Alexi Schwartzkopff

I would say that in sales, I've often heard that being thoughtful or honest is a weakness. I have to say it's been my superpower, that clients find me genuinely invested, emotionally invested in their success. And that's afforded me multi-million dollar wins, and referrals, and a black book of business that I've got really solid relationships with. Female leaders have inspired me to pursue different avenues. Per role I've taken, there's been a strong leader who's a female doing it that I could look up to, and that really helped me have the confidence to pursue more stretch roles, which has helped me accelerate my career at rocket fuel speed. I started working with Ruth Stannett, who was head of the Mars Corporation in strategy in the 80s and had started her own boutique agency in New York City. She's a multi-time author and powerhouse who guided me in my career. I worked under Nancy Ann Kadelicht at the Insights Association, who now has her own consultancy. I also worked with Helen Giddings, a VP of Operations who invited me to join Appen. Looking to other women in leadership positions has been key to my success.

When you find yourself questioning if you're in the right place, ask yourself, are you learning, or are you earning? And if the answer is yes to both, stay. And then if it's no to both, leave, and then if it's yes to one or the other, you know, weigh your options.

I would advise young women entering the industry to actively seek out female leaders as mentors and role models, and to use their example as a source of confidence when pursuing stretch roles that challenge you and ultimately accelerate your career growth.

I found that since getting into the AI space, they're in desperate need of guardrails, methodologies, and rules. I've spent a lot of my time transferring principles from the market research space to provide guidelines for clients like Google and OpenAI on best practices when it comes to handling people's data. Being a champion for business is great, and commercial viability is great, but you need to think about the people at the other side of this. I often test clients with the thought experiment: would you be comfortable if this data was being collected on yourself or your family? And if not, let's all pause and decide if this is the right thing to do. We're living in an era where unique individual capability has been accelerated, so one person can now get support as if they have a team. There's a lot of economic gain that individuals could find in this new space, specifically tackling societal issues that really need to be tackled. Maybe they're not the sexiest issues, but there are plenty of issues worth addressing, like women's safety. I have a concept that I want to bring to market in the next 5 years that focuses predominantly on that. I've heard from many individuals who have really big aspirations of positively impacting humanity and society with their business ideas, and I really want to help them accelerate that. All this narrative about AI is just clickbait and frightening people. It's still only about human and human interaction and humans helping humans.

I'm a competitive sailor and was a D1 athlete. I recently purchased a boat, and I compete with my dad and my partner against 130 boats in Cape Canaveral, so we see the SpaceX launch go up while we're in the middle of a heated race. It's very high adrenaline, but it's definitely my thing. I love it. I also began painting a couple of years ago, and my brand is called Vagabond Paints. Because I've traveled the world since a young age and sailed a lot of the world, I draw from a lot of that experience, and I paint animals and landscapes and all sorts of stuff. I'm quite into the art side of things. I've been blessed with an abundance of energy, and I'm desperately trying to find my way to ensure that it's being targeted in the right direction. It's not just for lucrative AI work gain, but in what way can I actually benefit the people? The way I've seen this AI industry go, it's still only about human and human interaction and humans helping humans. I'm a volunteer at the Jacksonville Humane Society, and I go look after the dogs there. I usually try to walk the older ones first, because there does seem to be an index towards the cutest ones going first. There are plenty of lovely dogs that are older and looking for homes, so I like to go there and give them some walks, get them out and about. I can even take them for a day out to the beach. I think that's better than the alternative.