Ajantha
Suriyanarayanan
CEO at MentalLoad
"Before 9AM: The Leadership Crisis No One's Measuring"
"Before 9AM: The Leadership Crisis No One's Measuring"
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Session: Before 9AM: The Leadership Crisis No One's Measuring
Women are leaving the workforce at alarming rates while simultaneously falling behind in AI adoption—865,000 women exited in a single pandemic month, and today women adopt AI tools at 25% lower rates than men, creating a compounding crisis that costs organizations $3.3 billion in replacement costs and widens wage gaps. The root cause is invisible: women arrive at work cognitively depleted from managing 20+ extra hours per week of household labor and mental load, making it nearly impossible to master the AI skills that will define career advancement. This talk challenges C-Suite leaders to recognize that contemporary expectations require contemporary solutions—specifically, deploying AI to reduce women's mental load while ensuring equal access to AI training and support. When women have both reduced invisible labor AND AI skills development, organizations gain transformative returns in productivity, innovation, retention, and competitive advantage in the AI era.Key Takeaways
- The Mental Load Crisis is Creating an AI Skills Gap: Women are adopting AI at 25% lower rates than men—not due to lack of interest, but because they arrive at work cognitively depleted from managing 20+ extra hours of invisible labor weekly.
- The Business Case is Urgent and Measurable: Organizations are losing $3.3 billion in replacement costs as women exit the workforce. Companies providing mental load support are bound to see transformative returns in productivity and innovation.
- Contemporary Expectations Require Contemporary Solutions: Leadership must deploy AI in two ways simultaneously—to reduce women's invisible labor through tools like agentic AI for household management, AND tensure equal access to AI skills training at work
Bio
Ajantha is a 20+ year veteran behavioral researcher and product strategist, who has led large global teams across corporate giants such as Meta, DocuSign and Visa, and scrappy startups such as BlueOwl and Culture&. She's built her career on understanding what makes people tick, and what makes teams thrive. Throughout her journey, she's prioritized carving out space to mentor countless women climbing their own career ladders.As a mom to two wonderfully chaotic little ones and part of the sandwich generation, she knows firsthand the weight of carrying it all. The burnout hit hard, but the revelation hit harder: this wasn't just her problem—it was universal.
Sometimes the most personal problems demand the most innovative solutions. When she couldn't find an effective affordable solution to address the invisible cognitive load that disproportionately falls on women's shoulders, she decided to build it herself. That's how MentalLoad was born—a platform designed to tackle the relentless invisible load that keeps women from excelling in their chosen paths and truly thriving.
