the Workplace study.
Women only occupy25% of the C-suite executive positions.
(01:05):
And for every 100 menthat are promoted from entry level
to managerroles, only 87 women are promoted.
So how do we avoid gender bias? Well.
One way is by conducting.
You've heard it every weeknow anonymous screenings of applications
that exclude aspects of a candidatethat may reveal
(01:26):
their assumed genderlike names and interests.
And, you know, you want it to be blindas much as possible.
So to set diversity, hiring goals,you need to ensure that your company
holds itselfaccountable to equitable hiring practices.
And again, make sure to compare candidatesbased on skills, power,
(01:48):
skills and merit rather than traitsthat can cloud your judgment.
Just make sure
that you're being as as ethicalas possible
in selecting the candidatesthat should be representing your company.
Thank you.
So welcome to the Intern Whisperer shows
all about the future of workand innovation and today's guest.
(02:09):
Little fanfare.
This is Latoya Hodge,
the former global head of marketingat Cappfinity, a leading provider
of behavioral insights and talentsolutions for organizations worldwide.
She was previously, too,that the head of marketing
and partnerships at the same companyand guided the expansion brand positioning
(02:30):
and marketing communications forenterprise buyers in the US and Americas.
She is a charter member of CMO Huddles,so we've got to hear more about that.
That just sounds like so warmand comforting and a world traveler
and a fellow fan of continuouslearning. So.
Latoya, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
(02:50):
I'm so excited to be here.
Oh, I'm thrilled. So a little side story.
We met at OMG Labsand it was through Canal.
And your favorite friend
Talari, let's give her a shout out.
It connected us all. Yes.
And so that's so awesome.
But the first question I always askmy guests is what are five words
(03:11):
that describe you and why
five words that describe me?
So I would say tenacious, persistent,
a mentor.
I love to tell stories.
So storyteller, I think those are four.
That's for what will be the fifth one.
The fifth one would be,I am a big thinker.
(03:33):
All right. We're going with big thinker.Yeah.
Okay. Is that two words, though?I don't know.
Like, you know, compoundwords are okay here.
Okay. Just so you know.
All right, So you started with Tenacious.
Why that word?
I think if you're going to do anythingmean meaningful in life,
you kind of have to have that. Don't quit.
You have to have that spiritwhere I'm just going to figure it out.
(03:57):
I think that's one of my superpowers.
One of my strengthsis just wading through uncertainty,
not giving up and just,you know, figuring it out.
So anybody who's worked with meand had had the pleasure or the
the terror of working withyou would probably say a super tenacious.
I think it's a good thing.
I think so, too, because, again,I got you know, throughout my career,
(04:21):
I've really been excitedto work in in environments
where we were either changing processes,so it kept finally changing how you hire.
And before then, I worked at a consortiumof higher education, and the intent was
to try to build a bridge, a tighter bridgebetween career to college.
So if you're going to do anythingthat isn't the norm
(04:41):
or isn't like the tried and truewhat the status quo
is, you have to be tenaciousor you might as well not try.
Mm hmm.
So you had mentioned also persistent.
Now, how how do you think that's differentfrom tenacious?
The persistence means that, you know,you take three no's and you come back
with a level of creativityor imagination or innovation.
(05:02):
That's that's the slight differencebetween never giving up
and but coming back at it,but not in the same way that you did
your first, your second, your third,or even your tenth time is it's
how you sort of approach whatever it isyou're trying to figure out.
Yeah, whatever the problem is. Yeah.
Mentor.
One of the things I've benefitedfrom being a first generation
(05:25):
professional is really strong mentors
and people who have had really goodcareers and, you know,
were really generous with their timeand their advice and their wisdom.
And so I feel really strongly
that mentoring is just a partof who I am, what I have to do.
So whether it is you work for meor I have a mentee, actually,
(05:49):
she's a first generation college graduatenow because she graduated back in May.
So mentoring is just really,I think, really important
because everybody deserves a shot and notall of us have the same starting point.
And mentoring helpskind of level that out a bit.
I agree.
I love that you said mentoringbecause that's very important
(06:09):
to me and servant leadership is
and I've seen a correlation between peerand reverse mentoring.
Your background being so deeply embedded
inside of of learning and the whole h.r.
Process recruitingand you mentioned onboarding.
I just find that fascinatingbecause that that's honestly
one of the checks I was going,oh, I've got to have this woman on my show
(06:31):
because she's she's in the H.R.
space, but yet she's in marketing.
And I think marketing and H.R.
have a lot of parallels. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, I agree.
And I personally feel like I had a reversementor where I hired someone for.
Right, her first job out of collegeand just
I had never managedGen Z professional before.
(06:53):
Just her approach to solving problemsor even just
collaborating was completely different.
And a lot of times I would be like,Oh, I didn't quite see it that way.
So I benefited, you know,sort of from just kind of that fresh eyes,
because that's the thingI think in marketing
that you kind of haveto constantly be testing and piloting
(07:14):
and trying and looking at thingswith a fresh pair of eyes.
And I mentioned this to youwhen we were getting ready to get,
you know, to recruit today in that,you know, marketing during the pandemic.
To me, I feel likeI had a whole new master's degree
because the thing that I had been toldI had tried,
you know, I had successfully done priorto the pandemic went all out the door.
(07:37):
And we're even thoughwe're in this post-pandemic
sort of period, it still has changed.
And some of the tried and truebest practices are obsolete now.
And so you kind of have to kind of thinkabout it in a different way.
Mm hmm. I agree. I agree.
It's interesting that you had a Gen Z.
You know, the one that comes right afterGen Z is Gen Alpha, where we ran out of Z.
(08:02):
So we start over at the beginning Alpha.
Okay. Okay.
Well, I'm curious to seewhat are they all about?
Where how are they seeing the world?
I think that we have to kind ofmake sure that there's
a space for everybodyto kind of have their perspectives.
I'm a Gen Xers, so I feel like we'reconstantly like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
Nobody talks about Gen X,We're not cool enough to be Gen Z.
(08:25):
We're not millennialsbecause we're too old
and we're not boomers,but we're just the smaller generation.
But the more conversations that sort ofwe should have to have
more of those conversations.
And I'm tending to listena lot more to younger the younger
generation, because I'm just like,Why do you think about it that way?
Or how did you even get there?
And maybe there's a lot of benefitin, again, just looking at things
(08:48):
differently and trying to seeif we can solve some of these things.
Who knows?
Maybe like Gen Alpha will figure outclimate change or
maybe I'm hopeful, you know? Yeah.
Have you ever heard of the fourthIndustrial age?
The fifth industrial age?Are we in that right now?
We're moving into fifth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(09:08):
And I think a lot of thatbecause you mentioned that.
How did these Gen Z and, you know,Gen Y and well, I guess that's you.
But how did they see things in Gen X?
They, they see things differently.
Know you're Gen X. Yeah. Millennial Y.
So they see things differentlybased on the fact
that they were born with all of thistechnology at their disposal.
(09:31):
So you know that it makes sensethat they see things differently.
Yeah, I think that's one of the benefitsof being Gen Xers
because we have it right between, yeah,
we have orientation to technology,but we also remember rotary phones
or like I was talking about before,like actually, you know,
when you put a postcard in the mailand you put stamps on it and you wait.
(09:55):
So I think it's a that sort of the tension
between generations is validbecause humans.
But it's that's where I think some ofthe secret sauce, some of the magic happen
in some of these big challengeslike we're trying to facing right now.
Yeah.
Things that define our our lives,whether it was 911
(10:16):
or if as COVID or, you know, just pick
epic things that have happened in a life.
And there are ways around technologyor some big historic event.
Yeah.
And I think I read somewherethat Gen Z is a little bit
more selective in their technologythan previously we had.
We thought about that being still value,
(10:38):
community and connectionand oh yeah, type of thing.
It just looks different tomaybe how some of the generations
prior to, to, to, tothen I've read that too.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you had mentioned storytelling.
I love this fact.
Yeah.
Because I knowbefore we even started interviewing,
you had me really engaged inquite a few stories that you were sharing.
(11:00):
Oh, yeah. So I can see that about you.
But you mentioned somethingthat when you were a kid,
that people were always sayingyou were telling stories.
So what kind of stories were they?
What's the back story to that is that I'm
I'm one of six kids,
so a big blended familyand I'm the middle child.
(11:21):
And we didn't necessarilyhave a lot of money growing up.
So I was constantlycreating these productions
and I would force my siblings into roles.
So and more often than not, my sisterswould, whether we were detectives
or we were, you know, on stage, we were,you know, superstars or whatever, we
there was always some creativityin my directing and storytelling.
(11:46):
And if I think about it now, to justeven as I've gotten into my career,
a lot of times when when I've faced like alike adversity or a pushback
or just completeoutright resistance story,
sometimes really helpsbreak a little bit of attention that
or they bring peoplea little bit closer to it to each other.
(12:08):
And so you can kind of figure outa different way to,
you know, work and try to still likeget to the end result.
So storytelling for mehas used to just be out of necessity.
We didn't have a lot of choices.
We don't have a lot of moneyand it was just fun.
But now it's just become a partof sort of my approach to to work.
Mm hmm.
So where does Big Thinker come from?
(12:29):
That was your last word.
Well, B and I think this isbecause I've had very humble beginnings.
I remember like, I remember my stepfathersaying, just because you don't have
money doesn't meanthat you can't still have a good life.
Example would be like all the collegeapplications that at the time
they were applying for multiple ones.
It's just like,
Yeah, we may not have a lot of money,but if you want to try to go
(12:52):
to these colleges, we're going to find it.
And you know, that was one hurdle.
And then paying for it was another hurdle.
And so I just always heard, likejust because you don't have a lot of money
doesn't mean that you can't figure outways to do the things that you want to.
And so what that looks like is
I've worked in lots,lots of different environments
where you've had biggermarketing budgets or smaller ones.
(13:14):
And in the last ten years, those budgetmarketing budgets have come down
smaller and smaller and smaller.
And that's where the big thinkingkind of comes in in that
if you kind of just take budgetor the actual physical dollars
off of the table,the creativity is actually free.
Yeah. So what can we do?
Like like, let's think about whatwe're actually trying to do
(13:35):
and then we figure out thehow we pay for it type of thing.
Yeah, I like that.
And I,
I think that's a really insightful quotethat you just
shared, that youyou came from humble beginnings,
but it doesn't meanyou can't have a good life.
Yeah, I love that, actually.
You know, we were poor until,like, we were I was in my thirties.
I was just like, what?We were what I expected. Yeah.
(13:56):
It just like we spend a lot of timetogether, you know, And that,
that could be just because you guys don't
spend a lot of time together,but not a lot of people in the house.
People a lot of kids,
a lot of my cousins are always aroundmy friends in the neighborhood.
But yeah, yeah, that's super cool.
So where did you go to school?
How did you get towhere you are now? What's that story like?
(14:18):
I, I graduated from GeorgiaState University in Atlanta
and I got my MBA from Hofstra
University in New York on Long Island.
And I think Georgia Statewas such a great experience.
You know, over twenty some odd years ago, I just dated myself unintentionally.
(14:41):
They Georgia State was actually talking
and thinking about career pathwaysand how do you get students,
you know, high achievingor first generation which which I am,
how do you get them in to collegeand out and into jobs?
And so I benefitedfrom being in a rotation program
at during my time at Georgia State,where I ended up at Turner Broadcasting.
(15:05):
So I started my my first internshipwas at the Cartoon Network.
I did a rotation really fun.
It was the best possible placeto start my career.
And I did a stint at Boomerang,which is the classic cartoons.
I know more about cartoonsthan the average human being
should probably should.
I know what's your favorite cartoonwhile Scooby Doo?
(15:27):
Obviously, that's what I was going to say.
You know that.
And you know,
there was actually the original Scooby Doois really a really short run,
but it's so well loved thatmost people think that it was on
for yearsand years and years. But it really wasn't.
So I went
into a rotation programthere and had an opportunity to learn like
the business, but the actual productionside of of television.
(15:51):
So and believe it or not, I had a mentorduring my time at Cartoon Network
where they were looking to bring onsome new shows and I actually pitched
I wrote a script for Interstitial,which is like a short, maybe two minute,
a two minute sort of bumper between anactual program and and commercial break.
(16:12):
And I sent it to the producer of a show
that was on TNT or was pitching for TNT.
And he thought, well,first of all, who are you?
You don't actuallyyou're not interning in my group.
And somehow you figured your wayto see the Turner Web and found me.
And that's where the tenacity came in.
(16:32):
And he passed along my scriptto a handful of other people,
and I ended up getting a full time job,not necessarily on the show
because it wasn't picked up.
But I did end up getting a full time joband a good run at at Turner.
And that small thingencouraged me to sort of
because at the time I wantedto kind of get into the production side.
(16:53):
I thought I wanted to get intowriting for television.
And by him not rejecting that,
that interstitial,it only encouraged me to keep doing it.
And so I actually hadI went through my entire personal network
and met a friend of a friend of a friendwho suggested
I should move out to Californiaand really give writing a shot.
And that was probably what I learned fromthat experience, was that was good.
(17:18):
But when I got out there,the person stopped
returning phone callsand actually didn't help me at all.
So I think you had asked me like one,what's one of those big lessons?
It was just like, you know,
that was one of the first timesI felt like super rejected.
And I felt like, you know,I had this idea that I was going to go out
and do all these thingsthat did not come into fruition.
(17:40):
But the experience,I mean, there is the experience of it
all of moving from Atlanta,which is where I graduated and started my
career and moving to Los Angeles,where I didn't know anybody.
It was really it was fun.
It was frightening.
And I wouldn't change it at all,even with the fact
that the person stoppedhelping or stopped responding
(18:05):
because who knows why, whythat why things worked out the way it did,
But it only encouraged me to kind ofgive it a try and see where things landed.
And what actually ended up happeningwas like during during that time,
I left a really good comfortablelike rotation at Turner
and I ended up at a much smaller companyfrom again kind of
(18:26):
going through my network and have ithaving explained like what had happened.
And then that's how I ended up going backto grad school because I figured
that I actually really didenjoy the creative side
of the filmmaking business,but I did not enjoy the business
of making filmsby any stretch of the imagination.
But I enjoyed the, the,the marketing, the finding an audience
(18:47):
developing and helping people, you know,find content that they really enjoyed.
And that's what brought me backto grad school and how I ended up
getting my MBA.
No, very nice.
All right.
So you got all the way to cap fit.
Okay.
I'm just really curious,how did the name Cappfinity come up?
Because I'm going.
(19:07):
That doesn't sound like anything in aH.R.
To me, is it?
I don't take any credit for it.
As a matter of fact,
the reason Cappfinity became Cappfinityis that they were launching
a company that had existed in Europefor 16 or so years.
Under the name of capp.
It was an acronym startedby two behavioral science scientists.
(19:29):
One was an academic,the other one was actually a practitioner,
and the acronym was super academic.
So they went from saying the full name,which I'm
forgetting rightnow, that's okay, it's a capp.
But when the companylooked to sort of expand
into the US market, there was alreadya company doing business as Capp
(19:49):
So they had to figure out another
another name to sort of do businessas and the CMO
who was there for a very short timecame up with a Cappfinity
Like the idea wasif you can bring behavioral science
into how you hire and develop people,
(20:09):
we would probably be better offfor an infinity.
I don't.
I feel like this today was a stretch.
I take no credit for it, but that was howthey ended up with that weird name.
Oh, that sounds kind of fun.
And it ties into some of that cartoonnetwork and when Cappfinity.
That's about to the infinity and beyond.
Yeah.
Now I had I take no credit for itbecause for many years
(20:31):
other people were like,What is that name you can come from?
But at least it helps.
Yeah, yeah, it's memorable.It's a good story too.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you're no longer with them.
What do you thinkyour future is going to be like?
Where do you see yourself going?
Well, I join Cappfinity.
This is a nerd.
They're like indication of my personality.
(20:51):
So I the shutdown happens, right?
So the pandemic and I initially startedhaving conversations
about joining Cappfinity,I think two months into the shutdown.
So or three months into it.
And I joined in January 21,
and I really wanted to try to help
grow the business in the USand in other the other growth regions
(21:15):
that really helpedpeople think about hiring different
looking less at like your whereyou went to college or your GPA
and really giving people a shotand looking at the behaviors,
looking at your skillsand how that could apply
to some of the thingsthat you're trying to do.
And so, you know, fast forwardalmost three years later,
I'm really, really happywith what we were able to accomplish
(21:37):
in terms of the brand awareness, in termsof really landing some great clients.
And so I think where I go to nextis probably going to be another company
that's off that's that really is readingand trying to change
how we eitherdevelop people, develop talent
or some
other huge problem that that as a society
(21:59):
will benefitfrom through some enabling technology.
So that's where I seeI would agree with you on that one.
I'm curious, do you think that, you know,in this role of global
but are you really good at marketingmessaging
also being able to take complex thingsand make it like five year old?
Simple.
That is, that's another one of my gifts.
(22:19):
Your superpowers. Yeah.
I've for the last 12 or 15 years,you know,
there's engineers, product managers,people that spend their days and lives,
you know, whether it's working onalgorithms or the data science behind it.
They're not the bestat helping people in the marketplace
get why you should buy this thing.
(22:41):
That's why I know, like forfor now into eternity,
I'll always have a jobbecause I can list that
In order to be a really good storyteller,you need to be a good listener, right?
And to translate meaning and value to a
to a consumer or to a buyer,you need to make it make sense for them.
And in the most simple terms.
(23:02):
And so that's all I do.
That's whether that is through a marketingemail campaign, whether it's through
refreshing your website, it's simplifyingit so people get how it benefits them
and how it fixes somethingthat they're trying to to address.
I really like this whole conversation.
Hard to believe, but we're going to takea moment to acknowledge our sponsor.
(23:25):
And we'll be right back.
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Thank you. Cat 5 Studios.
So we're back
to the second half of our show,but this is going to be a continuation
of the first half.
(23:46):
We're going to blow through that one
a little fasterbecause this woman is brilliant
and you have to hear what she has to sayabout the future of work.
Okay. Favorite quote that you live by.
My favorite quote is
a Arthur Ashe quote and it's startwhere you are.
You use what you have and do what you can.
I love it.
I have from my first job out of college,
(24:10):
up until my last day at Captain Navy,I've always lived sort of by that mantra.
So whether the marketing budgetis this big or whether it's this little,
what can we do?
What is it that we're really tryingto achieve it creativity free.
And so that's that'sthat's a quote that I really live by.
So I admire him creativity is free.
(24:31):
That's true.
I'm going to I'm going to be writing thesethings down here because you know what?
They're they're nuggets that are so good.
It's a little it is in there is free
is okay.
Yes, I like that, too. Okay.
What is the hardest lessonthat you learned that changed your life?
I talked about it a little bit beforewhen, you know, I had this vision of you
(24:54):
know, I had this really great opportunityand somebody saw what I was trying to do.
And but then Iyou know, I faced the fact that
what I thought sort of that path
of where how it was going to work outprofessionally early on in my career
wasn'tit wasn't going to quite work that way.
(25:14):
And I think the hard lesson in that was
that you
sort of have to remain flexibleand you sort of have to take your lumps
in life and pick yourself back upand and kind of move forward.
Yeah, very true.
What you think you wantmay not be the best thing for you.
Yeah. Not the time for.
(25:35):
And somehow it just.
But you still have to find a way forward,you know? Hmm.
So what are you most grateful for?
Oh, I'm so grateful for my family.
The one that I was born intoand also my chosen family.
So my good friends,
I feel really
grateful to have such a close network
(25:57):
and community around me.
Mm hmm.
What about who in your lifehas had the biggest impact?
And you can name names if you want.
So my mom and my Auntie Rena,who is no longer with us,
but my mom has always been a big advocate
for, you know, as a young woman,you should have a career.
(26:17):
You need to have education.
You need to go make your way in this worldand make good choices
and live with the choices that you make,but make your life
the way that you want it.
And my Auntie Renaowned a beauty salon in the Bronx, and
I just saw her running her own businessand she traveled a lot.
(26:38):
And so I would get all these adventure.
I would get her postcardsof all these adventures that she had had.
And she took me onmy first international trip.
And so I think between those two womenjust kind of giving me that push
and showing me that it was also possiblethere, there where I got a lot
my inspiration from. Mm hmm.
(26:58):
Very nice.
I'm sure your mom,your mom's still here? Yes.
Yeah.
Well, then I hope she gets to listen tothis show and know that she was mentioned.
Oh, I will. Definitely.
She loves this.
Oh, I'll have to show her how to find itand play it for her.
But she'll be. She'll love that.
Yeah.
What do you want to be remembered for?
Um, I really want to be,
(27:20):
because mentoring is so important to me.
Somebody who is encouraging
and supportive of whatever big idea
or big mission or thing that someonewas trying to achieve.
I want to be known for.
For those two things.
Mm hmm.
So what do you thinkthe future of 2030 is going to look like?
(27:41):
2030 is going to be probably
just as crazy as 2023 is right now.
We are like human beings.
We're on the path to just make ourselvesas crazy as possible.
More enabling technologyand all of the problems
that we have right nowwill just look different.
But it will be an excitingand probably frightening time as well.
(28:02):
Mm hmm.
When you say enabling,I know that sometimes that can have a
kind of a negativemeaning for some people,
because if we were beingcalled an enabler,
this was not a question that we discussedon throwing one out here.
But I always hear
large companies, enterprise companies,they work with people enablement.
(28:24):
And so what does that actually mean?
Because I think it's an H.R. term.
Yeah, I mean, I know it is an H.R.
term, but I think it's
really helpful for our audience to knowit's not the negative enabler.
You know,think about it like the light bulb.
You turn it onand you're able to do all these things.
The light bulb enablesreading it in, enable other innovations.
So that's why I think about technology.
(28:45):
So whether it's a job simulationthat gives a person
a chance to actually try out a jobbefore you hire them so you can see what
they would be like,that's an enabling technology.
Or if you think about it, young,
you know, or
interns doing their rotationrather than actually
going into a laband maybe doing those procedures
(29:07):
on cadavers, doing it on, you know,whether it's simulated augmented reality.
Exactly.
I think those are enabling technologiesthat help
us, at the end of the day,treat people in terms
of a medical professionmore efficiently, better.
It helps us really get to whatwe're trying to achieve.
(29:28):
So from when I use enabling,it's just helping us
kind of movefaster and solve bigger problems.
I think that's a really helpfuldescription because I know I've had
a couple of clients that have, you know,people enablement as part of their H.R.
department.
And so the student that I was talkingwith, while they have this position
(29:49):
and I was having to explain it,I like the way you explained it
also about how technologycan enable us to be more
whether it's productive or whatever,to do things in a different way.
I don't think
that it's always seenas something that can be a positive.
So I like the way you framed it. Oh, yeah.
I mean, there's so many thingsthat even though like food production
(30:11):
has all these in enabling technology,so canned goods are safer,
like we're no longer making them by handfor a reason so that, you know,
people aren't ended up with a botulismor something like that.
So technology should help us move.
We're doing thingsbetter, faster, in a safer, you know, way.
I mean, I it eventhe pandemic is a good example of how
(30:35):
a huge problem cause like the medical
and the sort of medtech
scientists academics to sort ofthink of a problem like that.
I feel I mean,I think we also have some secondary trauma
from living through that whole experience.
But the fact that we were able toas a society look at something that big
(30:57):
find solutions to treatit and to get it out into the production
and then into actual like use cases.
We all had the vaccines or many of us did.
Right.
That's in there'sso many enabling technologies
that supported thatyou could think about video chats, right?
So people were communicating acrossthe country.
(31:18):
Video communications enabled that.
Some of the ideationof whether you shared algorithms
or if it was,you know, sort of medical documents.
So like document sharing,all of those were enabling technologies.
So we had this inso that we would get to this
big solution, which is sort ofhow do we get out of
(31:41):
being locked indoors
with this weird, mysterious threat threat?
Yeah, yeah, that was out there.
So there was hundreds of enablingtechnologies and people involved in that.
All solution.
Very true.
So remote blended on site, flex work.
What do you thinkit's going to look like in 2030?
(32:03):
I think I think it's going to be morehybrid, more blended.
And the reasonthat has to be the case for two reasons.
We know
that people can be productivewithout being in the same space,
but we also knowthere's a benefit of humans
being in the same spaceand sharing and collaborating.
(32:23):
And I think over time, well, well,if we could allow ourselves to get past
the the conversation of remote work
or in-office work, but get to wherewhat is it that we're trying to do?
What is it that we're trying to solveand how do we do that?
What parameters,what do we need to create that to harness
that creativity or harnessthose solutions?
(32:47):
That's where I think a blended workenvironment will come into play.
And quite frankly,I mentioned that to you as well.
Many CEOsdo not go to your office every day
if you're a senior vicepresident of whatever.
So your senior leaders,they're not in their offices every day.
And now you have workers that are like,I well, if you're not in the office
(33:10):
every day, why should I in a lot ofwhat's even driving this, driving
people back to office?
This has nothing to do with productivity.
It has more to do withcommercial real estate and long leases.
You know, Facebook just, I think, spentsome ungodly amount of money
to get out of one of their huge leasesbefore for the same reason,
(33:30):
because they knew
that their parts of their workforcewere not going to go back into offices.
So I think if if we could get to a pointwhere we're really focused on
what is it we're trying to do,I think blended environments are probably
a much more aplace that's going to be more
productive overall for the future of work.
(33:51):
Now I can see conference roomsor being able to rent a room, or sometimes
maybe that might even bewhere the corporate retreat becomes.
Let's go to an office and then we all haveall of these breakout rooms
and all of those thingsthat could be something that could happen.
Yeah, rather than your offsite suitsbe like you're in office
or something like that. Yeah.
(34:14):
And because this idea, like,somehow you're more productive
just because you're in an office,that there's no there's
no science, there's no data behind that.
We all know that there are people thatthat goofed off that were the first ones
in, but they spent most of their timejust talking.
Or you could still be sitting at a deskand do it, not doing anything.
(34:35):
So it's not the physical locationthat I think that's the the thing that
we should be focused on as more of like,how do we accomplish these things?
What roles need to be together
and what roles can be distributed.
I've had the benefitof managing a distributed teams
and you can still be productive,
(34:56):
You can still hit your deadlines,you can still do really good work.
Whether you're in anoffice, right, or, you know,
across, you know, continents.
Can you build relationshipswhen you're in remote environments?
Yeah, you absolutely can.
But is there some secret saucewhen you're together,
(35:17):
you're sharing ideas in the same space,having a coffee?
Absolutely.
So but I think if we can figure outsort of a blended approach, that's what
that's what the future workshould be going towards.
Mm hmm. I agree.
What about I you know, what do you thinkthe impact that, you know, this year
we saw it happen when chat was launchedor maybe it was the end of last year.
(35:40):
I think it was the end of last yearwhen it officially came out,
You know, it was launchedand there was a huge impact.
And with with what you were sayingabout working remotely, we saw that change
in the education systemwhere teachers are having to figure out
how do they do, how do they teach distanceand how do they teach online,
(36:02):
especially if it was a five year old or,you know, a seven year old.
Those kind of ages are very, very,
you know, so they need to be together.
It's hard to be separate.
So then you have a
I and then we bring in other technologythat's there to to just change how we
we do research and how we writeand how we produce work.
(36:24):
I know there was a lot of concernabout it,
but to me it's just another way of lookingwhat Google did.
Google took all knowledge.
We used to have something called tabletsand then we old school tablets.
Moses Then we went into encyclopedias.
It's a fast pace.
Then we jumped into the Internet,then we jumped into Google
and now chat is the same thing,but just faster.
(36:47):
Yeah, I think that
generative A.I.
is exciting.
I personally, as a marketer, made my team.
We were piloting a projects using A.I.
generative AI, and that means likewhether we were building a new web page,
(37:09):
I was just like, I want toI want you to figure out the terms.
And we use toolsthat we're using generative A.I.
to help us build out the metadatafor our new web page.
And it worked, you know, writing summaries
for a press release or figuring out what,you know, outline for a blog.
(37:30):
If you were a writing for an executive.
There's a lot of use cases for marketers
that where it helps froma productive productivity
and really sort of time management,there's a lot of benefit to it.
I also think that we're at thisreally inflection point
where we need guardrails
(37:51):
because I think about A.I.
and, you know,Hollywood has all the robots.
They're going to come after usand kill us.
I don't worry about the robotscoming in and killing us,
but I do worry about artificial artificialintelligence and machine learning,
weeding people out of getting their carebenefits, or maybe getting the best rate
(38:13):
for a mortgage because of some blipor some some algorithm
that says that they may have predictivebehaviors, that they may default.
They're they're they're
that's the thing that keep me up at night.
I find those just the human.
But the human use cases, thingsin the public sector, public health uses,
(38:36):
that's where I worry about AI going awry.
And, you know, peoplenot having access to things because
maybe they're lower incomeor they're in a tax bracket
where they don't have a strongvoting block.
Those are the things where I thinkthat we need very strong guardrails.
And believe it or not,
and I'm not the first person to saythat you need laws for things,
(38:58):
but we do need laws to prohibitbad acts, that bad behavior.
And we're at a inflection pointif we don't get our arms around it right
now, it will go off the railsand who knows what things will look like
because right now GenerativeAI's is very much in its infancy.
It's a lot of the applicationswill spit back out, you know, things.
(39:22):
But over time, as more and moreis fed into it and there's more learning
that it will become even betterat some of these some of the outputs.
And but having said that,I just feel like it really is
it's really importantfor us to put guardrails or I agree now.
And what worries me iswhen I look at our politicians,
(39:44):
the things that they choose to talk about,this isn't one of them.
And even if they were to talk about it,
I don'tknow that they have the information
to make good decisions about it.
So how we as a society,just as we're talking about
health care and the economy and jobs,should be top of mind for us
(40:05):
because it'sone of it's enabling technology
that will impact your health carebenefits, that will impact
how you get a bank loan or not.
And those are the things that I thinkabout for all the good that it can do.
And helping you do your jobs better,which I'm benefited from.
I've you know, I've writtentons of press releases between when chat
(40:29):
was launched using applicationsthat embedded generative A.I.
into their solution and I used it.
So I see the benefits but I also think wehave to get our arms around it right now.
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
I am all for that.
I'm looking for the organizationslocally that do that that I can
either be a part of or support,you know, if it's on a larger scale.
(40:53):
I think World Economic Forum ishas already started something like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Pretty sure I have to goand look that one up.
But here's the thing that I thinkyou pose a really good
example of what could happenand can go wrong.
So we have generated A.I.
that can, you know, determinethis is the profile of me.
(41:15):
You know, And no,she can't go and have a mortgage
because of thisand this and this that showed up.
And then I have to go and talk to a chatbot before I can get to a person.
Anderson Yeah.
And then who's to say thatthat actual person
is really not a higher levelof another chat bot, right?
So it becomes for mesomething that's out of Black Mirror
(41:37):
and I just go,Oh no, there's that's exactly right.
The transparency aspect of it.
Yeah, there's no documentation of that.
I mean, I think about another applicationwhere I think about this often
because we live in Orlando,but traffic like,
yeah,artificial intelligence could tell us
how many more roads would be needed forthe amount of people that are moving here.
(41:59):
We were probably know that just straightroads are not the transportation
solutionthat we need to make model of solutions.
Those are the atthose are the things where like
if we were to put our hands around itand think about the applications
that could really benefitus, that would be one.
But that's eveneven when you think about that,
it's just like, well,where would the train go?
(42:20):
Would it go into certain neighborhoods?
Would people be boxed out of?
Transportation?
These are the things that I thinkthat that's where enabling technology
and humans, if you put them both together,
along with good regulation,that we could actually do things
where people have a much easier wayto get to to work,
(42:41):
or that you could bring more industryin and out of central Florida
because there was better transportation
options.
So there's so many good thingsthat could happen.
But if we aren't feeding
like good farmsgood information into these tools,
then the outputs is like garbagein, garbage out.
(43:02):
And that's a lot of what worries meis that there's not enough
oversight and transparencyon what that thing, let's say stewardship.
Yeah, yeah, stewardship for sure.
So in there will always be people that go,
Well, it's an encyclopedia,it must be true.
It's on the internet.
It must be true.
Google says it must be true.
(43:22):
Chet says it, It must be true.
That isn't true.
No apps.
Because there's bad information that goesinto any type of source that we all use.
And we need to remember that.
But I don't think that
people that are born intothese generations come with that wisdom.
I think it's like, you know, Googleyourself, you know, and what do you see
(43:44):
if you see stuff out there and you knowit's not true then or how many how many?
Latoya Hodges are there out there?
There's there's a handful I call myselfevery so often, and I'm kidding.
I'll give you an example of earlierthis week.
I actually used a resume, aa generative A.I.
tool just to see what itjust so I could compare my current resume
(44:07):
and what it wouldwhat generative I would spit out.
And I was like, Well,I would never use this even in the way
some of the language that I wouldn'tuse it because it first of all, that's it.
It doesn't sound like you.
It doesn't sound likea marketing professional.
It sounds like a computer wrote this.
And but that's what that looks like today.
(44:28):
Maybe six months from now will be better.
But the point it's just like I know thatbecause I'm a human, I'm looking at it,
but I don't know thatevery person that looks out,
you know, deliverables or maybe givingthat level of oversight or even that
critical sort of view on, well,is this right or is this sort of what
(44:50):
should I take action based on this thing?
And and I just think that that's that'swhere
we're at this real inflection point,that there needs to be more conversation
and socially, not just like legislaturelegislators, but we're taxpayers.
We should have a partof that conversation to
I don't want people taken advantageof because, you know,
(45:13):
something was produced with a tool.
But I also want us to use technologyso that we can get people
into situationswhere their lifestyles are healthier,
they're in safer in neighborhoodsand technology, or they have a better,
faster way to get to work,safer way to get to work.
So there are so many thingsthat we could do,
(45:33):
but we kind of have to do it together,not in a vacuum
and not some like super elitegroup of people
and like ten of the richest peoplein the world.
That's a that'show we already know where that goes.
I mean, there's enough cartoonswhere the cartoon villain is in that guy.
We don't need to do that.
But there's enough good people, smartpeople and technologies where we could do
(45:56):
something really amazing,this big thinking of,
you know, ideas and really changeour society, society for the better.
You know,when you were talking about how you were
using it,let's see what it could do for my resume.
Most of thisis something I used to teach 10th grade.
So most of the things that people read,the average
(46:18):
is written on an eighth gradereading level.
And so then I googled. Well,what is The Wall Street Journal?
It's written on an 11th gradereading level.
And so I feel like, yeah, I mean, I justlooked it up and so it's on the Internet.
It must be true, right?
You know,I feel like it to a certain level.
Yeah, I'm sure that is true, becauseyou can have some very intelligent people
that did not graduate from college,but they read on that level.
(46:41):
Right.
Or they produce really thoughtful content.
So but yeah, financial terms and stuff,
that's not like what you cover in highschool is what I'm thinking.
But the point of that is,is that right now
chat uses words that are soI'm going to use this word superfluous.
You know, they're just really amazing,just genuinely amazing.
(47:03):
Big words.
You go, Wow, what is that mean?
Yeah, Human doesn't speak like that.We don't talk like that.
Yeah,I was it Walter Cronkite that used to say
in journalism, trust but verify that.
Think so? I'm going to look it upwhile we're talking.
We have to kind of get back to in that
you can listen to the news and I'mbecause I'm old enough.
And I did go
(47:24):
I did take journalism in that whole veinin that you need to show proof.
You need to have facts.
It's not your opinion isn't enough. You.
Right? It works.
You trust and verify it.
Trust, but verify.
And that's where that'swhat is missing right now.
Yeah, we can.
That's what humans are supposed to do.
Yeah, that's what we're supposed to do.
(47:44):
But where we were,where, where we are right now
is that the engineers or the coders
or the developers, they're the onesthat are maybe writing the programs.
But who's who's who's doing the testing?
Who's there needs to be more than just
technologistscreating these enabling technologies.
You need social scientists,You need social workers, you need poets
(48:08):
and philosophers.
Also being a part of this
collaborative experience so that we can dothings in a much better way.
Oppenheimer was a really good movie.
Rae So do we not learn, likejust because we can do something
that we shouldn'tthink through the consequences
just because we can doesn'tmean we should.
(48:28):
And so I feel like
because when that movie came out,I was just like in all the generative,
I was like, Where was thatdiscussion about, Should we be doing this?
You know,what does it mean for a whole society?
Well, there wasn't enough dialog whenwe have the opportunity to do that. Now.
So we've covered the ethics questionWhat is the best
(48:48):
mentoring adviceyou want to pass on to our listeners?
Oh, I wish this wasn't true,but you learn a lot the the most from
the things you fail at, the biggest lumps,the that's the things that hurt
your failures are where you getthe most lessons.
They shape your your next steps.
(49:08):
They shape how you orientyour your solutions, your way forward.
But that's the biggest one.
And year after year, mistakeafter mistake, it's still true.
No, it is true.
It is so true.
Well, I want to thank youfor being a guest on our show.
So fun.
It went so fast and we did go so fast.
But how can people contact you?
(49:30):
You can find me on LinkedIn.
Latoya Hodge I'd be opento having conversations about air
and the applications in marketingor just really interesting marketing
solutions.
So you can find me on LinkedIn. Perfect.
And just so people know that's H O D G E and don't put an S on the end of it,
so make sure you spell it correctlyanyway, want to thank you so much
(49:53):
for being a guest this time.
It was so much fun, truly,and I look forward
to having another conversationhopefully over Chai tea.
That sounds delicious.
Coming in.
I'm not a coffeedrinker, so. Yeah. All right.
We want to thank our sponsor,
Cat 5 Studios, and thank you to our videoproduction and editing team,
(50:14):
Gabe Laport, Tommy Myers, AndrewPiggott, and Julissa Hurtado.
We also want to acknowledge our musiccomposer is Charles Lawrence Lide,
Hi, my name is Isabella
Johnston, the Intern Whispererand the founder of Employers 4 Change.
Our show is brought to youby Employers 4 Change.
And today's tip of the weekis about gender bias.
We want to thank built Intercomfor these tips that we share every week.
For the past, I don't know.
I think it's ten weeksabout unconscious bias.
(00:41):
So what is gender bias?
It's the tendencyto prefer one gender over another.
We all knowthat we would have a preference
whether we're going to work with maleor female.
Too often, men are given preferentialtreatment over women in the workplace.
And according to lean ends, Womenin the Workplace study.
Women only occupy25% of the C-suite executive positions.
(01:05):
And for every 100 menthat are promoted from entry level
to managerroles, only 87 women are promoted.
So how do we avoid gender bias? Well.
One way is by conducting.
You've heard it every weeknow anonymous screenings of applications
that exclude aspects of a candidatethat may reveal
(01:26):
their assumed genderlike names and interests.
And, you know, you want it to be blindas much as possible.
So to set diversity, hiring goals,you need to ensure that your company
holds itselfaccountable to equitable hiring practices.
And again, make sure to compare candidatesbased on skills, power,
(01:48):
skills and merit rather than traitsthat can cloud your judgment.
Just make sure
that you're being as as ethicalas possible
in selecting the candidatesthat should be representing your company.
Thank you.
So welcome to the Intern Whisperer shows
all about the future of workand innovation and today's guest.
(02:09):
Little fanfare.
This is Latoya Hodge,
the former global head of marketingat Cappfinity, a leading provider
of behavioral insights and talentsolutions for organizations worldwide.
She was previously, too,that the head of marketing
and partnerships at the same companyand guided the expansion brand positioning
(02:30):
and marketing communications forenterprise buyers in the US and Americas.
She is a charter member of CMO Huddles,so we've got to hear more about that.
That just sounds like so warmand comforting and a world traveler
and a fellow fan of continuouslearning. So.
Latoya, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
(02:50):
I'm so excited to be here.
Oh, I'm thrilled. So a little side story.
We met at OMG Labsand it was through Canal.
And your favorite friend
Talari, let's give her a shout out.
It connected us all. Yes.
And so that's so awesome.
But the first question I always askmy guests is what are five words
(03:11):
that describe you and why
five words that describe me?
So I would say tenacious, persistent,
a mentor.
I love to tell stories.
So storyteller, I think those are four.
That's for what will be the fifth one.
The fifth one would be,I am a big thinker.
(03:33):
All right. We're going with big thinker.Yeah.
Okay. Is that two words, though?I don't know.
Like, you know, compoundwords are okay here.
Okay. Just so you know.
All right, So you started with Tenacious.
Why that word?
I think if you're going to do anythingmean meaningful in life,
you kind of have to have that. Don't quit.
You have to have that spiritwhere I'm just going to figure it out.
(03:57):
I think that's one of my superpowers.
One of my strengthsis just wading through uncertainty,
not giving up and just,you know, figuring it out.
So anybody who's worked with meand had had the pleasure or the
the terror of working withyou would probably say a super tenacious.
I think it's a good thing.
I think so, too, because, again,I got you know, throughout my career,
(04:21):
I've really been excitedto work in in environments
where we were either changing processes,so it kept finally changing how you hire.
And before then, I worked at a consortiumof higher education, and the intent was
to try to build a bridge, a tighter bridgebetween career to college.
So if you're going to do anythingthat isn't the norm
(04:41):
or isn't like the tried and truewhat the status quo
is, you have to be tenaciousor you might as well not try.
Mm hmm.
So you had mentioned also persistent.
Now, how how do you think that's differentfrom tenacious?
The persistence means that, you know,you take three no's and you come back
with a level of creativityor imagination or innovation.
(05:02):
That's that's the slight differencebetween never giving up
and but coming back at it,but not in the same way that you did
your first, your second, your third,or even your tenth time is it's
how you sort of approach whatever it isyou're trying to figure out.
Yeah, whatever the problem is. Yeah.
Mentor.
One of the things I've benefitedfrom being a first generation
(05:25):
professional is really strong mentors
and people who have had really goodcareers and, you know,
were really generous with their timeand their advice and their wisdom.
And so I feel really strongly
that mentoring is just a partof who I am, what I have to do.
So whether it is you work for meor I have a mentee, actually,
(05:49):
she's a first generation college graduatenow because she graduated back in May.
So mentoring is just really,I think, really important
because everybody deserves a shot and notall of us have the same starting point.
And mentoring helpskind of level that out a bit.
I agree.
I love that you said mentoringbecause that's very important
(06:09):
to me and servant leadership is
and I've seen a correlation between peerand reverse mentoring.
Your background being so deeply embedded
inside of of learning and the whole h.r.
Process recruitingand you mentioned onboarding.
I just find that fascinatingbecause that that's honestly
one of the checks I was going,oh, I've got to have this woman on my show
(06:31):
because she's she's in the H.R.
space, but yet she's in marketing.
And I think marketing and H.R.
have a lot of parallels. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, I agree.
And I personally feel like I had a reversementor where I hired someone for.
Right, her first job out of collegeand just
I had never managedGen Z professional before.
(06:53):
Just her approach to solving problemsor even just
collaborating was completely different.
And a lot of times I would be like,Oh, I didn't quite see it that way.
So I benefited, you know,sort of from just kind of that fresh eyes,
because that's the thingI think in marketing
that you kind of haveto constantly be testing and piloting
(07:14):
and trying and looking at thingswith a fresh pair of eyes.
And I mentioned this to youwhen we were getting ready to get,
you know, to recruit today in that,you know, marketing during the pandemic.
To me, I feel likeI had a whole new master's degree
because the thing that I had been toldI had tried,
you know, I had successfully done priorto the pandemic went all out the door.
(07:37):
And we're even thoughwe're in this post-pandemic
sort of period, it still has changed.
And some of the tried and truebest practices are obsolete now.
And so you kind of have to kind of thinkabout it in a different way.
Mm hmm. I agree. I agree.
It's interesting that you had a Gen Z.
You know, the one that comes right afterGen Z is Gen Alpha, where we ran out of Z.
(08:02):
So we start over at the beginning Alpha.
Okay. Okay.
Well, I'm curious to seewhat are they all about?
Where how are they seeing the world?
I think that we have to kind ofmake sure that there's
a space for everybodyto kind of have their perspectives.
I'm a Gen Xers, so I feel like we'reconstantly like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
Nobody talks about Gen X,We're not cool enough to be Gen Z.
(08:25):
We're not millennialsbecause we're too old
and we're not boomers,but we're just the smaller generation.
But the more conversations that sort ofwe should have to have
more of those conversations.
And I'm tending to listena lot more to younger the younger
generation, because I'm just like,Why do you think about it that way?
Or how did you even get there?
And maybe there's a lot of benefitin, again, just looking at things
(08:48):
differently and trying to seeif we can solve some of these things.
Who knows?
Maybe like Gen Alpha will figure outclimate change or
maybe I'm hopeful, you know? Yeah.
Have you ever heard of the fourthIndustrial age?
The fifth industrial age?Are we in that right now?
We're moving into fifth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(09:08):
And I think a lot of thatbecause you mentioned that.
How did these Gen Z and, you know,Gen Y and well, I guess that's you.
But how did they see things in Gen X?
They, they see things differently.
Know you're Gen X. Yeah. Millennial Y.
So they see things differentlybased on the fact
that they were born with all of thistechnology at their disposal.
(09:31):
So you know that it makes sensethat they see things differently.
Yeah, I think that's one of the benefitsof being Gen Xers
because we have it right between, yeah,
we have orientation to technology,but we also remember rotary phones
or like I was talking about before,like actually, you know,
when you put a postcard in the mailand you put stamps on it and you wait.
(09:55):
So I think it's a that sort of the tension
between generations is validbecause humans.
But it's that's where I think some ofthe secret sauce, some of the magic happen
in some of these big challengeslike we're trying to facing right now.
Yeah.
Things that define our our lives,whether it was 911
(10:16):
or if as COVID or, you know, just pick
epic things that have happened in a life.
And there are ways around technologyor some big historic event.
Yeah.
And I think I read somewherethat Gen Z is a little bit
more selective in their technologythan previously we had.
We thought about that being still value,
(10:38):
community and connectionand oh yeah, type of thing.
It just looks different tomaybe how some of the generations
prior to, to, to, tothen I've read that too.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you had mentioned storytelling.
I love this fact.
Yeah.
Because I knowbefore we even started interviewing,
you had me really engaged inquite a few stories that you were sharing.
(11:00):
Oh, yeah. So I can see that about you.
But you mentioned somethingthat when you were a kid,
that people were always sayingyou were telling stories.
So what kind of stories were they?
What's the back story to that is that I'm
I'm one of six kids,
so a big blended familyand I'm the middle child.
(11:21):
And we didn't necessarilyhave a lot of money growing up.
So I was constantlycreating these productions
and I would force my siblings into roles.
So and more often than not, my sisterswould, whether we were detectives
or we were, you know, on stage, we were,you know, superstars or whatever, we
there was always some creativityin my directing and storytelling.
(11:46):
And if I think about it now, to justeven as I've gotten into my career,
a lot of times when when I've faced like alike adversity or a pushback
or just completeoutright resistance story,
sometimes really helpsbreak a little bit of attention that
or they bring peoplea little bit closer to it to each other.
(12:08):
And so you can kind of figure outa different way to,
you know, work and try to still likeget to the end result.
So storytelling for mehas used to just be out of necessity.
We didn't have a lot of choices.
We don't have a lot of moneyand it was just fun.
But now it's just become a partof sort of my approach to to work.
Mm hmm.
So where does Big Thinker come from?
(12:29):
That was your last word.
Well, B and I think this isbecause I've had very humble beginnings.
I remember like, I remember my stepfathersaying, just because you don't have
money doesn't meanthat you can't still have a good life.
Example would be like all the collegeapplications that at the time
they were applying for multiple ones.
It's just like,
Yeah, we may not have a lot of money,but if you want to try to go
(12:52):
to these colleges, we're going to find it.
And you know, that was one hurdle.
And then paying for it was another hurdle.
And so I just always heard, likejust because you don't have a lot of money
doesn't mean that you can't figure outways to do the things that you want to.
And so what that looks like is
I've worked in lots,lots of different environments
where you've had biggermarketing budgets or smaller ones.
(13:14):
And in the last ten years, those budgetmarketing budgets have come down
smaller and smaller and smaller.
And that's where the big thinkingkind of comes in in that
if you kind of just take budgetor the actual physical dollars
off of the table,the creativity is actually free.
Yeah. So what can we do?
Like like, let's think about whatwe're actually trying to do
(13:35):
and then we figure out thehow we pay for it type of thing.
Yeah, I like that.
And I,
I think that's a really insightful quotethat you just
shared, that youyou came from humble beginnings,
but it doesn't meanyou can't have a good life.
Yeah, I love that, actually.
You know, we were poor until,like, we were I was in my thirties.
I was just like, what?We were what I expected. Yeah.
(13:56):
It just like we spend a lot of timetogether, you know, And that,
that could be just because you guys don't
spend a lot of time together,but not a lot of people in the house.
People a lot of kids,
a lot of my cousins are always aroundmy friends in the neighborhood.
But yeah, yeah, that's super cool.
So where did you go to school?
How did you get towhere you are now? What's that story like?
(14:18):
I, I graduated from GeorgiaState University in Atlanta
and I got my MBA from Hofstra
University in New York on Long Island.
And I think Georgia Statewas such a great experience.
You know, over twenty some odd years ago, I just dated myself unintentionally.
(14:41):
They Georgia State was actually talking
and thinking about career pathwaysand how do you get students,
you know, high achievingor first generation which which I am,
how do you get them in to collegeand out and into jobs?
And so I benefitedfrom being in a rotation program
at during my time at Georgia State,where I ended up at Turner Broadcasting.
(15:05):
So I started my my first internshipwas at the Cartoon Network.
I did a rotation really fun.
It was the best possible placeto start my career.
And I did a stint at Boomerang,which is the classic cartoons.
I know more about cartoonsthan the average human being
should probably should.
I know what's your favorite cartoonwhile Scooby Doo?
(15:27):
Obviously, that's what I was going to say.
You know that.
And you know,
there was actually the original Scooby Doois really a really short run,
but it's so well loved thatmost people think that it was on
for yearsand years and years. But it really wasn't.
So I went
into a rotation programthere and had an opportunity to learn like
the business, but the actual productionside of of television.
(15:51):
So and believe it or not, I had a mentorduring my time at Cartoon Network
where they were looking to bring onsome new shows and I actually pitched
I wrote a script for Interstitial,which is like a short, maybe two minute,
a two minute sort of bumper between anactual program and and commercial break.
(16:12):
And I sent it to the producer of a show
that was on TNT or was pitching for TNT.
And he thought, well,first of all, who are you?
You don't actuallyyou're not interning in my group.
And somehow you figured your wayto see the Turner Web and found me.
And that's where the tenacity came in.
(16:32):
And he passed along my scriptto a handful of other people,
and I ended up getting a full time job,not necessarily on the show
because it wasn't picked up.
But I did end up getting a full time joband a good run at at Turner.
And that small thingencouraged me to sort of
because at the time I wantedto kind of get into the production side.
(16:53):
I thought I wanted to get intowriting for television.
And by him not rejecting that,
that interstitial,it only encouraged me to keep doing it.
And so I actually hadI went through my entire personal network
and met a friend of a friend of a friendwho suggested
I should move out to Californiaand really give writing a shot.
And that was probably what I learned fromthat experience, was that was good.
(17:18):
But when I got out there,the person stopped
returning phone callsand actually didn't help me at all.
So I think you had asked me like one,what's one of those big lessons?
It was just like, you know,
that was one of the first timesI felt like super rejected.
And I felt like, you know,I had this idea that I was going to go out
and do all these thingsthat did not come into fruition.
(17:40):
But the experience,I mean, there is the experience of it
all of moving from Atlanta,which is where I graduated and started my
career and moving to Los Angeles,where I didn't know anybody.
It was really it was fun.
It was frightening.
And I wouldn't change it at all,even with the fact
that the person stoppedhelping or stopped responding
(18:05):
because who knows why, whythat why things worked out the way it did,
But it only encouraged me to kind ofgive it a try and see where things landed.
And what actually ended up happeningwas like during during that time,
I left a really good comfortablelike rotation at Turner
and I ended up at a much smaller companyfrom again kind of
(18:26):
going through my network and have ithaving explained like what had happened.
And then that's how I ended up going backto grad school because I figured
that I actually really didenjoy the creative side
of the filmmaking business,but I did not enjoy the business
of making filmsby any stretch of the imagination.
But I enjoyed the, the,the marketing, the finding an audience
(18:47):
developing and helping people, you know,find content that they really enjoyed.
And that's what brought me backto grad school and how I ended up
getting my MBA.
No, very nice.
All right.
So you got all the way to cap fit.
Okay.
I'm just really curious,how did the name Cappfinity come up?
Because I'm going.
(19:07):
That doesn't sound like anything in aH.R.
To me, is it?
I don't take any credit for it.
As a matter of fact,
the reason Cappfinity became Cappfinityis that they were launching
a company that had existed in Europefor 16 or so years.
Under the name of capp.
It was an acronym startedby two behavioral science scientists.
(19:29):
One was an academic,the other one was actually a practitioner,
and the acronym was super academic.
So they went from saying the full name,which I'm
forgetting rightnow, that's okay, it's a capp.
But when the companylooked to sort of expand
into the US market, there was alreadya company doing business as Capp
(19:49):
So they had to figure out another
another name to sort of do businessas and the CMO
who was there for a very short timecame up with a Cappfinity
Like the idea wasif you can bring behavioral science
into how you hire and develop people,
(20:09):
we would probably be better offfor an infinity.
I don't.
I feel like this today was a stretch.
I take no credit for it, but that was howthey ended up with that weird name.
Oh, that sounds kind of fun.
And it ties into some of that cartoonnetwork and when Cappfinity.
That's about to the infinity and beyond.
Yeah.
Now I had I take no credit for itbecause for many years
(20:31):
other people were like,What is that name you can come from?
But at least it helps.
Yeah, yeah, it's memorable.It's a good story too.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you're no longer with them.
What do you thinkyour future is going to be like?
Where do you see yourself going?
Well, I join Cappfinity.
This is a nerd.
They're like indication of my personality.
(20:51):
So I the shutdown happens, right?
So the pandemic and I initially startedhaving conversations
about joining Cappfinity,I think two months into the shutdown.
So or three months into it.
And I joined in January 21,
and I really wanted to try to help
grow the business in the USand in other the other growth regions
(21:15):
that really helpedpeople think about hiring different
looking less at like your whereyou went to college or your GPA
and really giving people a shotand looking at the behaviors,
looking at your skillsand how that could apply
to some of the thingsthat you're trying to do.
And so, you know, fast forwardalmost three years later,
I'm really, really happywith what we were able to accomplish
(21:37):
in terms of the brand awareness, in termsof really landing some great clients.
And so I think where I go to nextis probably going to be another company
that's off that's that really is readingand trying to change
how we eitherdevelop people, develop talent
or some
other huge problem that that as a society
(21:59):
will benefitfrom through some enabling technology.
So that's where I seeI would agree with you on that one.
I'm curious, do you think that, you know,in this role of global
but are you really good at marketingmessaging
also being able to take complex thingsand make it like five year old?
Simple.
That is, that's another one of my gifts.
(22:19):
Your superpowers. Yeah.
I've for the last 12 or 15 years,you know,
there's engineers, product managers,people that spend their days and lives,
you know, whether it's working onalgorithms or the data science behind it.
They're not the bestat helping people in the marketplace
get why you should buy this thing.
(22:41):
That's why I know, like forfor now into eternity,
I'll always have a jobbecause I can list that
In order to be a really good storyteller,you need to be a good listener, right?
And to translate meaning and value to a
to a consumer or to a buyer,you need to make it make sense for them.
And in the most simple terms.
(23:02):
And so that's all I do.
That's whether that is through a marketingemail campaign, whether it's through
refreshing your website, it's simplifyingit so people get how it benefits them
and how it fixes somethingthat they're trying to to address.
I really like this whole conversation.
Hard to believe, but we're going to takea moment to acknowledge our sponsor.
(23:25):
And we'll be right back.
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Thank you. Cat 5 Studios.
So we're back
to the second half of our show,but this is going to be a continuation
of the first half.
(23:46):
We're going to blow through that one
a little fasterbecause this woman is brilliant
and you have to hear what she has to sayabout the future of work.
Okay. Favorite quote that you live by.
My favorite quote is
a Arthur Ashe quote and it's startwhere you are.
You use what you have and do what you can.
I love it.
I have from my first job out of college,
(24:10):
up until my last day at Captain Navy,I've always lived sort of by that mantra.
So whether the marketing budgetis this big or whether it's this little,
what can we do?
What is it that we're really tryingto achieve it creativity free.
And so that's that'sthat's a quote that I really live by.
So I admire him creativity is free.
(24:31):
That's true.
I'm going to I'm going to be writing thesethings down here because you know what?
They're they're nuggets that are so good.
It's a little it is in there is free
is okay.
Yes, I like that, too. Okay.
What is the hardest lessonthat you learned that changed your life?
I talked about it a little bit beforewhen, you know, I had this vision of you
(24:54):
know, I had this really great opportunityand somebody saw what I was trying to do.
And but then Iyou know, I faced the fact that
what I thought sort of that path
of where how it was going to work outprofessionally early on in my career
wasn'tit wasn't going to quite work that way.
(25:14):
And I think the hard lesson in that was
that you
sort of have to remain flexibleand you sort of have to take your lumps
in life and pick yourself back upand and kind of move forward.
Yeah, very true.
What you think you wantmay not be the best thing for you.
Yeah. Not the time for.
(25:35):
And somehow it just.
But you still have to find a way forward,you know? Hmm.
So what are you most grateful for?
Oh, I'm so grateful for my family.
The one that I was born intoand also my chosen family.
So my good friends,
I feel really
grateful to have such a close network
(25:57):
and community around me.
Mm hmm.
What about who in your lifehas had the biggest impact?
And you can name names if you want.
So my mom and my Auntie Rena,who is no longer with us,
but my mom has always been a big advocate
for, you know, as a young woman,you should have a career.
(26:17):
You need to have education.
You need to go make your way in this worldand make good choices
and live with the choices that you make,but make your life
the way that you want it.
And my Auntie Renaowned a beauty salon in the Bronx, and
I just saw her running her own businessand she traveled a lot.
(26:38):
And so I would get all these adventure.
I would get her postcardsof all these adventures that she had had.
And she took me onmy first international trip.
And so I think between those two womenjust kind of giving me that push
and showing me that it was also possiblethere, there where I got a lot
my inspiration from. Mm hmm.
(26:58):
Very nice.
I'm sure your mom,your mom's still here? Yes.
Yeah.
Well, then I hope she gets to listen tothis show and know that she was mentioned.
Oh, I will. Definitely.
She loves this.
Oh, I'll have to show her how to find itand play it for her.
But she'll be. She'll love that.
Yeah.
What do you want to be remembered for?
Um, I really want to be,
(27:20):
because mentoring is so important to me.
Somebody who is encouraging
and supportive of whatever big idea
or big mission or thing that someonewas trying to achieve.
I want to be known for.
For those two things.
Mm hmm.
So what do you thinkthe future of 2030 is going to look like?
(27:41):
2030 is going to be probably
just as crazy as 2023 is right now.
We are like human beings.
We're on the path to just make ourselvesas crazy as possible.
More enabling technologyand all of the problems
that we have right nowwill just look different.
But it will be an excitingand probably frightening time as well.
(28:02):
Mm hmm.
When you say enabling,I know that sometimes that can have a
kind of a negativemeaning for some people,
because if we were beingcalled an enabler,
this was not a question that we discussedon throwing one out here.
But I always hear
large companies, enterprise companies,they work with people enablement.
(28:24):
And so what does that actually mean?
Because I think it's an H.R. term.
Yeah, I mean, I know it is an H.R.
term, but I think it's
really helpful for our audience to knowit's not the negative enabler.
You know,think about it like the light bulb.
You turn it onand you're able to do all these things.
The light bulb enablesreading it in, enable other innovations.
So that's why I think about technology.
(28:45):
So whether it's a job simulationthat gives a person
a chance to actually try out a jobbefore you hire them so you can see what
they would be like,that's an enabling technology.
Or if you think about it, young,
you know, or
interns doing their rotationrather than actually
going into a laband maybe doing those procedures
(29:07):
on cadavers, doing it on, you know,whether it's simulated augmented reality.
Exactly.
I think those are enabling technologiesthat help
us, at the end of the day,treat people in terms
of a medical professionmore efficiently, better.
It helps us really get to whatwe're trying to achieve.
(29:28):
So from when I use enabling,it's just helping us
kind of movefaster and solve bigger problems.
I think that's a really helpfuldescription because I know I've had
a couple of clients that have, you know,people enablement as part of their H.R.
department.
And so the student that I was talkingwith, while they have this position
(29:49):
and I was having to explain it,I like the way you explained it
also about how technologycan enable us to be more
whether it's productive or whatever,to do things in a different way.
I don't think
that it's always seenas something that can be a positive.
So I like the way you framed it. Oh, yeah.
I mean, there's so many thingsthat even though like food production
(30:11):
has all these in enabling technology,so canned goods are safer,
like we're no longer making them by handfor a reason so that, you know,
people aren't ended up with a botulismor something like that.
So technology should help us move.
We're doing thingsbetter, faster, in a safer, you know, way.
I mean, I it eventhe pandemic is a good example of how
(30:35):
a huge problem cause like the medical
and the sort of medtech
scientists academics to sort ofthink of a problem like that.
I feel I mean,I think we also have some secondary trauma
from living through that whole experience.
But the fact that we were able toas a society look at something that big
(30:57):
find solutions to treatit and to get it out into the production
and then into actual like use cases.
We all had the vaccines or many of us did.
Right.
That's in there'sso many enabling technologies
that supported thatyou could think about video chats, right?
So people were communicating acrossthe country.
(31:18):
Video communications enabled that.
Some of the ideationof whether you shared algorithms
or if it was,you know, sort of medical documents.
So like document sharing,all of those were enabling technologies.
So we had this inso that we would get to this
big solution, which is sort ofhow do we get out of
(31:41):
being locked indoors
with this weird, mysterious threat threat?
Yeah, yeah, that was out there.
So there was hundreds of enablingtechnologies and people involved in that.
All solution.
Very true.
So remote blended on site, flex work.
What do you thinkit's going to look like in 2030?
(32:03):
I think I think it's going to be morehybrid, more blended.
And the reasonthat has to be the case for two reasons.
We know
that people can be productivewithout being in the same space,
but we also knowthere's a benefit of humans
being in the same spaceand sharing and collaborating.
(32:23):
And I think over time, well, well,if we could allow ourselves to get past
the the conversation of remote work
or in-office work, but get to wherewhat is it that we're trying to do?
What is it that we're trying to solveand how do we do that?
What parameters,what do we need to create that to harness
that creativity or harnessthose solutions?
(32:47):
That's where I think a blended workenvironment will come into play.
And quite frankly,I mentioned that to you as well.
Many CEOsdo not go to your office every day
if you're a senior vicepresident of whatever.
So your senior leaders,they're not in their offices every day.
And now you have workers that are like,I well, if you're not in the office
(33:10):
every day, why should I in a lot ofwhat's even driving this, driving
people back to office?
This has nothing to do with productivity.
It has more to do withcommercial real estate and long leases.
You know, Facebook just, I think, spentsome ungodly amount of money
to get out of one of their huge leasesbefore for the same reason,
(33:30):
because they knew
that their parts of their workforcewere not going to go back into offices.
So I think if if we could get to a pointwhere we're really focused on
what is it we're trying to do,I think blended environments are probably
a much more aplace that's going to be more
productive overall for the future of work.
(33:51):
Now I can see conference roomsor being able to rent a room, or sometimes
maybe that might even bewhere the corporate retreat becomes.
Let's go to an office and then we all haveall of these breakout rooms
and all of those thingsthat could be something that could happen.
Yeah, rather than your offsite suitsbe like you're in office
or something like that. Yeah.
(34:14):
And because this idea, like,somehow you're more productive
just because you're in an office,that there's no there's
no science, there's no data behind that.
We all know that there are people thatthat goofed off that were the first ones
in, but they spent most of their timejust talking.
Or you could still be sitting at a deskand do it, not doing anything.
(34:35):
So it's not the physical locationthat I think that's the the thing that
we should be focused on as more of like,how do we accomplish these things?
What roles need to be together
and what roles can be distributed.
I've had the benefitof managing a distributed teams
and you can still be productive,
(34:56):
You can still hit your deadlines,you can still do really good work.
Whether you're in anoffice, right, or, you know,
across, you know, continents.
Can you build relationshipswhen you're in remote environments?
Yeah, you absolutely can.
But is there some secret saucewhen you're together,
(35:17):
you're sharing ideas in the same space,having a coffee?
Absolutely.
So but I think if we can figure outsort of a blended approach, that's what
that's what the future workshould be going towards.
Mm hmm. I agree.
What about I you know, what do you thinkthe impact that, you know, this year
we saw it happen when chat was launchedor maybe it was the end of last year.
(35:40):
I think it was the end of last yearwhen it officially came out,
You know, it was launchedand there was a huge impact.
And with with what you were sayingabout working remotely, we saw that change
in the education systemwhere teachers are having to figure out
how do they do, how do they teach distanceand how do they teach online,
(36:02):
especially if it was a five year old or,you know, a seven year old.
Those kind of ages are very, very,
you know, so they need to be together.
It's hard to be separate.
So then you have a
I and then we bring in other technologythat's there to to just change how we
we do research and how we writeand how we produce work.
(36:24):
I know there was a lot of concernabout it,
but to me it's just another way of lookingwhat Google did.
Google took all knowledge.
We used to have something called tabletsand then we old school tablets.
Moses Then we went into encyclopedias.
It's a fast pace.
Then we jumped into the Internet,then we jumped into Google
and now chat is the same thing,but just faster.
(36:47):
Yeah, I think that
generative A.I.
is exciting.
I personally, as a marketer, made my team.
We were piloting a projects using A.I.
generative AI, and that means likewhether we were building a new web page,
(37:09):
I was just like, I want toI want you to figure out the terms.
And we use toolsthat we're using generative A.I.
to help us build out the metadatafor our new web page.
And it worked, you know, writing summaries
for a press release or figuring out what,you know, outline for a blog.
(37:30):
If you were a writing for an executive.
There's a lot of use cases for marketers
that where it helps froma productive productivity
and really sort of time management,there's a lot of benefit to it.
I also think that we're at thisreally inflection point
where we need guardrails
(37:51):
because I think about A.I.
and, you know,Hollywood has all the robots.
They're going to come after usand kill us.
I don't worry about the robotscoming in and killing us,
but I do worry about artificial artificialintelligence and machine learning,
weeding people out of getting their carebenefits, or maybe getting the best rate
(38:13):
for a mortgage because of some blipor some some algorithm
that says that they may have predictivebehaviors, that they may default.
They're they're they're
that's the thing that keep me up at night.
I find those just the human.
But the human use cases, thingsin the public sector, public health uses,
(38:36):
that's where I worry about AI going awry.
And, you know, peoplenot having access to things because
maybe they're lower incomeor they're in a tax bracket
where they don't have a strongvoting block.
Those are the things where I thinkthat we need very strong guardrails.
And believe it or not,
and I'm not the first person to saythat you need laws for things,
(38:58):
but we do need laws to prohibitbad acts, that bad behavior.
And we're at a inflection pointif we don't get our arms around it right
now, it will go off the railsand who knows what things will look like
because right now GenerativeAI's is very much in its infancy.
It's a lot of the applicationswill spit back out, you know, things.
(39:22):
But over time, as more and moreis fed into it and there's more learning
that it will become even betterat some of these some of the outputs.
And but having said that,I just feel like it really is
it's really importantfor us to put guardrails or I agree now.
And what worries me iswhen I look at our politicians,
(39:44):
the things that they choose to talk about,this isn't one of them.
And even if they were to talk about it,
I don'tknow that they have the information
to make good decisions about it.
So how we as a society,just as we're talking about
health care and the economy and jobs,should be top of mind for us
(40:05):
because it'sone of it's enabling technology
that will impact your health carebenefits, that will impact
how you get a bank loan or not.
And those are the things that I thinkabout for all the good that it can do.
And helping you do your jobs better,which I'm benefited from.
I've you know, I've writtentons of press releases between when chat
(40:29):
was launched using applicationsthat embedded generative A.I.
into their solution and I used it.
So I see the benefits but I also think wehave to get our arms around it right now.
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
I am all for that.
I'm looking for the organizationslocally that do that that I can
either be a part of or support,you know, if it's on a larger scale.
(40:53):
I think World Economic Forum ishas already started something like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Pretty sure I have to goand look that one up.
But here's the thing that I thinkyou pose a really good
example of what could happenand can go wrong.
So we have generated A.I.
that can, you know, determinethis is the profile of me.
(41:15):
You know, And no,she can't go and have a mortgage
because of thisand this and this that showed up.
And then I have to go and talk to a chatbot before I can get to a person.
Anderson Yeah.
And then who's to say thatthat actual person
is really not a higher levelof another chat bot, right?
So it becomes for mesomething that's out of Black Mirror
(41:37):
and I just go,Oh no, there's that's exactly right.
The transparency aspect of it.
Yeah, there's no documentation of that.
I mean, I think about another applicationwhere I think about this often
because we live in Orlando,but traffic like,
yeah,artificial intelligence could tell us
how many more roads would be needed forthe amount of people that are moving here.
(41:59):
We were probably know that just straightroads are not the transportation
solutionthat we need to make model of solutions.
Those are the atthose are the things where like
if we were to put our hands around itand think about the applications
that could really benefitus, that would be one.
But that's eveneven when you think about that,
it's just like, well,where would the train go?
(42:20):
Would it go into certain neighborhoods?
Would people be boxed out of?
Transportation?
These are the things that I thinkthat that's where enabling technology
and humans, if you put them both together,
along with good regulation,that we could actually do things
where people have a much easier wayto get to to work,
(42:41):
or that you could bring more industryin and out of central Florida
because there was better transportation
options.
So there's so many good thingsthat could happen.
But if we aren't feeding
like good farmsgood information into these tools,
then the outputs is like garbagein, garbage out.
(43:02):
And that's a lot of what worries meis that there's not enough
oversight and transparencyon what that thing, let's say stewardship.
Yeah, yeah, stewardship for sure.
So in there will always be people that go,
Well, it's an encyclopedia,it must be true.
It's on the internet.
It must be true.
Google says it must be true.
(43:22):
Chet says it, It must be true.
That isn't true.
No apps.
Because there's bad information that goesinto any type of source that we all use.
And we need to remember that.
But I don't think that
people that are born intothese generations come with that wisdom.
I think it's like, you know, Googleyourself, you know, and what do you see
(43:44):
if you see stuff out there and you knowit's not true then or how many how many?
Latoya Hodges are there out there?
There's there's a handful I call myselfevery so often, and I'm kidding.
I'll give you an example of earlierthis week.
I actually used a resume, aa generative A.I.
tool just to see what itjust so I could compare my current resume
(44:07):
and what it wouldwhat generative I would spit out.
And I was like, Well,I would never use this even in the way
some of the language that I wouldn'tuse it because it first of all, that's it.
It doesn't sound like you.
It doesn't sound likea marketing professional.
It sounds like a computer wrote this.
And but that's what that looks like today.
(44:28):
Maybe six months from now will be better.
But the point it's just like I know thatbecause I'm a human, I'm looking at it,
but I don't know thatevery person that looks out,
you know, deliverables or maybe givingthat level of oversight or even that
critical sort of view on, well,is this right or is this sort of what
(44:50):
should I take action based on this thing?
And and I just think that that's that'swhere
we're at this real inflection point,that there needs to be more conversation
and socially, not just like legislaturelegislators, but we're taxpayers.
We should have a partof that conversation to
I don't want people taken advantageof because, you know,
(45:13):
something was produced with a tool.
But I also want us to use technologyso that we can get people
into situationswhere their lifestyles are healthier,
they're in safer in neighborhoodsand technology, or they have a better,
faster way to get to work,safer way to get to work.
So there are so many thingsthat we could do,
(45:33):
but we kind of have to do it together,not in a vacuum
and not some like super elitegroup of people
and like ten of the richest peoplein the world.
That's a that'show we already know where that goes.
I mean, there's enough cartoonswhere the cartoon villain is in that guy.
We don't need to do that.
But there's enough good people, smartpeople and technologies where we could do
(45:56):
something really amazing,this big thinking of,
you know, ideas and really changeour society, society for the better.
You know,when you were talking about how you were
using it,let's see what it could do for my resume.
Most of thisis something I used to teach 10th grade.
So most of the things that people read,the average
(46:18):
is written on an eighth gradereading level.
And so then I googled. Well,what is The Wall Street Journal?
It's written on an 11th gradereading level.
And so I feel like, yeah, I mean, I justlooked it up and so it's on the Internet.
It must be true, right?
You know,I feel like it to a certain level.
Yeah, I'm sure that is true, becauseyou can have some very intelligent people
that did not graduate from college,but they read on that level.
(46:41):
Right.
Or they produce really thoughtful content.
So but yeah, financial terms and stuff,
that's not like what you cover in highschool is what I'm thinking.
But the point of that is,is that right now
chat uses words that are soI'm going to use this word superfluous.
You know, they're just really amazing,just genuinely amazing.
(47:03):
Big words.
You go, Wow, what is that mean?
Yeah, Human doesn't speak like that.We don't talk like that.
Yeah,I was it Walter Cronkite that used to say
in journalism, trust but verify that.
Think so? I'm going to look it upwhile we're talking.
We have to kind of get back to in that
you can listen to the news and I'mbecause I'm old enough.
And I did go
(47:24):
I did take journalism in that whole veinin that you need to show proof.
You need to have facts.
It's not your opinion isn't enough. You.
Right? It works.
You trust and verify it.
Trust, but verify.
And that's where that'swhat is missing right now.
Yeah, we can.
That's what humans are supposed to do.
Yeah, that's what we're supposed to do.
(47:44):
But where we were,where, where we are right now
is that the engineers or the coders
or the developers, they're the onesthat are maybe writing the programs.
But who's who's who's doing the testing?
Who's there needs to be more than just
technologistscreating these enabling technologies.
You need social scientists,You need social workers, you need poets
(48:08):
and philosophers.
Also being a part of this
collaborative experience so that we can dothings in a much better way.
Oppenheimer was a really good movie.
Rae So do we not learn, likejust because we can do something
that we shouldn'tthink through the consequences
just because we can doesn'tmean we should.
(48:28):
And so I feel like
because when that movie came out,I was just like in all the generative,
I was like, Where was thatdiscussion about, Should we be doing this?
You know,what does it mean for a whole society?
Well, there wasn't enough dialog whenwe have the opportunity to do that. Now.
So we've covered the ethics questionWhat is the best
(48:48):
mentoring adviceyou want to pass on to our listeners?
Oh, I wish this wasn't true,but you learn a lot the the most from
the things you fail at, the biggest lumps,the that's the things that hurt
your failures are where you getthe most lessons.
They shape your your next steps.
(49:08):
They shape how you orientyour your solutions, your way forward.
But that's the biggest one.
And year after year, mistakeafter mistake, it's still true.
No, it is true.
It is so true.
Well, I want to thank youfor being a guest on our show.
So fun.
It went so fast and we did go so fast.
But how can people contact you?
(49:30):
You can find me on LinkedIn.
Latoya Hodge I'd be opento having conversations about air
and the applications in marketingor just really interesting marketing
solutions.
So you can find me on LinkedIn. Perfect.
And just so people know that's H O D G E and don't put an S on the end of it,
so make sure you spell it correctlyanyway, want to thank you so much
(49:53):
for being a guest this time.
It was so much fun, truly,and I look forward
to having another conversationhopefully over Chai tea.
That sounds delicious.
Coming in.
I'm not a coffeedrinker, so. Yeah. All right.
We want to thank our sponsor,
Cat 5 Studios, and thank you to our videoproduction and editing team,
(50:14):
Gabe Laport, Tommy Myers, AndrewPiggott, and Julissa Hurtado.
We also want to acknowledge our musiccomposer is Charles Lawrence Lide,
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