Influential Woman · Software

Alessia Burst

Author & Publisher, Behave Books

North Little Rock, AR

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Culinary Arts Degree Degree Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration with minor in Information Technology Degree Southern New Hampshire University (expected completion in a few months)

Her Story

About Alessia

I started my career in sales before pursuing a passion project in culinary arts. When that path proved unsustainable long-term, I taught myself IT skills by building computer labs at home. I created my own company where I would sell people equipment and get their old equipment in return, which I would wipe clean and use for my own lab environments. This self-taught approach allowed me to not only explain what I knew but show what I knew in interviews. I quickly moved up into a higher technical position at Wells Fargo Bank, then transitioned to the oil and gas industry in the oil fields of North Dakota, where I sharpened my leadership skills. In 2019, I got sober after battling alcoholism, and in the process lost my job in the oil field, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I landed in my current role where I've been for 6 years, developing global learning initiatives, creating practical teaching and live lab environments, and reinventing testing processes to move from book knowledge assessments to mock call testing that evaluates how people troubleshoot. My programs have improved agent knowledge retention, reduced attrition, and increased client satisfaction and retention. I work with teams across multiple countries, helping transform client services representatives into technical professionals, and I'm heavily involved in AI integration and Diversity, Equity, Belonging, and Inclusion committees.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Alessia

01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

I had this CFO who told me something that didn't make sense at the time, but made sense later. He said, and I quote, 'you can't eat an elephant all in one bite.' That simple quote has lived on with me to this day. On the surface, you're like, what the heck are you talking about? But really, when you dig deep, you can't eat anything in one bite. Everything needs to be taken in bite-sized chunks. So what I try to do with my coworkers and my other leadership, they're always like, okay, Alessia, you can't eat an elephant all in one bite. I have other people saying it too. But it's how I always explain, like, okay guys, let's slow down, and let's reground ourselves, because right now, we're trying to eat the whole elephant, when really, we just need to pick it apart. Not that we should be eating elephants, that's not what I'm saying, but you get the point.

02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

AI adoption is a big challenge, and it's an opportunity. I think that we have the opportunity to responsibly adopt something. AI is too big that people are going to adopt it no matter what, but understanding how that impacts people is critical. And by people, it could be a client, it could be an employee, it could be anybody, another department that relies on you. Understanding the responsible adoption of that, and how it affects people, and making sure that we don't do something that's going to adversely affect employment status of people is really what is most important to me. I know we have a lot of people that do a very good job, we have a lot of good agents, no matter what country we have, we have people that you can't replace them with AI. As long as we're responsible about it, I can buy into it. I think it presents us both an issue and an opportunity, because it creates this issue of what do we do, but it also creates an opportunity of how can we do it so good that we set that example for others.

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