Samantha Rushmeyer

For the past 11 years, my career has been rooted in education, human development, and advocacy. I began my professional journey as a school counselor after earning both my undergraduate and master’s degrees in school counseling, and from the very beginning, I knew my purpose centered around supporting people—especially students navigating difficult circumstances and systems that often overlook their needs.

Working directly with students shaped every part of who I am professionally. Some of the most defining moments of my career came through helping young people during periods of crisis, grief, and mental health struggles. Experiencing the loss of two students to suicide profoundly impacted me and strengthened my commitment to advocacy, emotional support, and prevention work within schools. Those experiences reminded me how important it is to create environments where students feel seen, supported, and safe enough to ask for help.

Today, I continue advocating for educators and students through my work with a teachers’ union in Minnesota, where I focus on supporting fair contracts, legislative advocacy, and educator rights. I believe educators are consistently asked to carry more responsibility with fewer resources, and I am passionate about ensuring their voices are represented and respected. I also lead an LGBTQ+ affinity space within my union, helping create community and support for educators across the state.

At the same time, I am co-founder a company called TAIGA — The AI Gap Analyzer — alongside my partner. TAIGA was inspired by a frustrating real-world experience where we encountered poor automated customer service trying to to change restaurant reservations that resulted in a double reservation and many other problems and realized how disconnected technology can become when human interaction is removed entirely. That moment sparked a much larger conversation for us about the future of artificial intelligence and how organizations measure the balance between automation and human engagement.

Our mission with TAIGA is to help organizations better understand how AI impacts people in the workplace while promoting responsible AI governance and meaningful human integration. While my partner leads the coding and technical development side of the platform, I focus on outreach, education, communication, and helping organizations think critically about the human side of emerging technology.

In college, I had an advisor who truly helped me realize that everyone has a voice, and that if someone's willing to listen to your voice, they're going to give you the right guidance and help you along the way. That shaped why I wanted to be a school counselor - because I wanted to help students move forward. Throughout my journey, I've also relied heavily on mentors and peers. In my grad school cohort, we were all there to support each other and run ideas by one another, and even though we were peers, they were definitely still mentors to me. In my current work as a union organizing specialist, I rely so much on the other organizers who have more experience than me - they help me truly every single day to make sure that I'm fighting for teachers in the best way possible.

The biggest thing is to walk into the room and know that you are the expert and that you are the professional. Every room that you walk into, you need to hold yourself with confidence and believe in yourself more than anybody else, because you are going to have to put yourself out there so many times and in so many ways, no matter what field you're working in. A lot of the fields are male-dominated, and as a Black queer woman, it's super important to me to walk in with confidence in every room that I go into, because we are one of the first groups that are going to be trying to be torn down as females, women of color, or LGBTQ+. So really just be confident and proud of yourself. Be proud of who you are every day, and just remember - you are the expert in your field, and don't let anyone take that away from you.

Right now, the biggest challenge is that companies are adopting AI so quickly, but no one understands the impact that it's having because it's a little too far downstream. Right now they're seeing that AI makes them more productive, faster, and more efficient, but they're not seeing what it's really doing to humans. Are their employees' skills eroding? Are humans still providing original thought? Are companies adopting AI outputs without human oversight? These are the questions we're asking and trying to measure. We're trying to start at the ground level - teaching what's an effective prompt, how to use AI most responsibly, how to incorporate your humans so that you're not laying off people, but instead, making sure to use them in a different, and more effective, way. A lot of companies really aren't seeing or experience that yet. Another challenge is that not all companies have to be compliant or governed at this time. Even though we help organizations get compliant in 14 different frameworks, a lot of companies don't see that as important because it hasn't come down from the top yet. The challenge is getting people to understand that this is all coming before it's too late.

Everything I do is all about advocating and educating other individuals. That is what everything is run through. I have a very philanthropic heart - giving back is so important to me, and that's truly where all of my values come from. I donate regularly to St. Jude's and Planned Parenthood, and one of the main purposes of TAIGA is to eventually give back. It's very important to me to give back to the community. I am a very proud Minnesotans, especially in Central Minnesota, and would love to help grow the community and really put Minnesota on the map even more as a democratic state where educators can get fair pay, where everyone has access to healthcare, and where students are being fed. My primary focus will be within the educational system - education access, healthcare support, and student nutrition initiatives.