B The Way Forward

What if the most important question in AI is not how intelligent we can make machines, but what we want that intelligence to do for us?

In this episode of B The Way Forward, Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with Francesca Rossi, IBM Fellow and IBM's Global Leader for Responsible AI and AI Governance at the T.J. Watson Research Center, for a conversation about AI ethics, AI governance, and the human decisions behind every system we build.

Francesca spent more than 20 years as a computer science professor advancing AI capability, before a year at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute changed the questions she was asking. She explains why AI ethics is really human ethics, why governance works like brakes and seat belts rather than a speed limit on innovation, and why the language fluency of large language models should never be confused with reasoning. She and Brenda dig into whose values get embedded in a model and who gets to fine tune them, what happens to democracy and the legal system when people can no longer tell what is true, and why the greatest threat to human agency may be the steady accumulation of small decisions we hand over without noticing.

This is a conversation that sits right at the center of this season's theme of presence, passion, and purpose, because the future of artificial intelligence is not something arriving on its own. It is something we are building, one choice at a time.

Connect with Francesca on LinkedIn

We Learned About:

• Human agency as a measure of progress
• Gaps in training data
• How AI ethics is Human ethics
• What AI is teaching us about ourselves

Chapters:

00:00 Just because we can build it, should we?

02:09 The bigger question behind 20 years of AI research

05:28 Leaving a tenured professorship for IBM

06:28 AI ethics is human ethics

10:45 Governance is the brakes, not the speed limit

12:19 What do we actually mean by intelligence?

15:13 Fluency is not reasoning

17:30 Why we anthropomorphize machines

21:36 What technologists miss about consequences

24:09 Business, government, research, and community in one room

29:15 Whose values get built into the model

32:44 The maieutic machine: AI that asks us questions

35:26 Serving humanity means expanding human agency

40:59 What gives Francesca hope

43:01 Deepfakes, jobs, and the risk of AI rejection

46:10 What AI is doing to how we learn

48:23 What working on AI taught her about humanity

#BTheWayForward #AnitaB #FrancescaRossi #AIEthics #ResponsibleAI #AIGovernance #IBM #ArtificialIntelligence #HumanAgency #TrustworthyAI #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #TechLeadership #WomenInTech #WomenInAI #FutureOfWork #AIandSociety #EthicalTech

In this episode, Brenda is joined by Prasanna Gopalakrishnan, former Global Chief Product & AI Officer at ADP and a veteran executive with over 25 years of experience leading digital transformation across tech, banking, and media.

While much of today's conversation around Artificial Intelligence focuses on what machines will replace, Prasanna shifts the narrative toward a far more empowering question: What can AI make possible for human beings?

Prasanna also shares where her optimism lands ten years out, from democratized superintelligence to breakthroughs in mental health and drug discovery, and what still keeps her up at night. If you're a leader, product builder, or HR decision maker trying to bring people along through AI change instead of running them over with it, this episode is for you.

Connect with Prasanna on LinkedIn

We Learned About

• Designing for People
• The Human Advantage
• Responsible AI & Trust
• Leading Through Transformation

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome back to Be the Way Forward

01:51 Meet Prasanna Gopalakrishnan

02:06 When technology actually works for people

05:08 Three questions to ask before you build anything

07:00 Just because AI can, should it?

08:49 What stays true about people across every industry

12:11 Better at transformation, or just moving faster?

15:03 Customers want a kill switch, and that's okay

16:23 What she listens for when she walks into a company

19:34 How do you measure people when AI does the work?

21:28 The wrong question: what will AI replace?

26:18 Superintelligence in everyone's hands

28:30 The divide forming inside organizations

31:34 Sprint thinking in the middle of a marathon

35:36 The what, the how, and what actually gets rewarded

37:19 Work, roles, and tasks are not the same thing

44:43 Giving people room to figure it out

46:42 The moment leadership became a philosophy

50:19 The moral compass she never gave up

53:01 Straight talk and why women hear it differently

55:41 Ten years from now

58:42 What keeps her up at night

1:00:38 What being the way forward means

#BTheWayForward #AnitaB #WomenInTech #AIEthics #FutureOfWork #Leadership #ArtificialIntelligence #ProductManagement #DigitalTransformation #InclusiveLeadership

Machines can now write, create, diagnose disease, generate art, and carry on a conversation. Which raises a question bigger than technology itself: if machines can increasingly do what humans do, what makes us uniquely human?

In this episode of B The Way Forward, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with Dr. Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist, serial entrepreneur, and one of the world's leading thinkers on artificial intelligence and human potential. She has built AI that improves healthcare, reduces bias in hiring, predicts mental health crises, and reunites orphaned refugees with their families. But the through line of her career isn't machines. It's people.

Brenda pushes on the hardest part: how any of this reaches policy, education, and the systems that keep flattening people into something simpler than they are. Dr. Ming's answer is characteristically unsentimental and characteristically hopeful: tension is the reality of a healthy world, all real problems are messy human problems, and the one thing you actually control is you.

Because meaningful innovation begins with internal alignment. Before we reshape industries or build remarkable technology, we decide what kind of people we want to become.

Connect with Vivienne on LinkedIn

We Learned About

1. Algorithmic bias is a mirror, and that's what makes it useful.

2. Credentials predict far less than we think

3. There is no such thing as a problem-solving skill.

4. The cyborg finding: our advantage is exploring the unknown.

5. Depth is engineerable, and so is a better AI.

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome Back: What Makes Us Uniquely Human?

01:47 Meet Dr. Vivienne Ming

03:02 Sci-Fi Nerd to Neuroscientist: Where the Philosophy Began

05:18 Real Smiles, Fake Smiles, and the Tip of the Tongue

07:43 Why Algorithmic Bias Tells Us About Ourselves

08:21 Facial Analysis for Hiring: Absolutely Not

08:52 Intelligence Isn't Fixed

09:35 Two Scientists, an EdTech Company, and 2008 Venture Capital

10:33 Ending High-Stakes Testing with AI

12:59 Foundational Skills, Not "Soft" Skills

14:58 People Can Change — And It's Measurable

17:23 Zero-Sum, Positive-Sum, and Peer Role Models

18:08 When Systems Treat the Most Complex Thing as Fixed

19:42 It's an Ecosystem Problem

20:11 Productization, Not Science, Is the Problem

22:38 Why Politicians Are So Vile Online

23:07 The Human Trust and the French Pluralism Project

24:05 You Aren't Your Shallowest Self

25:31 Allostasis: Beware Anyone Selling a Simple Rule

26:31 Finding the Happy Tension

28:58 There Is No Such Thing as a Problem-Solving Skill

30:33 Everyone's a Mashup — And Everyone's Bad at Something

32:34 When Scale Becomes a Flattening Word

33:41 Flattening Produces Divergence, Not Sameness

34:41 Three Levers: Technology, People, and Policy

37:03 From Thirty Parameters to Eight Billion

37:32 When the Worst AI Beats the Best Human

38:28 The World's Slowest Copy-Paste Function

39:26 Meet the Cyborgs

41:24 Our Advantage Is Exploring the Unknown

42:23 Why Don't We Take Courses on Curiosity?

43:21 Socrates: The AI That Refuses to Answer

43:52 Hybrid Intelligence — and Why the Students Hated It

44:12 Getting This Into Education Policy

46:22 Thirty Years of AI and a Thirteenth Company

46:46 Refugee Reunification, Autism, and Repurposed Tech

49:30 Building AI That Leaves You Better

50:56 Don't Wait Until You Have Wrinkles

51:27 The World Gets Better When Old Men Plant Trees

53:52 Diverse Teams, Flat Hierarchies, and Reading People You Disagree With

56:49 Tension Is at the Heart of Everything

57:46 The One Thing You Control Is You

58:48 Character and the Building of a Citizenry

01:00:12 Kuala Lumpur: The Question She Read Completely Wrong

01:02:40 What She Hopes She's Remembered For

01:02:50 Closing Reflections

#BTheWayForward #AnitaB #VivienneMing #RobotProof #HumanPotential #AIandEducation #ResponsibleAI #FutureOfWork

We ask AI questions. We trust its recommendations. We increasingly let it shape decisions about our work, our health, our money, and our futures. But there's a question we don't ask nearly often enough: who taught AI what it knows and who was missing from the room while it learned?

In this episode of B The Way Forward, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with Shubhi Rao, founder and CEO of Uplevyl, and a leader who spent decades at the highest levels of global business (Ford, PwC, Tesco, and Alphabet) where she became the first woman and first person of color to serve as treasurer. From that vantage point, she saw a problem that never appeared on anyone's balance sheet: It wasn't only that women were underrepresented in the rooms where technology gets built. It was that the data powering artificial intelligence didn't really understand women's lives at all.

If you build with AI, fund it, govern it, or simply rely on it, this conversation will change what you ask of it. Because behind every algorithm is a series of human choices, and the most important question isn't what AI can do. It's “Who is AI being built to serve?”

Connect with Shubhi on LinkedIn

We Learned About:

1. Data is only half the equation; the algorithm is the other half.

2. Foundational models are remarkable, and they're the wrong tool for specialized guidance.

3. The internet is a skewed teacher, so Uplevyl built its own corpus.

4. A woman is not a homogeneous group and that's precisely the design problem

5. This isn't about replacing human advocates, entrepreneurship is a three-person job.

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome Back: Who Taught AI What It Knows?

00:57 Meet Shubhi Rao: Ford, PwC, Tesco, and Alphabet

02:27 The Problem That Wasn't on Anyone's Balance Sheet

03:18 The Google Project Where the Data Wouldn't Come Clean

04:57 Why Who Builds AI Matters

05:28 Two Halves of the Equation: Data and the Algorithm

06:43 Why Workforce Representation Alone Isn't Enough

07:23 Foundational Models vs. Specialized Domain Models

09:28 The Missing Middle Layer

10:49 The Internet as AI's Largest Teacher

11:19 A Very Western Internet — and How to Rebuild It Cleanly

13:37 The Smithsonian, Women Artists, and Voices with No Webpage

14:20 From Blame to Responsibility: The Consequence of Defaults

15:16 What We Missed When ChatGPT Launched

16:18 Now Everyone Can Be a Builder

17:39 Grace Hopper and "We've Always Done It That Way"

18:08 Seeing the Problem — and Leaving Corporate to Solve It

19:01 A Problem Solver First, an Entrepreneur Second

21:01 What Uplevyl Actually Solves

22:26 Workplace Rights Across 23,000+ Jurisdictions

23:25 A Woman Is Not a Homogeneous Group

24:50 Widowhood, Advisors, and the Great Wealth Transfer

25:50 Trauma-Informed vs. Grief-Informed Algorithms

27:26 Why General Models Hallucinate on Lived Experience

28:40 Founding Uplevyl Before ChatGPT

29:28 Pattern Recognition as a Superpower

31:42 Why Build a First-Party Knowledge Base from Scratch

32:28 Uplevyl Studios and Hundreds of Women Experts

35:11 Craft and Care: Protecting the Algorithm

37:03 When People Questioned the Vision

41:11 Building Every Line — and Choosing Europe for Privacy

42:43 Entrepreneurship Is a Three-Person Job

45:07 Taking Your Fingers Out of the Cookie Jars

46:09 AI for Empowerment, Not Replacement

46:36 Financial Flows, Human Capital, and Unsolved Human Problems

49:21 Technology Should Reflect Our Priorities

50:21 What She Hopes We See in the Mirror in Five Years

51:48 Leadership in the Unknown Unknowns

54:17 Presence, Passion, and Purpose

55:04 The 10,000 Days Question

56:22 Closing Reflections

#BTheWayForward #AnitaB #ShubhiRao #Uplevyl #WomenInAI #AIBias #WomenInTech #ResponsibleAI

For years, we were told that algorithms were neutral. Just math. Just code. Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble asked a different question, and it changed the way the world thinks about technology.

In this episode of B The Way Forward, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with the scholar, author, and educator whose groundbreaking book Algorithms of Oppression helped spark a global conversation about algorithmic bias years before most of us had the language for it. Dr. Noble takes us back to the beginning: a working-poor childhood full of questions about how the world really works, fifteen years inside corporate telecom, a front-row seat to the dot-com boom and bust, and a PhD earned at forty-one; proof that the timeline you were handed is not the only timeline available to you.

She also gets honest about the cost. About Black women stepping back from leadership because they turn around and find no one behind them. About the online violence pushing women and girls out of public life. And about why, right now, retreat is a luxury none of us can afford.

Connect with Safiya on Instagram

We Learned About

• The search that exposed a system.
• Code is a language — and languages are subjective.
• Technology and humanity were separated by design.
• There are now two education systems, and AI is deepening the divide.
• Everyone has a lane, and everyone has leverage.

Chapters:

​​00:00 Welcome Back: Presence, Passion, and Purpose

01:28 Meet Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble

02:17 Curiosity, a Working-Poor Childhood, and a PhD at 41

04:23 Corporate Tech, the Dot-Com Bust, and a Skeptic's Eye

08:00 Why We Ever Believed Technology Was Neutral

09:53 From Chat Rooms to Search Engines

12:45 Gen Z Doesn't Trust Search Anymore

13:44 The Search That Started It All

16:33 Designing the Study: What the Data Revealed

19:22 Algorithms Are Not "Just Math"

20:53 The Bifurcation of Technology and the Humanities

22:20 What If Women Had Held the Power and the Resources?

24:35 Eugenics, Race Science, and the History of CS

26:25 Techno-Solutionism and the Defunding of the Humanities

28:15 Sabbatical, Stand-Up Comedy, and Staying Present

30:03 The Cognitive Cost of AI Dependence

33:22 When Being Device-Free Becomes a Luxury

34:49 Who Gets Chatbots and Who Gets Teachers

37:23 Data Centers, Water Bills, and Community Pushback

40:58 "We Are the Optimists"

42:19 Tell the Truth

44:17 An Ecosystem of Truth-Tellers

47:16 Find Your Lane: Where Everyday People Have Power

49:51 Pensions, Portfolios, and Pro-Social Technology

51:53 Trained vs. Educated

54:02 Advice for the Exhausted Changemaker

56:08 Building "Data in Society" at UCLA

57:26 Gen Z and Values-Aligned Work

58:59 Black Women, Leadership, and the Cost of Retreat

01:02:31 Closing Reflections

#BTheWayForward #AnitaB #SafiyaNoble #AlgorithmsOfOppression #AlgorithmicBias #WomenInTech #ResponsibleAI #TechEquity

What does it really mean to lead with purpose in a world that rewards speed over intention?

In this episode of B the Way Forward, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with Betsy Ziegler, CEO of 1871, one of the nation's premier startup incubators and innovation hubs in Chicago. From her early days at McKinsey and GE to leading innovation at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and now championing thousands of founders through 1871, Betsy has built a career defined not by a linear plan, but by a learner's mindset, radical authenticity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding what people believe is possible for themselves.

Brenda and Betsy dig into what it takes to lead through ambiguity, how to stay grounded in your identity when your title becomes your identity, and why the future will be shaped by whoever has the courage to grab the pen. This is a conversation about redefining leadership, reimagining success, and building something that lasts beyond yourself.

Connect with Betsy on Twitter (@betsyzeo) and LinkedIn

We Learned About

• Staying present as a leader while operating in environments that are constantly looking ahead
• Why non-linear career paths are the norm, not the exception, and why that's actually a competitive advantage
• The "40 by 40" list framework Betsy used to reorient her life around living, not just achieving
• How authentic leadership can cost you power in some rooms while building deep trust in others
• The danger of defining your self-worth through your job title

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction & Season Theme

1:44 Welcome to B the Way Forward – Meet Betsy Ziegler

3:11 Betsy's Response: Partnership Between 1871 and AnitaB.org

4:02 Leading in the Present While Focused on What's Next

8:26 Was Your Career Path Linear? Betsy's Honest Answer

13:10 The "40 by 40" List That Changed Everything

16:08 Letting Go of Certainty to Step Into Something New

19:42 Trusting Yourself Through Major Career Reinventions

21:53 The Danger of Giving Too Much of Yourself Away

25:07 How Betsy Separates Urgency From Importance

29:56 Authenticity in Leadership: Where It Costs You and Where It Pays

37:16 What Really Motivates Founders (It's Not the Metrics)

43:24 A Founder Story That Shifted Betsy's View on Impact

46:00 What People Misunderstand About Failure

50:20 Advice for Anyone Struggling to Believe in Themselves Right Now

54:05 AI, Abundance, and Who's Grabbing the Pen

1:00:05 Closing Thoughts and Defining Integrity

#BTheWayForward #WomenInLeadership #StartupEcosystem #Leadership #Innovation1871 #AuthenticLeadership #AIandInnovation

What does it actually take to lead AI transformation inside a global industrial enterprise, and do it with both technical rigor and radical humanity?

In this episode of B the Way Forward, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with Ambica Rajagopal, Group Chief Data and AI Officer at Michigan, where she leads enterprise-wide data strategy to optimize manufacturing, services, and industrial operations through advanced analytics and AI. Ambica has built her career transforming large-scale organizations across pharmaceuticals, energy, and manufacturing, and her through-line has never been the technology itself. It has always been the people.

In this conversation, Brenda and Ambica dig into what happens when the urgency of AI meets the human cost of change, why empathy is the most underrated technical skill, what a brutal performance review 15 years ago taught Ambica about the difference between expertise and leadership, and why she believes the most courageous thing a woman in tech can do right now is invest in her own resilience.

This is a conversation about clarity, transformation, and what it really means to make your path the evidence of the change you believe in.

Connect with Ambica on LinkedIn

We Learned About:

• Why empathy, not speed, is the real foundation of successful enterprise AI deployment
• The critical distinction between self-expression and authenticity, and why getting it wrong costs you influence in the room
• Ambica's leadership mantra "Clarity wins the day" and what it actually looks like to apply it inside high-stakes, fast-moving organizations
• How a 15-year-old performance review that said "your team doesn't like you much" became one of the most transformative moments of her career
• The difference between being a journey person and a goal person, and why knowing which one you are changes everything about how you lead

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction & Season Theme

1:00 Meet Ambica Rajagopal, Group Chief Data and AI Officer

2:30 Why Empathy Is the Only Way to Get AI Transformation Right

5:30 Empathy as Active Common Ground, Not Passive Sympathy

7:00 What Has Remained Constant Across Industries: Clarity and People

10:00 How Ambica Stays Grounded When Performance Metrics Are Always On

11:00 Meditation, Mental Space, and the "Room of One's Own" Framework

13:30 Has Leading with Balance Ever Cost You Anything?

15:00 The Shift from Showing Up as an Expert to Showing Up as a Leader

17:30 Journey Person vs. Goal Person: How Ambica Defines Her Own Motivation

19:30 When Personal Transformation Gets Tested the Most

20:30 The Performance Review That Changed Everything

23:00 Vulnerability in Leadership and Why It Takes More Courage Than Being Right

24:30 Authenticity vs. Self-Expression: A Framework Worth Knowing

27:00 Who Is Most at Risk of Burnout in the AI Era

30:00 Advice for Early-Career Women in Data Science Who Are Already Exhausted

32:00 Building Resilience and Finding Your Sources of Courage

33:30 What Integrity in Leadership Actually Looks Like

34:30 "Make Your Path the Evidence of the Change You Believe In"

36:00 Closing Thoughts: People Always Come Before the Technology

#BTheWayForward #WomenInAI #AITransformation #EmpathyInLeadership #WomenInTech #DataAndAI #TechLeadership #CourageToTransform

What does it look like to build a technology ecosystem from the ground up in a field most people can't yet name?

In this episode of B the Way Forward, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with Kate Waimey Timmerman, CEO of the Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE), the Midwest's most powerful quantum information science and engineering consortium uniting universities, national labs, government agencies, and private industry.

Kate brings a rare combination to her role: a decade-plus background in neuroscience, a systems-builder's mindset, and an unapologetic commitment to making quantum one of the most accessible and inclusive sectors in emerging tech. Brenda and Kate dig into what it takes to lead across a non-traditional multi-institution ecosystem, why the growth mindset doesn't expire at graduation, how the South Side of Chicago became an unlikely anchor for quantum innovation, and what accountability actually looks like when you're building something the country has never built before.

This is a conversation about awareness, access, and the courage to build a future that doesn't just replicate the models of the past.

Connect with Kate on LinkedIn

We Learned About:

• Why "awareness, awareness, awareness" is the foundational operating principle at CQE and in high-stakes scientific environments
• How Kate transitioned from neuroscience to leading one of the country's premier quantum ecosystems and why that path is the point
• What it really takes to lead across a multi-stakeholder ecosystem spanning universities, startups, national labs, and government
• Why quantum technologies are far more accessible than people assume, and what the Midwest Quantum Workforce Strategy is doing to prove it
• The Duality accelerator, the first quantum-focused startup accelerator in the United States, and how it was built for the globe, not just one institution

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction & Season Theme

1:00 Meet Kate Waimey Timmerman, CEO of Chicago Quantum Exchange

2:00 Staying Aware in Systems Optimized for Speed, Not Reflection

4:00 Leading Across a Multi-Institution Ecosystem

6:30 From Neuroscience to Quantum: What People Misunderstand

8:00 What People Outside the Field Need to Know About Quantum Now

11:00 Career Transitions and Identifying Your Transferable Skills

14:30 Risk, Growth Mindset, and Why Adulthood Is the Best Time to Develop It

17:30 Staying Grounded When You Lead at Scale

20:00 When the Science Is Ready but the System Is Not

22:00 Being First to Market: CQE and the Duality Accelerator

24:30 What Short-Term and Long-Term Success Looks Like for CQE

27:00 What Neuroscience Taught Kate About Leading Complex Systems

30:00 What Real Accountability Looks Like in an Emerging Tech Ecosystem

31:00 Why the South Side of Chicago Matters for Quantum's Future

32:30 Open Quantum Initiative and the Q Ready Program

35:00 How to Stay Aligned When Your Vision Is This Big

36:30 Closing Thoughts: Building Differently, Not Just Building Forward

#BTheWayForward #QuantumComputing #WomenInSTEM #ChicagoQuantumExchange #EmergingTech #InclusiveInnovation #TechLeadership

What does it take to reach the top of one of the largest tech organizations on the planet, and then walk away to fix the pipeline that got you there?

In this episode of B the Way Forward, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with Judith Spitz, former CIO of Verizon and founder of Breakthrough Tech, an initiative reshaping who gets access to power and influence in a tech-enabled world. Judith's path from applied research scientist to Fortune 10 C-suite leader to movement builder is not a story about climbing a ladder. It's a story about learning when the ladder stops serving you, and having the courage to go build a new one somewhere else.

Brenda and Judith dig into what authentic leadership actually costs, why imposter syndrome is a conversation worth retiring, what happens to AI when the wrong people are in the room, and why the moment we are living in right now may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to break a broken talent pipeline before it locks into place again. This is a conversation about humility, urgency, humanity, and the radical act of lifting others as you climb.

Connect with Judith on LinkedIn

We Learned About:

• How Judith built her leadership identity through applied research rather than corporate command-and-control, and why that unconventional start gave her the freedom to lead authentically from the beginning
• Jim Collins' definition of great leadership as "a paradoxical combination of personal humility and professional will" and why that framework reshapes how we think about authority
• Why Judith wants us to retire the imposter syndrome conversation and replace it with a more empowering reframe: you don't have to know everything, you just have to surround yourself with people who do
• The moment Judith looked around the C-suite and realized women weren't coming up behind her in 30 years, and why that observation became the foundation of Breakthrough Tech
• What "democratizing privileged access" actually means in practice, from Sprinternship micro-internship programs to AI-focused work-based learning cohorts

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction & Season Theme

1:00 Meet Judith Spitz, Former CIO of Verizon and Founder of Breakthrough Tech

2:30 What Pressure at the C-Suite Level of a Fortune 10 Company Actually Looks Like

4:00 Relationships as Rocket Boosters: How Judith Survived the Peak

5:30 The "March": Suits, Pumps, and How Women Were Taught to Perform Leadership

7:30 Judith's Unconventional Path: Why Coming Up Through Research Changed Everything

10:00 Authenticity as the Non-Negotiable Foundation of Leadership

13:00 Jim Collins, Personal Humility, and the Paradox of Great Leadership

15:30 Why Judith Wants to Retire the Imposter Syndrome Conversation

18:00 Leaving Verizon: How Do You Know When It's Time to Go?

21:00 Fall in Love With the Problem, Not the Solution

23:00 The Origin Story of Breakthrough Tech

26:00 Women in CS Peaked in 1986: The Data That Would Not Let Judith Rest

27:30 Democratizing Privileged Access: What It Means and Why It Matters

35:00 How to Hear the Voice That Tells You It's Time to Do Something Different

38:00 What Happens When You Give Overlooked Talent a Foot in the Door

41:00 How Judith Stays Motivated on the Hardest Days

43:00 Was Your Drive Rooted in Achievement? Judith's Honest Answer

47:30 Who Is in the Room When AI Decisions Are Made, and Who Is Not

53:00 The AI Skills Gap: What Hiring Managers Say vs. What Technical VPs Need

58:00 The Medical Residency Model and the Once-in-a-Generation Pipeline Opportunity

1:01:00 Defining Leadership by Integrity, Not Title

1:02:00 Closing Thoughts: You Don't Have to Lose Yourself to Lead Change

#BTheWayForward #WomenInTech #BreakthroughTech #AIWorkforce #TechEquity #LiftAsYouClimb #InclusiveAI #WomenInLeadership

What happens when one of the country's sharpest mathematical minds decides that being brilliant isn't enough, that the real work is holding power accountable?

In this episode of B the Way Forward, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with Cathy O'Neil, mathematician, data scientist, founder of the algorithmic auditing firm ORCAA, and author of the landmark book Weapons of Math Destruction, which exposed how opaque algorithms amplify inequality across hiring, credit, criminal justice, and beyond.

Cathy's path has been anything but linear: from PhD mathematician to Wall Street quant to Occupy Wall Street activist to public critic of the very systems she once helped build. She has spent the decade since her book's publication doing the unglamorous, legally constrained, financially risky work of algorithmic auditing, turning down lucrative clients whose ethics didn't pass the "can I tell my kids about this?" test, and founding a new nonprofit, Ocean, focused on AI child safety.

Brenda and Cathy unpack what it actually costs to follow your conscience in tech, why urgency is a deliberate ethical bypass strategy, why AI is not a math problem, and why the window for federal AI regulation is coming faster than most people think. This is a conversation about accountability, clarity, and what it really means to channel something bigger than yourself.

Connect with Cathy on http://mathbabe.org/contact

We Learned About:

• Why "big data" and "AI" are marketing terms engineered to evoke trust rather than describe something objective, and why that matters for how we regulate them
• What it felt like from the inside to work as a Wall Street quant building models that front-ran California teachers' pension funds, and why Cathy's body gave out before her brain caught up
• How Occupy Wall Street taught a pure mathematician that race, sex, and class were not distractions from the financial crisis but the actual story
• Why the lack of accountability, not the technology itself, is the core problem with algorithmic systems deciding who gets a job, a loan, or a prison sentence
• How urgency is used as a deliberate strategy by the tech industry to bypass ethical reflection, and Cathy's triage framework for responding to it anyway

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction & Season Theme

1:00 Meet Cathy O'Neil, Author of Weapons of Math Destruction

2:00 What "Big Data" and "AI" Actually Mean: Marketing, Hype, and Misplaced Trust

4:00 The Lack of Accountability That Drove Cathy to Write Her Book

5:30 Starting ORCAA: Trying to Make Algorithms Comply With Anti-Discrimination Law

7:00 From Naive Quant to Activist: The Financial Crisis That Changed Everything

8:30 What Occupy Wall Street Taught a Mathematician About Race, Class, and Power

11:00 When Cathy's Body Knew Before Her Brain Did: Leaving Finance

13:00 Front-Running Teachers' Pensions and the Moment It Became Real

15:00 Practices and Boundaries That Keep Cathy Grounded Now

16:00 The "Can I Tell My Kids About This?" Litmus Test

17:30 Why Cathy Measures Herself in Deeds, Not Salary

19:00 Is Urgency a Strategy? How the Tech Industry Bypasses Ethics

20:00 The Triage Framework: Focus on the Worst Thing Happening Right Now

20:30 Why Cathy Founded the Nonprofit Ocean and the Coalition for AI Child Safety

21:00 Turning Down TikTok and the Qatar Government: What Integrity Actually Costs

23:30 What Speaking Out Has Cost Cathy Professionally and What It Has Given Her

25:00 The Patterns in Algorithmic Harm That Never Change Across Industries

27:00 When Technical Brilliance Alone Isn't Enough: The Occupy Wall Street Turning Point

28:30 "It's Not a Math Problem": Why Cathy Now Calls Herself a Mathematical Sociologist

30:00 How Math Facilitates the Hard Human Conversations That Actually Need to Happen

32:00 Tech Oligarchs, AI as God, and Why That Vision Won't Play Out

33:30 The Humanities Deficit in Technical Education and Why It Matters

35:30 How External Validation and Influence Show Up on Cathy's Internal Compass

37:00 Why Cathy Did the TED Talk Anyway and Who She Did It For

39:00 What to Do When Passion Meets the Long, Hard Reality of Actually Doing the Work

40:00 The First Three Years With No Clients: Patience, Hustle, and Rightsizing Ambition

41:00 Why Cathy Knits Blankets and What Completion Teaches You About Progress

42:30 Advice for Early-Career Data Scientists Who Want to Change the System

44:00 Algorithmic Auditing, Data Journalism, and the Legal Tech Pipeline Coming Fast

46:00 Defining Leadership by Integrity, Not Influence

49:00 The Way Forward: Keep Moving, Stay Curious, Make Room for Despair, Then Find Your Hope

52:00 Closing Thoughts: Brilliance Without Wisdom Is Dangerous

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