Her Story
About Ari
Arianna Solarte brings a diverse professional background to her work in technology and artificial intelligence. After earning a bachelor's degree in animal science, she transitioned into tech three years ago through self-directed learning via boot camps and online courses. Her career includes building customer experience teams at Ollie Pets, developing new initiatives at OLLI Health, and later joining Cyclotron, a major Microsoft partner, where she created an AI strategy role focused on bridging business and technical stakeholders. She went on to become the first AI strategist at Paramount before pursuing opportunities to build similar functions as a director at other organizations. Arianna holds a Google Gemini certification and is completing Anthropic coursework. She is a member of Tech Ladies and credits her success to the guidance of female mentors she has sought out at every stage of her career. She values open communication and transparency in her work and plans to launch a consulting firm with her wife focused on the human side of AI.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Ari
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think it's the people I've surrounded myself with. I have always found myself finding some sort of mentor, and it's always been in the female capacity too. There's always been a woman who whether they were on my level, or they were someone that I was reporting to, or even someone on another team, I'd always find myself reaching out to them, creating some form of a relationship, and then asking for their guidance. It's changed who I am, it's changed for the better how I've been able to look at where I am and where I'm going, and it's also made me reflect back on myself and how I can be that same person to open the door for people coming behind me.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Stay coachable, stay humble. I think one of my favorite things to say especially during interviews I do not have ego but I do have pride. So I don't have ego where I have no issues asking for help, I have no issues accepting that I've made a mistake and wanting to get support in figuring out how to be better but I do have pride in the work that I deliver. I've been an athlete my whole life so I think that's also ingrained in me is I'm always going to know where I failed before someone else is going to have the opportunity to tell me - but still tell me. Tell me where I can be better so I can do better the next time.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Do it! Don't be afraid. Just do it. Learn as much as you possibly can, talk to everybody, talk to anybody. You may not agree with what they have to say and then you'll learn kind of who your people are within this space within AI within tech but just don't stop trying to educate yourself. I think that's gonna be the key here is as long as you keep learning because there's so much to learn and you stay hungry for it that would absolutely be my advice to any young woman any older woman it doesn't matter what age you are just I think educate yourself and continue the conversation. Just keep the door open and keep talking to people because you never know what you're gonna learn or what new perspective you're gonna see.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The challenge for sure have it's tech so where I am right now there are a lot of people speaking on AI in the same kind of breath that I'm speaking on and I do feel you're still gonna run into the issue that I'm a female speaking on it rather than a man right? So there are some pieces of it where it's I have to check myself. In the AI space which is that subset of tech right now it's moving so fast nobody knows who to trust or how to trust themselves within it because it's all so new and seemingly unreliable but I think that's part of the beauty of it is that you get to carve out a lot of these niche things. I'm finding this beautiful space between the technical aspect of it I'm not an engineer and I'm not just a strategist for businesses but I'm the human side of AI.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Communication, transparency. I don't believe anybody enjoys being in the dark. So collaboration and that communication again whether it's whether you're an individual contributor whether you're managing a team or you're part of a team that is being managed I think being able to have that open communication is key and crucial because it's the foundation for everything else. If you don't have that you don't have the trust you don't have the visibility you don't have the camaraderie you don't have anything else that you build upon if you don't have that communication piece because then you're just in a vacuum or you're in a silo working alone.
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