Chauvon Jones Owens

I actually attribute my success to a lot of closed doors, like feeling like spaces that I've wanted to be in as a kid, I just didn't have access to. And then going into education, sometimes people think teachers are like, oh, you're just a teacher. So I would say actually lack of access has really exposed me and made me hungry for more, and then also made me excited to leave the door open and make it wider for people to come after me. Those closed doors and that lack of access didn't stop me - they fueled me to push harder and to make sure that I'm creating opportunities for others who might face similar barriers.

I've struggled with imposter syndrome a lot, so all the advice from my mentors has been around this: when you walk into the room, know that you belong there. There's a reason why you're there. It's not a mistake. Just walk into a room on purpose. Every room you enter, even if you've never had any experience, even if you've never done anything that the people in there are doing, just walk in knowing that you belong and you add value to the room. That advice has helped me overcome those feelings of not belonging and has given me the confidence to show up fully in every space I enter.

I would say keep learning. Being a lifelong learner is the most critical thing, because this field is always changing. With AI coming in, the playing field is becoming level, and AI can help you do a lot of the work that we do, so being innovative and always having a heart to learn more - learn more not only about your tool, but also about your customer - is going to be priority. You can be someone new, but you can bring great ideas. Your lack of experience is actually a blessing, because you're not constrained by how things have always been done. You bring a breath of fresh eyes on things that people have always seen be a certain way. So it's actually a blessing when you enter this field and you have fresh eyes. Open them wide, and don't be afraid to share things that are new. They may have never been done, but the world could be waiting on you.

I would say the biggest challenges are learning how AI is going to help and where it's going to create additional processes that are not necessary. So learning how to use it in a human-centered way - keeping the human in the AI processes, but again, not being slow to it. The biggest challenges are learning how to best use AI to keep humans at the center. Also, I just think the market is saturated. There's a lot of tools, so there's going to be a lot of tools that are great, so it's going to come down to the support. How supportive are you? Do you have that servant mindset? Do you really care about your customers? That commitment is going to go far, because when there's 5 tools people can choose from, and honestly all of them are great, and if they're not great, they're just going to do a software update and it's going to become great. So companies are going to be leaning more to just, okay, the tool is nice, but also how does the support look? Keeping that servant mindset and always being customer-focused is going to be what sets companies apart.

Empathy is number one. I don't think you can truly support a customer or person or a student at all until you understand where they're coming from, their struggles, the things that matter to them. So empathy is number one. And then two, I would just say a servant mindset. I think if you do everything in a position to serve, you're always going to grow. Even if your bottom line is revenue, if you do it in a service-led way, people will find money to give you if they know you care about them. I also really appreciate authenticity. I love spaces where I thrive the most, both personally and professionally - spaces where people can show up as their authentic selves and they invite transparency. That even means sometimes being critical. If something doesn't work, having a comfortable space to say, hey, this is not working, let's find solutions together for it. And community is very important to me. I'm oftentimes the person on my team that does come up with ideas and ways we can better build community beyond the work, because when you have community, it also spreads into how you support your customers as well when the team is tight. So I would say authenticity, transparency, and community.