Gabriele Vaisnoraite

I think it's partially how I grew up, and the way that I had to get comfortable with uncomfortable for a long time, whether it was moving from Lithuania at a very young age to Belgium, and I didn't speak much English, and I had to do all my classes in English, and so that was a huge learning curve. And then just the way I grew up, I was kind of in different places, and with different people, in different domains, and I think for many people, that feels scary, but for me it became something that's my strength, and so I'm just not really scared of change. I think change is good, and I think every time I change something, because I'm unhappy with it, or I expect more of myself, I think I'm quite self-critical, and I have that drive for myself, but also that I can always do better, or learn new things. I always find that a couple of months of that is challenging when you change, whether it's your job or the city, or you have to develop net new relationships in the new place that you are. And I think that that probably has made my skin thicker. I'm just curious, I think, about the world and different disciplines. I don't like to stay in one thing for too long, and I think so far, that's kind of paid off for me.

My advice to young women entering this industry is to cut the jargon and explain complex topics simply, use AI responsibly with human-in-the-loop checks, and prioritize continuous learning to stay relevant.

I think there's a lot of unknowns, and while we are building for the now or the near future, this field is evolving extremely fast, like from one day to the other, you have more tools, new technologies, new ways of working. Whether that's internally, like all of our processes are changing, the workforce is evolving, the expectations - the kids that join the firm are completely different than it was back in the day, and let alone in this field, to be a leader in this evolving space. I think before it used to be like, okay, you have a set domain, but that's not good enough anymore. You need to kind of understand the domains around you, and so that's evolving very quickly, the business models are evolving. I think it's challenging because it's not static. And so, with all the predictions that are happening about whether it's the workforce or the AI tools, I think I need to make sure that I'm upskilled every single day, and that's really challenging to do between your job, between the change that is happening, and also the uncertainty. So I think you can do the best that you can, but at the end of the day, the challenge is this whole field - how do you need to become an expert and continue to be in that space. It's the uncertainty that's exciting, but at the same time it also means there's always more to do and more to learn, and I think mentally, that can be challenging. I'm not scared for job security so much, because I think the more you are in these net new areas, like cybersecurity was - we are doing these surveys, and everybody says cybersecurity and AI is the top of mind for all CEOs across. So that's not going away, but I think it's more about how do you remain relevant in this fast-changing environment. A big topic right now is how all of these agents are going to become part of our workforce, and we'll have these digital teammates that will essentially work with us. That's been a big topic for our team - how do we prepare all the employees for this agentic era, in terms of reimagining how work is going to be done and what do we need to equip our people in the company to have the skills or the ways of thinking for.

The values most important to me in my work and personal life are trust, ethical use of data and AI, quality, adaptability, continuous learning, and clear communication.