Your playbook for making AI real, practical, and valuable.
Jie Tao, DSc, an associate professor of business analytics and the director of the AI and Technology Institute at Fairfield University’s Charles F. Dolan School of Business, provides listeners with a practical guide to mastering AI for real results.
Each episode delivers actionable tools, proven frameworks, and real-world case studies to help leaders and innovators leverage AI for business growth and career success. Explore topics from the Practical AI Playbook to insights from Fairfield Dolan's AI and Tech Institute and discover powerful AI applications shaping the future.
Episodes
Sep 21, 2026
Sep 21, 2026
47 min
Philip Maymin and Jie Tao are joined by Senia Maymin — fractional Chief People Officer in AI, founder of Silicon Valley Change Executive Coaching, and a Stanford PhD in organizational behavior — on what going AI native takes when your company already runs on decades of process.
Senia put her four-year-old in Italian day camp. Nobody taught the girl Italian; she was simply in it. That is the bar she sets for companies. At a conference of a hundred chief people officers, she met one who had cleared it: an AI chief of staff running her mornings. Push one button, drink your coffee, the day arrives triaged.
Getting there is where they stop agreeing. Jie wants to start in HR and finance, where a failed pilot lands soft. Senia says take it to the core business or don't bother. He cites MIT: over 80% of AI initiatives stall under purely top-down or bottom-up rollout. Neither concedes.
Then Jie admits the harder thing. "I have over 15 rules in my harness that guarantee by-the-book knowledge transfer, but my agents are still not there." Philip goes further: a company that advertised for a human CEO, a figurehead whose only job is persuading the AI. If the hand on the wheel isn't steering much anyway:
"I don't want to hold the steering wheel.”