Hi, everyone. My name is Leila Sami.I'm the chief product and technology officer at IntraHive, a place that we actually make the strongest side of human, our relationship, to lead organization growth and actual personal brands. I have been part of the evolution of technology for quite some time, about twenty years, starting from the age of Internet to the social media and AI these days. Big part of organizations as large as BMO, Bank of Montreal, Reuters, Facebook is Meta. I have been benefiting from their value of the relationship when I used it right. And, actually, somehow got hurt.

I'm sorry. We just got a note that says, I see that the talk is scheduled for something forty. It's not even open to the public yet. It will open in three minutes. Okay. So so that's probably why we didn't have

Okay. So let's get started.

So you're gonna have to do it again, but wait.

Thank you. Thank you. Note?

Do you see that note? It's on the side. No. I It says I see yeah. The talk is for, I guess, forty past the hour, so it's not

Oh, forty minutes. Thank you. Oh. Yes. Thank you for

Thank you for updating us. Now we know there's somebody else on the other on the line. So the third person.

Yeah. Okay. So we are still another eight minutes. So

Yes. So all you're running around for air. Yeah.

Ten minutes early.

Yep.

And then you're even but saw you get

Here's a quick ask. Can I get or can we get a message as soon as this session

on calls?

We can yeah. If we can get that prompt via note here, that would be great. And thank you thank you, Ghost, who's talking to us through through. That was a good good save. We would have been halfway through. Through.

Yeah. And I I was wondering why it's just only three people.

Well, we might it might just be the three are administer administration accounts.

Yeah. Maybe. I write a message, but you will also see people to join to type up.

Yeah. Type in the chat. Alright.

Alright. Okay. That's fun to know.

Good. We'll we'll figure it out if we go. Thank you so much. This is why they sent you because we're gonna

Then we're gonna go all the way. And then All of a

sudden, the everybody else joins, and we're of discussion. Yes.

Yeah. It's funny. I'm glad that I went for my charger.

Yes. Yes. Good save, Leila.

Yeah.

I'm curious where the moderator is based or the organizer. Let's see if we get a response. We're sitting here in Toronto. Wow. Ah, very cool. Thank you. There you go. We know someone is listening. What time is it in, Bulgaria right now? Let's see if we can guess. It's

I say it's later.

I think it's

it should be Yeah. I think it's 11PM.

It should be late at night. Right?

Yeah. Because Tehran is about 01:00 1AM

Yes.

Right now.

So you're up to speed.

An hour an an hour

Yep. Behind. 23 and a half. So 11:30. Alright.

Yep. I I was right. I was good.

Yeah. Yes. You were right on. Thank you for being with us and supporting the chat at a late time. Leila, do you know where the organization Women in Tech is based out of? I think it's based out of Europe. Right?

Yeah. I think they're European.

Alright. Session's open now. Okay. Thank you. Alright. We've got five minutes to go, I think, before we officially Yep. Officially expand.

See how many people join and then

Yeah. Go from there. I'm still curious if the counter is, I know we were told the counter should should go up, but until I see it, I won't know if it works. So we'll wait and see. We should have some elevator music playing in the background before.

You're funny.

My kids just learned about the, Jeopardy. So this Jeopardy song, Jeopardy song is the beginning of Jeopardy song. So they they were singing it for we were for a board game that we were playing. And so now they just every time we take a while to answer their questions, they they they along to us. Yes. Feels like that's playing in my head now.

That's interesting.

Yeah. I

can I can try to play that for myself?

Yes. Yes. So we're gonna wait until, I think, 04:40. We were prompted to wait until then.

Yes.

To officially kick off. Well, I'm thinking it's interesting because if a lot of folks are calling in from Europe, I bet you they would be just accessing the, content through recorded sessions, but we'll have to see if Yes.

If that I would see that too.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's just, your video sometimes breaks out. Do you have the same with me?

It happened once on your side. It hasn't app happened since. It was when you were plugging in that it broke up a little bit. Okay. But, hopefully,

you're ready. Yeah. Maybe we should move less and

make them.

It gets Okay. The caching mechanism

They didn't put me up here for comedy. You can tell.

You're funny, and you can use it.

Alright. We've had a few folks join. We were just in case you're listening in, we were just saying, assuming a lot of folks are calling in from Europe, I think we're gonna have a lot of, a lot of, views, the, not the live version, so the recorded version. So we'll see how many of us are here live. It's quite late in Europe right now. And Leila and I are calling in from Toronto in case anyone's deeply curious with administrator support from Europe. So thanks again to the folks who stayed up late. The Jeopardy song is still playing in my head, in case you're wondering.

I have my drum motor.

Yeah.

Triple. Triple. Triple. Alright.

I I think we're good. You can kick off.

I think we are we're good, and we can get started. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the session. Thanks for joining us. And for those who are listening to us afterwards, thank you for listening. My name is Leila Sami, a New York based person today in Toronto along with, Sai, Fard. I am the chief product and technology officer at IntraHive, a company that we create we bring the strongest side of human, which is our relationships to lead organization growth as well as our product brand personal brand. I've been part of the evolution of technology for more than probably twenty years. At the age of Internet, social media, and these days, AI is the hot topic. Being part of organizations as large as Bank of Montreal, Thomson Reuters, Facebook, Meta, and just to name some. I firsthand have experienced, and benefited from good relationships while I got hurt with losing some or having a gap in it.

As a female tech executive, looking back in my path of career growth, it just makes me more excited about talking about the topic that we are talking today. The reality is the world around us keep changing, and we need to we need to be ready for it. If you'd be ready for it, we're gonna benefit from it. If you're not ready for it, we're probably gonna have challenges. And while we agree that the change is inevitable, but it's hard as well, we're gonna grow to it if it's better. So change is coming. Technology bring the change, and I'm so excited to be talking to Sai, who is who has a magical ability to build relationship. And I when I say magical, it's magical.

She actually, the magic in her skill brought us today in the same room, to be honest, and that that's make me more excited. She is a finance and technology executive with an impressive growth profile, which you're gonna talk about how relationship helped her to get there. She earned her CFO seat at the very young age, in a very male dominated space. And, I'm excited to hear her story and share her story. Sai, very welcome to the panel. Help us to get to know you a bit better and tell us about the relevant relationship super supercharged capability that you have, and you benefited from it in your career in the past? And maybe tell us let's just start with that and then begotting to tell me, how do you think it is gonna be critical in the age of AI?

Leila, thank you so much for the very kind, introduction. I know it's quite late in Europe, so hello to any of the folks that are calling in, from around the world. We're calling in right now from Toronto as Leila said. And a special thanks to, Women in Tech for bringing this group together. I know just based on the timing of this session, we are going to have a lot of folks that are accessing the content in recorded format. So if you do have questions, feel free to reach out. I think LinkedIn is gonna be our best, bet to connect with either Leila or myself. But this is a topic that's pretty near and dear to our hearts, both from a professional sense because this is what we, work to empower the world with.

But also just on a personal level, I think you'll you'll hopefully hear from us. This has been a topic that has, really supported our career growth, mine in particular, and so I'm excited to talk to you guys a little bit about that. So on the topic of, intros, I'll do a very quick one. Leila mentioned I'm a finance and technology executive. I have a very similar beginnings to, what, any finance folks on accessing the content or just folks that you would know. I have, you know, I have a big four, beginning. I worked at PwC in the first three years of my career, left PwC to work for a number of of organizations, whether in, the publicly held, space, here, in Canada or or private organizations fast growth, through organic means or through acquisitions.

If there's a couple of things to my career, I think we can guess I'm I'm a tech a technology executive. Leila mentioned that. But, really, I've worked through a lot of fast moving transformation where, the themes around growth have focused on innovation. And so a lot of what I've had to do even in my internal facing enablement pools across the years, a lot of it has been around innovation and getting access to, you know, technical skills that move organizations and also relationships. The topic that we're talking through today is relationships. I'll I'll tell you a little bit about why, I feel passionate about this and how it's influenced, my career in particular. And I'll take you back a little bit to, let's call it, middle, middle management where, I got to a point where I started to feel, a little bit stuck, if I'm honest.

And at that point, I think I had spent a good chunk of time, a good part of a decade, acquiring the technical skills to get me to where I was going. And I started to notice there's actually quite a lot of difference between, the the, folks that move up really, really fast, in organizations and the folks that stay, and continue to feel stuck in their careers. So that was the point, I think, for me, there was a breakthrough, and that breakthrough for me came in the form of relationships. Originally, it came in that form because I was quite curious about what sets apart the folks that are moving faster of, you know, what what do these people have in common? What do I need to know that I'm not gonna of, you know, what what do these people have in common? What do I need to know that I'm not gonna learn in a classroom or on the job?

The second thing I think just around in my, observation with with relationships and how much they came in handy when you really needed them, was this this concept of intentionality. I was really intentional after I realized, wow, you can access so much great and you can move move the dial faster in organizations if you can learn more and you can access other people's experience. So both those themes of curiosity and intentionality probably played a huge role, in those early days of me accessing relationships. And, ultimately, they resulted in me getting promoted a lot faster as I started to pick at themes that were much more strategic, in my learning than I would have otherwise. Bailey, you look like you're pausing for a question.

Yes. Yes. But because you mentioned two two words that are interesting to share, you know, dig deeper a little bit. And maybe you wanna share examples if you can. But you talk about intentionality and you talk about curiosity. And we are talking about career growth and opportunities that relationship brings. So I see an intersection between relationship and curiosity. And if you can tell us a little bit more about how that ended up being your compound superpower, and what what what in that made you feel these two two are very important things to consider and bring it together?

Good question. I think as I think back to kind of the learnings there, like, what what those two themes of curiosity and intentionality played. I think on the curiosity note, relationship building starts from a place of wanting to know more about others. Often, we talk about networking in a way that says, oh, what what can this what can others do for me? For me, it has started in a different place. It's been a true place of curiosity, wanting to learn what fueled others' success. And I think if we step back, I think networking that is, coming from a place of wanting to truly get to know others, it's a lot more efficient. It's a lot more, personalized, and it feels a lot less fake, if I can say that.

And in those days, that's how, you know, I was I was trying to break through a shyness, right, of, you know, in in accessing networks. And so that was important. Authenticity was important. And I think curiosity, real curiosity is the fuel of, lasting relationships. The second one that you picked up on, the second word, which was intentionality, I think I'll use another word. I think intentionality for me is about honing in on relevance. Right? So at first, it was about curiosity, then it was about relevance. Right? What is the relevance of the the, issue that I'm raising, to the, you know, the problem that I'm trying to solve? Right? And so being very targeted with the way that we think about networks is is actually quite critical to, being able to get the right support for, you know, whether it's projects that we wanna get moving faster on, whether it's, career, you know, career topics that we're trying to get to, whether we're actually trying to sell or influence with an idea in our network, all of that, intentionality of the networks that we have and we seek advice from or we sell to is, is a lot more important than many of us realize.

So I think I wanna bring it back to to what you what you just mentioned to me as an engineer. Keep talking about data, information, being aware of what's going on around you and who is doing what and how that actually feeds your curiosity or help you with your success. Tell me about that and bring it to machine and how machine can help. Like, I want to understand how how you think what you were doing as a person was complicated because it's there's a lot of data to dig in.

Yeah.

And then we get into how we can how we can get help or how we can fight something.

It it's funny. The word you use is data. Right? But and most of us on a day to day basis, we don't think about our networks through the lens of data and, the quality of that data. But in reality, I think if you step back, that data is gold. Right? When we're when we're thinking about how do I get better at understanding the reach of my network? How do I, assess where I have gaps? How do I assess relevance of my network for the goals that I have, career goals, whether, again, it's recruitment, whether it's getting a new job, whether it's, selling, faster and in a more efficient way? All of that, we often don't think about the the data in our networks. It or we haven't yet, but I think we're evolving, towards that state.

If I take you back to sort of how I've been intentional about networking and in in in the old world, you know, pre, even knowing that AI could help me with that, I was thinking often in those early years about, you know, who's in my network that I can seek advice from? Who is going to hire me? Who's gonna know the right folks to hire me next? Who's going to know the folks that can help me influence to get the projects that I feel are gonna be groundbreaking for the organization I'm in? Who's done this type of work before and can tell me where my mistakes are gonna be if I don't pause? And so all of that is data. Right? And that I was seeking, but not realizing that I was seeking. And I was intentional in those early days about, you know, where I needed, my network to develop, where my gaps were.

And that intentionality, I noticed, was not necessarily the approach that a lot of other folks were finding. But I will say it's probably one of the reasons that I was able to break through. I was able to take, you know, take on and be successful with projects that I hadn't, led before. I often had at my fingertips others that I could reach out to, for that for that support. And now fast forward, I think what I was doing in my head that I was trying to do in my head around identifying gaps and identifying relevance and the quality of my network and where I needed to build more, or where I need to spend less time. I think machines can do that, and you're probably the expert to talk us through, all of that, based on the nature of the work that you do.

Yeah. I think it I think it's interesting as you mentioned about the network, social network. And social network has been out there, and the word network has been out there forever. But I think, to me, in my brain, there is a network of information that we can easily leverage machine to to dig in and give us give us more more insight of who can help me in this specific topic or who can be helping my business in that specific topic or relationship that they're in.

And that that's pretty much what what AI is supposed to do, consuming a lot of data points and give us give us an action or take action on behalf of us. So tell us a little bit about how you think strategically we can leverage AI in this space. Now that we know machine can parse and assess and dig into information that we can, collect and then feed into them?

Yeah. So I think paying attention to the data points that matters. If we step back, what are the data points that I was tracking for myself when I was doing it manually? Right? Those data points were essentially interactions with the network that I have. You know, who's who's out there? What's what does that look Rolodex? What's that inventory of relationships that that I've already built? Then after that, it was about what is the quality of, you know, the the network or the relevance of them to the problems that I'm trying to solve? How many times do I reach out to them?

How many times do they reach reach back out to

me? Respond to that.

Got it. And so I think all of that, again, going back to that theme of data, helps us measure the quality of our social capital. Right? Social capital is something that we can now, in the age of AI, score. Yep.

Now I like that.

Yes. Right. And that can be such a differentiator for for women and men. But we're here talking about, you know, the careers of women. And I think one of the things that's super exciting in this era that we have not yet talked about as women is the fact that access to all of that information and data is now democratized. And so we can go faster as women than we have before.

So go a lot. I I wanna I wanna interrupt you for a second because something came to my head for a for a moment that you said the equality and democratization of the, capability of AI for all of us. I feel like, can I really think of AI being my unbiased friend that give me confidence and give me ability to do better because I have better relationship or I have communication or interaction somehow? Just you know what I when when my head is going, like, is that is that a way to strategically use AI to make sure I overcome what was existing before, which was an biased, evaluation of who I am and what I was able to do.

Yeah. I think what you're getting at is that voice inside our heads, but also that real systemic barrier that women have faced in terms of building the networks that we have. I think, again, one thing that I'm excited about, as we think about networking in this new era is women and men have access to all the same tools. Now we're not starting from the same place. We know we're not because of the systemic barriers that we're all too familiar with. But the tools that we have to overcome that barrier, they're the same. So we have the access to to the exact same AI tools to help us go faster, to understand the relevance of who we know, to understand who we who knows the people that we know well and already have the relationships with, so that who knows who.

We have we have the ability to uncover a lot more using date using data and AI than we had we had earlier when I was trying to solve this problem with a pen and paper. And, really, what will set us apart, I think, and it it could it doesn't necessarily have to be gendered, but what will set us apart is how fast we adopt the technology that is at our fingertips. It's how much experimentation we take on. It's how who we align ourselves with, both in terms of existing networks, but also, innovation makers in the world. All of that is gonna help us go faster. So as women, we could actually overcome some of the systemic barriers through this democratization of the tools that are available to us to go faster. It's

So you're talking about the making a stronger personal brand by being proactively engaged with the technology advancement. You're talking about how to experiment faster with them and how align and or find or or be engaged with innovators in the space. I hear braveness. You you so we have one more minute, I guess. Quickly tell us how AI can make us more brave.

For me, that comes down to the fact that we know that we now have access to the same tools to uncover information and to be relevant in the world than others who had bigger networks. So the systemic barriers that we have faced can be overcome the more intentional we are with how we use AI to go faster for ourselves. And I think the fact that we all have access to the same tools means that those of us who are better at adopting those tools are going to be much better in a future state in the world professionally.

Yeah. And machine doesn't have a bias. You gotta be honest and correct. Yeah. It's gonna hallucinate if the data is not right. But perfect. Thank you so much, Sai. It was great talking to you. I know the time was short, but you did amazing. Hope that the audience felt that this conversation was valuable.