Welcome to Episode 800 of CXO Talk.
We're speaking with Mozhgan Lafev, the Executive Vice
President and Chief Technology and Operations Officer of
Travelers Insurance. We're talking about digital
transformation and customer experience.
My guest cohost is Q Harrison Terry, the Chief Growth Officer
at the Mark Cuban Companies. My role, as you said heading up
technology and operations is really leading our technology,
our data and analytics, cybersecurity.
And then on the business operations side, it includes
everything from business resiliency to customer service,
premium audit billing and you know a whole bunch of things
that are about customer service role is very much involved with
digital transformation and with customer experience.
Do you want to give us a little bit of overview about that?
You have a very unusual title. It's really two functions that
aren't necessarily inherently always together, but I think
they're very connected because through the customer operations
and service. A lens I, you know I and my
organization, we have the opportunity to truly see the
interaction with the customers, which is really what it's all
about. And when we think of digital
transformation, we don't necessarily use those terms.
We talk about our transformation as our transform agenda and it's
our innovation and transform agenda.
But really what it encompasses is the making sure that we are
serving our customers the way they want, the lighting them
every step of the way. Serving them how they want and
through any channel that they want.
So it's all about the customer experience and this is not
something that has always been the case in the insurance
industry. I'd say it's probably something
that's started with the advent of the consumerization of IT, of
course. And you know we've seen it in in
every industry and it's happening as we speak in ours as
well. Did you give an example of how
you envisioned like the tech that you're working on today,
transforming and enhancing some of those customer experiences
that are existing and soon to be coming?
Some of what we've done over the last few years is truly
enhancing our the mobile experience where from your
mobile phone you can pull up your policy, you can get a
certificate of insurance, you can pay your bill.
And then if you have, you know if if you're unfortunate and do
actually have an accident and want to file, file a claim.
There's a whole slew of capabilities that you can
actually perform on your mobile phone.
And these weren't things that we had before and actually.
The rating we had several years ago on on the iOS was 2.7 and
today it stands at, you know, over 4 1/2.
So you're managing the expectation, right.
So it's like the customers expect X because that's the
world we live in and that's where the the technological
innovations have existed. When you have a legacy brand
like Travelers where you're you're known for doing what you
do, you're you're making sure that you're not too far behind,
but you're right where you need to be and it's a seamless
experience. Absolutely.
I mean, I couldn't have said it better myself.
You know, we're all about really delivering at our promise, which
is to take care of our customers at their most difficult times.
And that is absolutely our core. That's what we're known for and
that's what everybody loves us for.
So we want to make sure that we're leveraging technology to
deliver that promise as effectively and in the most
modern way possible. And as you said, exactly the way
our customers expect it. You mentioned that your rating
in the App Store went from pretty low to very high.
There must be a cultural, organizational dimension behind
that because I don't think it's a matter of, oh, well, now we
have better technology. Well, you had good technology
before as well. So can you elaborate on that
aspect of it? For me, I always say that the
toughest thing about technology and technology initiatives isn't
necessarily the actual technology itself, it's the
adoption, it's the change management, it's people being
open to that. And and I agree that like the
mindset, the culture and how an organization is, is probably one
of the core elements of how that works and really your talent,
that's that's. Core to making all of this
transformation. So you know we set out as as I
joined the organization, we set out on making sure that we
established first of all our strategic priorities where we
said you know we are going to continue to invest in our
people. So investing in our people.
Secondly it was about evolving the way we work.
I mean we were working in a very traditional way that I T
organizations work with their business where you know things
are thrown over the wall and and you go off and you work for.
You know months or or at least that's how it used to be months
or a year or two and then come back and say here I've, I've
built you the solution. And so it was truly moving us
away from that ensuring that you know we started always with what
what's the business problem we're solving.
You know what what's the expectation of the customer, the
stakeholder. And so we definitely drove kind
of an agile transformation and Dr. drove a kind of product
mindset. Into the organization and you
know started also simplifying and modernizing everything.
But we very much focused on our culture and our teams pulled
together and established our cultural beliefs where you know
it was first and foremost customer first.
The second one was make sure that we are prioritizing.
And then I think probably the third cultural belief that made
all the difference in the world was our test and learn.
Because prior to that, you know, everybody believed that.
You know what, whenever we're doing something, we had to just.
Strive for it to be perfect and and you know regardless of what
goes wrong, don't change your path.
And I think in today's world you actually have to be as flexible
as possible. Recognize when something's not
working and pick up from there. Learn from it and and pivot.
And and so that was really probably what gave our people
kind of the the freedom to to think more openly to be to
understand how innovation works. And and so it was absolutely a
kind of a cultural transformation as much as
everything else. What was the underlying driver
that made you want to undertake, I mean you're an enormous
company. You have what, about 30,000
employees and almost $40 billion in revenue.
So why? Why did you do this?
As I go back to my roots of having been born in in in Iran,
you know, several, many, many years ago I should say.
And then, you know, being there when we had a revolution, our
government was changed. And so really, I would say
probably the future of women completely went.
Down the tube, so to speak. And I knew that as a woman I
really wouldn't have the opportunity to bring my
ambitions which which were big always.
And I don't don't really know what the source of that was.
But I was always pushing myself. And so as I graduated high
school, I worked for a year, you know, saved some money because
my parents couldn't really afford to let send me anywhere
and was lucky enough to get a student visa to come to the US
and. You know, I guess the rest is
history. On that challenge, I wanna ask a
question and this is this is gonna get into a bit of your
background, but I'm gonna transition us to one of the
things that just like when I saw your title, the thing that
screamed to me was okay, you're our travelers.
Everyone knows it's a big data company insurance is all about.
I just it's it's a data play on all sides, right?
Like I give them my data I get a quote I pay the quote premium.
You help me out if I get an unfortunate situation, pretty
streamlined and easy to understand business.
One of the things that's changed in our economy today is as
things have become more digital, the data in itself is very, very
valuable and we are living in an economy where.
Basically anyone with your role or your title is basically the
chief scapegoat officer, right? Where if something goes wrong,
if there's ransomware, if the technology doesn't work, that
blame is placed on you. And my question for you is, like
in this world of cybersecurity and ransomware threats and like
just quite frankly burnout, how have you kept going and how are
you managing that with a company of this size?
I've learned that. The company that you joined
their their kind of their mission, who they're about and
their culture is absolutely paramount and important in, you
know, enjoying your job. So I I don't think that our
organization is 1 where anyone ever gets blamed for one thing.
Now I know that you were dramatizing that in the form of,
look, all of these, all of these are.
For risk and you know, huge risk and and really you know
catastrophes happening so to speak.
And you're right like whether it's the cybersecurity role or
if it's the business continuity role, right, which is a business
role. And and anything from you know
the pandemic to to all the resources that we had externally
not just for the technology organization that also for our
claim organization and others making sure that our
relationships with those vendors were right.
Those are all kind of in the. The purview of my organization
but you know I I never I obviously no leader can do
anything on their own and all the credit obviously goes to the
organization that you build and the you know how cohesive that
that group is and truly bringing the best talent on board and
making sure that you're developing them and and you
know. Helping them do what they do
best. And you know we, we are lucky
and I'm lucky to have a phenomenal team of whether it's
our Chief Information Security Officer or you know The Who we
have at the helm of our business resiliency.
These are like some of the top talents and you know they're
empowered to do their jobs effectively and do things go
wrong. Absolutely.
But you know, The thing is. You know if something goes wrong
I take responsibility for it. If you know and and I strive
that if you know if things go right it's it's obviously
they're doing but my job is to make sure that I just remove the
the problems for them and then you know make sure that we
perform the best possible way. And I have yet to feel like, Oh
my God, like this. This is, I'm going to be blamed
for this thing. One thing that you you mentioned
is the Pandemic and just the current landscape of of
cybersecurity issues. Could you share an example of
how you're managing burnout with your team?
Like what I'm seeing on my end is like I've got rock stars A
players and it's 2023 middle of the year and I'm dealing with
like burnout from my A players, people that I would have never
thought or expected to just be in these faces where they're
just not kicking in all their gears and.
They got us, they got us to hear right.
They got us through all the crazy stuff that just ensued not
too long ago. And I'm curious like what are
you seeing at Travelers and how are you managing that just
giving your role in position? Yeah, I mean, there are
absolutely times where you know and you feel that there's
burnouts. You've gotta be aware of that.
You gotta make sure that you're rewarding people that you
acknowledge that, that you encourage them to, you know,
take their time off. I always do my best not to.
E-mail any of my team members over the weekend unless it's
absolutely necessary, just just behaviors like that I think will
go a long way. But at the end of the day, I
think the world we live in is, you know, these.
The pace is just going to keep getting faster and faster.
And we just have to become better as individuals, you know,
to manage it, to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves.
Because without that, you know, without being healthy, nothing
will happen. Our CEO, actually.
Introduced his like Top 40 leaders in our organization that
we call our operating committee to you know why it's important
to sleep. It's a book that's based on the
science of sleep and that was the book that he sent to all of
us and encouraged us to provide it also to our team members
because he said, you know, if you don't sleep and you, you, I
mean, I think everybody knows that now, but.
There's just so much science behind it and and I think that
just shows you know the culture of the company and and how much
the organization cares about our people and our talent that we're
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YouTube channel. We've been talking about data
and transformation. A I is the great driver of
transformation or certainly going to be one of them.
I know you're doing things with a I, can you tell us what you're
doing? But what I'm really interested
in is how do you use those capabilities to drive again to
drive transformation? First and foremost, I'd say we
know that's that there will be no a I strategy or execution at
scale without really having a data strategy understanding that
both the quality and then as as Q pointed out, the volume of
data. Is absolutely critical now for
us, you know this is we've been around for 165 plus years.
So the the amount of data that we have which we of course treat
vary with like the highest respect and ensure the privacy
and security of our customers because that's like the crux of
of the relationship with us. But, but we have that and then
now with the third party sources of data that are that are
available and that are really powerful and I think that's
truly. Our, you know one of the the
deepest parts of our competitive advantage so to speak and and so
everything that we do in terms of whether we're writing a risk
and evaluating that risk to how we price it to you know how much
reserves we we put aside and then all the way to.
The customer experience on what their interactions have been
with us and how to personalize their experience and to ensure
that our customers stay with us and their retention of course is
a is a huge impact as to to our company as as to any company.
So, so we leverage that data and we have done so for many years
to absolutely build models for all of the functions that I
talked about. And then five years ago, we
actually established our AI accelerator, which is very
focused. And machine learning and
automation. And so we've got practices that
are focused on you know with the combination of some of the
geospatial capabilities that we've developed.
So leveraging both vision a, I and and other types of
automation to for example identify the shape of a roof and
to do it as accurately as possible and this really and you
know to to segment the data as as.
Into as small parcels as possible and all of these have
continued to help us to underwriting in a much more
effective way. And you know we've got, we're
known for being one of the best underwriting organizations in
the world of insurance which is really the the core of it.
And then from a customer experience perspective, you know
we've got models that that we built that for example can
identify after a wildfire total damaged homes from images that
we have both pre and post. Catastrophe without having to
send any of our claim folks out there.
So our people are much safer and we have to, we inform our
customers if something like that has happened when they fled
their homes, they really don't even know what's happened.
And you know we call them up, give them the bad news, but also
tell them that we're there to take care of them and start the
the claim process. And for over 90% of our claims
we actually handle them under 30 days, which is really an
industry benchmark. So a I has.
Absolutely being critical and core to to what we do and and
you know we're very focused on it and now with with generative
AI, I mean we've been working on large language models for the
past few years and we've leveraged those in continuing to
improve how submissions come in. So as submissions, you know.
Thousands of them come in. How do you triage those?
How do you leverage these models to actually filter them and make
sure that we're sending the the best ones to our underwriters
and and really reducing that time from when the quote come
from when the submission comes into when we provide the quote
from you know from days to to hours.
And so these are just some of the areas that we're focused on
in terms of leveraging artificial intelligence.
You mentioned AI Accelerator Lab.
Can you tell us just just briefly about that?
And I'm really interested how that's organized.
Sure. How do you organize it and how
does it fit into the broader whole?
But just just briefly. This is one of our teams that
we've established as a center of expertise that goes horizontally
so to speak. And really their their mission
is to first of all make sure that we always have our.
You know, hands on the pulse of what's going on in the industry
as it relates to a I in this case.
And then they're also there to not only you know, make sure
that they themselves have the best skills, but that they are
actually enabling the rest of the organization to to do so as
well. So through establishing you know
becoming being the subject matter experts for the content
that we develop, for our learnings that we have in the
area of a I and. Conducting, you know, conducting
learning classes for that or actually taking in some of some
of our engineers from other areas so that they can become
experts as part of, you know, learning and doing and then
putting them back out in the organization.
So it's really a way for us to advance our R&D, but then also
make sure that we're extending that to other people in the
organization because. Again at the end of the day, I
think every single one of our technologists need to know AI
the same way that you know we say everybody needs to know the
cloud and how how to execute in that environment.
So and and this is part of our data and analytics organization
which is another horizontal and so.
In my organization, I've got like the business unit CI O's
that I think of as verticals who are very aligned to the business
unit, understanding what you know, what the business needs
are, what the business problems are and then we've got a set of
horizontal capabilities that are really foundational and enablers
for the the entire organization. We have a motto at Travelers
which is about, you know, common as possible and unique as
necessary so that we can leverage our scale and really
take advantage of. Building things once and then
making sure others can take advantage of that and and in
order to do that really those those horizontal kind of
platform teams are focused on some of those capabilities.
I mean the obvious one of course is infrastructure which every
company has as a horizontal, but then above that it's our
architecture organization, our digital organization, our
enterprise data and analytics organization.
Again, the these are ones that. Are providing capabilities
horizontally across the board and then building platforms that
are common that can be then leveraged as services throughout
the organization. One of the things that I wanna
talk on as you're mentioning the infrastructure is you don't just
have one iOS app. I think you have several.
And one of them that I think I noticed when I was just doing a
bit of research was the Intelli Drive.
So travelers Intelli Drive. It's very rare someone gets to
sit down like the CTO or someone at this level and ask them what
are you doing with that data, right.
Like cuz I I I mean I my insurance company wants me to
download the same app and they you know I I'm a little
skeptical and I'm not the only person but I'm curious like as a
customer and and from the customer end like why should I
trust you with all of that data. We tell our customers what we do
with the data. We we want that data just
because we'll use it as kind of a a score of like how you drive,
right. And if you're a great driver we
actually give you a break on your price and if you're you
know not such a great driver then your price goes up.
So it's not like we we're very transparent about this because
again we absolutely believe in in you know trust being
important and I would say insurance companies inherently
are not trusted by a people do not trust insurance companies.
But and we believe we are the kind of insurance company that
has proven that you know through what whether it's through what
happens when you have a claim or or you know the fact that we
have never abused the data that we've had for 160 plus years.
What's the baseline on a good driver?
Because a good driver in Texas is a lot different than a good
driver in New Jersey, right? Like, right.
Well, I mean I would say it's probably everything from you
know staying within the speed limit to like how many times you
have brought spot a stop or to you know ultimately like how
many accidents you have which clearly you don't need
telematics for that. But it's it's really that it's
just you know and then distracted driving of course,
which is you know one of the biggest causes of of deaths in
this country is something we're very focused on.
And and you know that's that's another thing that we, you know,
we just want to make sure that people are focused on driving
when when they're doing so. So we've got an interesting
question from the audience from Elizabeth Shaw and she's asking
you know how are the stresses on the insurance business model as
it stands, impact like the digital transformation and
customer experience solutions that you're providing.
I would say lucky enough that you know working for a company
where financially we've been extremely successful knock on
wood over the you know past past many years and you know we're
very focused on shareholder value and and return on on
equity and and you know have had like double digit return on
equity is one of the elements of financials that we absolutely
drive towards and have been doing so and if you look at our
stock price you can you know I think it shows.
Having said that, of course we're very aware of what's going
on. But the wonderful thing is that
our leaders also realize that a lot of what's going on only
makes our transformation all that more important.
And you know everything we do of course has to be very, very
focused and and related and connected to the business
outcomes that our business leaders want.
So we have yet to cut, you know cut our budget so to speak.
I mean you know we, we annually spend 1 1/2 billion on
technology and and you know again over half of that is
really investments in new capabilities.
We've driven down the cost of like our run to enable the
investment. So as as of now, you know, we've
been very responsible in, you know how and what we spent and
that there's there's business cases behind it, but at the same
time have not yet asked being asked to kind of stop any of
what we're doing. What we try to do is be a, you
know, prioritize as much as possible because frankly some of
it is when there's so much change, you know, making sure we
can actually perform and and deliver and and then more
importantly absorb all of the change that that we're creating.
That's a great question. Here's another really
interesting one from Arsalan Khan on Twitter.
Arsalan always listens, and I should call him the great
questioner because he always comes up with these really
thoughtful questions and he says this.
IT alone cannot change culture. Should I T intervene if they see
something that is happening that?
Could cause the culture to be negatively affected.
I always tell our team we are the technology organization we
are it and in in our case we are IT and operations but we're also
travelers and we're probably travelers 1st.
And so not everything we do is just you know to make sure that
our piece of the pie is working but but that you know what we're
doing it's the right thing for the company as a whole.
So I would say every single one of us actually, if something's
happening that isn't good for the culture, we should feel
accountable and do feel accountable and responsible to
make sure that we're doing the right thing, whether it's, you
know, letting our manager know or or or reaching out to our HR
organization or actually you know, our CEO Alan Schnitzer
again, he has he everybody has his e-mail.
He puts it up every time, not that he needs to but he puts it
up in every town hall that he has once 1/4.
And he says call me e-mail me and and people do.
People do. So you know and sometimes it's a
valid and sometimes it's not but it's again you know a culture
that allows for that and and so yeah I mean as you know as
whether you're ITHR you know sales or or anything I think
everybody feels that they could do that and you're and you're
right. IT alone absolutely cannot.
And you know we've got a very strong cultural foundation that
that goes across our enterprise as a whole.
So it's only together that we can kind of change the culture
as you're pointing out. What kind of practical advice
can you offer to technology leaders around this culture
issue? You mentioned the importance of
IT folks to understand that yes, they're IT, but more
importantly, they're part of this larger organization.
Frankly, for many IT folks that's a really hard lesson to
get across. Yeah, because we've been in the
background for so long, right. And or you know we've been
focused on, on that back office so to speak.
And in today's world, you know, I mean you guys started the
conversation with customer experience, customer delight
like the work we do impacts that directly.
So I think really making sure that everybody knows why they do
what they do every day. You know, if they're working on
on a project, you know, what's the problem that they're
solving? Who's the customer, who's the
stakeholder and being confident like knowing that they're there
and they're as they're there as equals.
And you know, not not being afraid and thinking well we're
IT, we shouldn't. You know, it's not our job to do
that. And and really I I, I always say
you're a business person 1st and then you've got your skill sets.
You know, the same way a finance person is a finance person, but
you know they're a business person and they've got their
finance skills or someone's got their underwriting skills and so
on and so forth. So it is a change.
It is absolutely a change. But you know, I'd say the
ability to make sure that you're communicating openly that you're
partnering with other, you know other parts of your business
that you're there to help and that you're actively
participating in solving problems.
I think those are the behaviors that over time and we'll we'll
first of all make sure that everybody else agrees with that
perspective and that you act that way.
And and you know continue to make sure that people are aware
of your knowledge of the business and make sure you you
do know you understand your business and you probably are at
the best place in any company to understand many parts of your
business. You know you can.
You can understand everything and like in so many functions,
because every single function has a lot of technology involved
in it these days. I want to bridge off of that,
right. So follow me here.
So in insurance, you know every. I mean underwriting is like it's
your bread and butter, right. That's when you ask yourself,
you know you're going to look at the risk, you're going to
determine if you as travelers, the insurance company will
insure it and then if yes you guys will give a price and and I
said person pays the premium or the policy.
We're in an era where generative a I has turned everyone to this
thing called automation. And a lot of leaders now have on
their death, you know, how can we automate this process or how
can we make, you know, technology support what we're
doing with less people in 20-30. Do you think underwriting exists
as we know it? Because right now that process
doesn't involve quite a few people and there's there's
there's people involved in it. I'll say nothing will exist as
we know it like that underwriting claim even it you
know coding right, like engineering.
So that I'm comfortable saying now what will it look like?
I have no clue like I'll I'll just tell you like what will it
look like, will there be more automation there?
Absolutely. I, I, you know, I think that
again first of all like you know you can have very positive or
very negative views about the whole AI thing.
I think first and foremost it's you know, I truly hope that the
right regulations get put in place.
You know with the help of our governments, I hope that
companies establish you know ethical frameworks through which
they will operate, which we absolutely have done and we call
it our responsible AI framework. And it's very, very connected by
the way to the the way we've done models and modeling and
pricing ensuring that there's you know, no bias or at least as
little as as possible. And so I, you know we're going
to continue these things. Now the way we're approaching AI
and how generative AI can help is really how can it help us get
our underwriters, our claim people to focus on the more
valuable things and and you know, let automation do a lot of
the kind of grunts work for them.
So for example, one of the solutions that we've just
created a pilot for is for our claim professionals.
They have a lot of knowledge that has been curated over time
but it's in you know dozens if not hundreds of documents and
we've created our own kind of GPT capabilities.
We call it claim GPT and and so and it's it's operating pretty
effectively where you you know the claim professional can ask
it questions and our Chief claim Officer was saying that it's
amazing like the level of accuracy it's coming back with.
So I think you know we again we're thinking of it as how it's
an assistant. Now I have no doubt that people
of course are worrying about well will my job become
redundant, but and I'd say probably all of our jobs that
are at some sort of risk, and the white collar jobs probably
more than any other. So if you're a programmer.
If you're a developer. Unclaimed GPT.
Like you've built this. It's already existing.
How are you dealing with drift? The whole concept of like it's
accurate and then the model starts to enlarge in and
elongate and then it starts to drift and it misrepresents the
data. When you build models and you
train them like machine learning models and you train them.
I mean drift is absolutely like, you know, part of it as many
other things like there's a whole slew of things as part of
our machine learning operations which we've got a group very
focused on that to make sure that you know, we're training as
you know, frequently as possible.
Now with the cloud, that's much more feasible than it used to
be. And again, our data scientists
have been building models for a long time.
So there are a lot of practices that we've put in place very
focused on this. How do you ensure that the
models that you're using don't hallucinate, don't bring in data
from the Internet and essentially make stuff up.
We are doing a huge amount of tests and learn in the in the
field of of generative A I and you know we're very aware I mean
actually like the generative side of it is actually based on
the fact that it can hallucinate, right.
Like it can create content that wasn't there yet.
Now many times that content can be accurate but many times that
content can be just you know I guess hallucinations that are
completely false. So I think there are definitely
elements that and and you know things that can be changed in
the model to increase or decrease the amount of
hallucination and it's like finding the right, I I guess the
right settings for that. And then what we're doing of
course is you know we are going to leverage our own data to to
train, we're not letting the models like just go out to the
Internet and and find anything. So it's like as we leverage
whether it's the existing large models like the open A I's or
Amazon's bedrock or or others or open source Llms that you know,
we're training them again on on our own data.
And that's the critical part. And the beauty of it is it's got
the capabilities that the LLM had, but but it's actually
leveraging our data that we trust.
We have a project that's going on right now with Harvard
Business School where they're analyzing the 800 episodes of
CXO talk transcripts to look for trends over time, things like
that. And we wanted to put it into a
model. And so we did this.
And the first thing is we started asking the questions and
it started giving us these amazing quotes from CIO's, from
all these different incredible people.
The only thing is, as we started going back to look at it, the
folks never said these things. I think the technology leaders,
at least those I, I talked to frequently, we're very like this
is one of the first times that we're just so high on on this
technology and and is there a hype around it.
I'm sure there's some level of hype, but at the same time now
you've got consumers involved in in the interaction.
It is like one of the first times where consumers are
interacting with this technology.
So it's not going to just go away, let's put it this way.
This is different from like the Metaverse and all those other
things, which by the way I think they have promised and they will
be relevant to whatever industries they are and maybe to
all at some point. Same for blockchain.
But, but this one, we just think this is extremely relevant that
I'd say AI as a whole by the way, you know there's AI and
then now with generative AI kind of like at another level.
When I think of AI and where it's at today.
It's interesting to hear that everyone's dealing with the same
problems. It doesn't matter if you're a
one person team or you know a several hundred person team and
you're working with these models, You're dealing with the
same consequences. But in some cases they're not.
They're not much different than the real world.
The AI now has its own perception or?
Experience that it thinks happen.
And we're like saying, no, that's wrong, but it's not much
different than if like you know someone on this show will hear
something that I said entirely differently than I intended it
or that it was perceived. And just because of that, that's
their perception. It's not that they're wrong,
it's just that's their that's their that's that's how they
view things. And that's it's a very like, it
gets very hypothetical and theoretical and I think that's
why this a I thing makes everyone very queavy.
Let me ask a question from LinkedIn very quickly and this
is from Mike Prest who is a Chief Information Officer at a
private equity investment group. And I'm going to ask you to
answer this really quickly because we're simply going to
run out of time as you build out customer facing applications.
What are your thoughts on the challenges in developing AI
driven? Virtual agents as well as the
potential opportunities to drive innovation and growth.
So the challenges and opportunities of AI virtual
agents and and really quickly please AI virtual agents have
you know we've there been their attempts have been made.
I think kind of like the accuracy of them has not
necessarily always been perfect, but then there are companies who
are leveraging them. Of course.
I think that with generative AI that's going to become really
that's one of the areas that's very promising and that it's
going to be an opportunity for you know more kind of AI driven
virtual agents to be leveraged and to make it to make it better
for the customer. Because you know the customer,
if it's good, the customer doesn't even realize that it's
virtual. I want to ask a couple questions
regarding just your personal story that you shared with us
earlier. One of those is you grew up in
Iran and you. End up through a series of
journeys at this role at one of the largest organizations in the
world. One of the questions I have just
just delineating off that is you know what were the skill sets
that helped you just navigate a world where there's not that
many people of color and there's not that many women especially
in the in the market. I think at the end of the day it
comes down to the basics. I say regardless of what your
role is, communication is like at the core of it.
Like you know the ability to express tell a story to inspire
to you know to to both written and verbal and everything.
So I say communication, communication, communication.
And then I say you know, relationships, the ability to to
work with people to have them like you.
You know, if you're trying, if you're leading A-Team, they'll
do a lot more for you if they like you than if they don't.
And then you know, I'd say third is I I think we're always like
many people are, are very hesitant to take risks.
So as I look back to my journey, I would say look when I left
Iran at the age of 19 and I'd, I'd actually got in into medical
school which was always my dream to become a doctor.
Well, I clearly did not become one, but I knew what I wanted
ultimately in terms of like having far more freedom as a
woman than than where I was. And it was a risk.
Like I could have come to the US and you know, not being
successful academically or not have been able to like I don't
know, I guess support myself and so on and so but being resilient
and, you know, taking the risk and the worst case scenario
would be I would have gone back, you know what I mean?
I guess that would have not been a good scenario, but that's how
I think of it. How did you go about building
and developing your executive presence?
I think it happened really through work and practice.
Again, I think the best way to learn is really through doing
and without doing and without failing a few times.
Really. It's like really hard to become
very successful. And so I remember when I was
working like before business schools, I was in my early 20s
and was working at Computer Vision at the time.
And there was going to be a presentation and I and I went to
my boss and I said hey, can I, can I do this now?
You know, people supposedly like, you know, are are afraid
of speaking publicly as they are of dying.
So that's like the second fear that you have dying and then
speaking publicly. So, so it's like putting
yourself out there, you know, working hard, practicing like
you know, practicing because of course but but then doing it and
then doing it enough times where you start to get comfortable and
and you know, be be confident. What advice do you have for
other women who are interested in becoming obviously more
senior in their careers and facing so many challenges of
being a woman in a male dominated career profession?
Be confident, don't be afraid of taking risks.
I I think women might even take that even one step farther where
like a lot of times they think 3-4 years out and say, Oh well,
I'm going to have babies in like 3 years.
So I'm not going to take on this job and it's like okay, Well,
why don't you wait until that happens and then worry about it
Or you know, things like that. Like I, you know, I tell them,
you know, just just again, don't be afraid.
The worst that can happen is it's not going to work out.
You're going to learn something from it and.
I'd say go for it. You know, if you want something,
go for it. No one else is really going to
take care of you. You have to think of yourself,
but then also build relationships and make sure you
have allies which can who can play a huge role in in your
career. And as I look back, I mean I
there have been so many people that were instrumental in
helping me get to where I am today.
You know, when is your book coming out?
You've got such an incredible story and there's so many things
that everyone can learn from you.
Like when is when is that announcement happening?
Thank you too. Well, now you're giving me an
idea. Nothing in the plans yet, but I
really appreciate that. Can we get one more question
squeezed in here very fast from Twitter, Arsalan Khan comes
back. He says something.
This is his assertion. I don't know if I totally agree
with this, but you can decide, he says.
Shareholders want profit, customers want trust.
How do you strike the balance between profit and?
Trust. And I understand what he's
saying. I don't think it's quite that
simple. A dichotomy.
And what do you, what do you think?
Yeah. And I don't think they go
against each other frankly, because what we say is if if
we're not a profitable company, we're not going to be viable to
to deliver the services that we deliver.
But if we do it ethically, if we do it with with trust that we
can create that trust. So we think we can do both and
they absolutely don't go against each other.
Moshkan, thank you so much for being here today with us.
Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me and both
of you, I mean, and it's been a pleasure, Q and Michael talking
to you. So really appreciate it.
And Q Harrison, Terry, it is great to see you.
It's been a very interesting conversation today.
Everybody thank you for watching, especially those folks
who ask such great questions. You're an amazing audience.
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