I am Liberty White. I am an AI architect and I have always been curious. Curiosity has been my competitive advantage. So I believe from my Canadian Jamaican upbringing that I’ve always looked at the world as like, well, how does that work? Well, who are you? Even just being fascinated with how people think about things. I don’t know how many people remember watching A&E back in the day, the channel A&E Arts and Entertainment. And they had a show called Biography. So every Saturday morning, they would have different leaders and entertainers, your directors, your producers etc. And it wasn’t as much as the celebrity as it was their journey and just understanding why they made a decision, how they got this role, how they pushed through, they got may have gotten rejected, but then this door opened, and just following that. That was something that always grabbed my attention.

So I would say, you know, curiosity is what’s led me to media and then to technology and now AI. So today, that same curiosity is what helps me to solve business problems. I help organizations to be able to use AI in practical ways to improve how they get work done. And so curiosity didn’t just shape me, but it’s become the foundation of my career and everything that I do.

Innovation is the thread. If we were to put my life on a timeline, you would see that at every chapter of growth, it has been about helping people adapt to change. And so the content piece helps the ideas to spread. The speaking helps people to understand, helps people to connect with this woman who is Black, who is in tech or, you know, insert whatever space at that time. The community part helps people to grow. And then the entrepreneurship is turning ideas into solutions, because entrepreneurs are problem solvers at the end of the day.

So where we are is AI is just simply the innovation that’s happening right now. It might be something else in a decade. And if this interview ages well, I will be on to that next thing, because innovation is that line. My work has always been about preparing people for what’s next. The technology changes, but helping people adapt so that they can be successful has been the constant throughout my career.

I recognized AI not just as like this technological shift, but an operating shift. It is literally transforming, shifting the way that we work, the way we think, the way we move. So it is literally transforming our generation. And so in 2022, I for roughly three years was a panelist and a host in this community and on this show that was broadcasted around the world called Office Hours Global. So I had early exposure to testing Midjourney and then ChatGPT, and being in this space with these other professionals experimenting in real time. That helped me to see the shift that was happening and that organizations were going to need help implementing workflows, frameworks, and integrating the technology into their systems.

A perfect example is at the top of 2023—this is just when ChatGPT surpassed downloads—I did a tutorial and it got over 140,000 views in almost three days, like 72 hours, showing people how to use AI in their business. To this day, I still have people telling me about the testimony of how they were able to quickly create content or social media graphics. It was more so focused on practical guidance. So I realized that my work isn’t just about teaching AI, it’s about helping people to adopt it successfully.

I’ve come to realize that opportunities take place in action, not before it. A perfect example: this year, Cannes, the International Festival of Creativity, focuses on marketers and the advertising world. This is my second year going. Last year, we did an activation, a full week, we brought a delegation. This year, I was just going to go on my own, and my daughter was like, ‘Hey, what about me?’

Growing up, parents would say ‘You’ll have McDonald’s money.’ So my daughter is like, ‘You’ll have Cannes money because that’s going on the other side of the world!’ Her wanting to go helped me think through what we can come up with to make this a reality. The secret to shooting your shot… I played basketball when you were younger, and you can’t score if you don’t shoot. You can’t see the things that you want to happen if you don’t take a step.

Fundamentally, I’ve always been shooting my shot. I have just now recognized and started coining that I’m shooting my shot all year long. At the top of this year, looking at where I am and where I want to be, it’s just going to require me to keep going, keep making an attempt, and separating my worth from the results. Because what happens when you keep shooting? You learn! ‘Oop, I shot that too far, or that was too high, or I need to take a little edge off.’ You learn how to shoot better. By choosing to keep going, you learn how to make better decisions. You realize it’s the momentum, the action, that’s where clarity comes in. I am most grateful that a lot of the opportunities began with a decision to move and then figuring out things along the way.

I would say one of the best ideas that I’ve ever had actually wasn’t my idea, and it really just comes back to what got us to Cannes. I was sitting, and I made a comment on a young lady’s video about ‘Oh, you know who would buy this shirt?’ To this day, I think it’s almost at 400 likes. That might seem small because we see these numbers thrown around on social media, but 400 people took the moment to agree like, ‘Yes, I would like to see this shirt.’

Listening to the community, listening to the audience, and then waiting on that moment where I could put that idea into the world. I sat with that for a little bit—it might have been 10 weeks earlier that I made that comment. I was like, ‘Man, making a T-shirt? That’s so random. What does that have to do with my brand? My brand is helping people implement AI.’ Yes, I talk about my West Indian, Canadian upbringing, but just, ‘Hey guys, I made a T-shirt?’

Because I had planted that seed, and I’m trying to get my child to Cannes, I am going to test this and put this out there. I almost talked myself out of it because it’s like, ‘Oh, what is this? How is this going to impact how people view me?’ But the momentum idea is like, no, we’re just going to take this day by day and build the story around it and show the muscle memory. Some of your strongest ideas come from paying attention to what people are responding to. When we got to Cannes, some of the first things people said to me—I didn’t even know they were following this—were like, ‘Did she make it?’ That just shows the power of betting on yourself.

People look at AI as a technology problem. Fundamentally, it is an implementation problem. There are so many tools, so much information, not enough workflows. Where do I begin?

What I do when I am training or when I go into an organization is find something that’s already in their world—something they’re already doing—and then walk them through how to integrate and implement AI into that. If for you it is tedious and challenging with time management, well, how can we use something like Claude or ChatGPT to work through your schedule, find workflows that will grab your appointments, or help you figure out what to prioritize? When you see the tool help you, or I should say implementing AI into your world, that is what makes your work better.

I wish more people knew: just take one thing and apply it to your world. How did that feel? How did it work? If there’s anything you need to tweak, tweak it, and then rinse and repeat. Find something real, not something theoretical where you’re just watching a tutorial.

I don’t just want people to leave inspired, I want them leaving with practical capability. I want them feeling capable that they now have a solution, a system, a workflow.

Earlier this month, I got a chance to be one of the trainers for Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lands with the AI Automation Society live. Their session was on the first 30 days of implementing AI in your business. I’m hands-on. Pull out your Claude and let’s go through it. People want to figure out how to use AI to make money in their business. What do they need to set up?

I want you to have real workflows that are mapped to how you live, how you do work, and the implementation there. The best learning is one that changes how you work the next day, the next week, the next month. That’s the stuff that sticks.

Ownership for me has become more than just ownership of a business. It means owning my time, which I equate to freedom; owning my learning; being able to manage my reputation, opportunities.

I look back to when I got into tech, which really was when I was younger, and there were programs around that allowed us to meet people early in their careers working in the banks and science programs. When I got to university going to U of T, I recognized, ‘Wait a minute, these web pages and websites that people are building—that being a technological shift.’ I took ownership of my learning by saying, okay, even though I’m at U of T, I’m going to put all my U of T classes at night because the program I wanted to do at Humber was in the daytime. And I went to Humber so that I could make some side money while being at school.

That’s what it looks like owning the outcomes in my world. The more you own your knowledge and your systems, the more choices that you can create for yourself.

Don’t wait for the confidence to kick in. Start small and build your reps. That’s where the evidence comes in. Test an idea. Break things quickly, learn quickly, and rinse and repeat.

I like this story from Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx. She says that when she was younger, her dad would ask her and her brother at dinnertime what they failed at today. He was normalizing failure, because that’s what holds us back—we don’t want to be embarrassed or make a mistake. That’s what I do with my daughter now. It’s okay if it doesn’t work out, because that’s where you learn, that’s where you grow your confidence, and then you have on the backside the evidence of ‘Okay, if I try this, it might not work this way because I tried it this way last time.’ You have your own receipts to help you the next time.

Start small, test that idea, learn from that quickly, and rinse and repeat. Small wins build your confidence much faster than waiting for the perfect moment. Think about that: how much time passes waiting for the perfect moment, versus taking one action every day and learning from that action?

I am building the next chapter of AI adoption. What does that look like? That is growing our arm of executive education and going into organizations and really helping them. There was a report from MIT that just shared how companies are not seeing the ROI on AI adoption. So that’s us helping them think through and look at how to improve that.

Fundamentally, I hope if people walk away from this interview learning that the way I train and help companies, people, and organizations is very practical, because I want it to stick. I want to help you understand how to not only use it, but grow with it and prepare you for what’s coming. We have done that for the past three years through She Learns AI. People saw that last month, turning an idea into action by getting to Cannes. Even when our store got shut down by Shopify, watching us pivot and keep it moving.

As we’re getting into the remainder of the year, the different corporate partnerships that we can have to not only help with training, but with various events coming up. Our next experience, our training cohort, will be the Ideas to Action cohort. If you’ve got an idea that you’ve been sitting on, or you may be a little apprehensive when it comes to AI—you saw that we made almost $1,000 in 10 days by putting something out into the world—what would it mean to you if you were able to make an extra $100 a month, or optimize something in your business?

Our first cohort is very much from an operator’s perspective. Let’s help you get set up, get your AI operating system together so that you can take an idea to action. What if you were able to do that in four weeks? That is our Ideas to Action cohort pilot program. Four weeks, and I got the receipts, they’re out there. I’m excited about being able to help people grow their skills, but then also at the bottom line, their economic impact. That’s what implementing this technology correctly can do for you: your impact, your economic impact, and your influence. The more people that are in a good economic position, the more people can invest in others to help them be in a stronger economic position. I believe that AI is one of the paths to help us get there, and that’s the work I’m excited to keep building.