Fourteen years ago, I stood in a room full of executives about to launch groundbreaking technology that worked on exactly one phone model in the entire world.That spectacular failure taught me the most valuable lesson of my career, one that would transform how I build technology, how I lead, and ultimately, how I see humanity. In 2010, Google approached our retail engineering team at OfficeMax about launching a mobile payment solution in our stores. A tech geek at heart, I was sold. Who wouldn't wanna push the bounds of store payment technology, transforming traditional checkout, partnering directly with Google architects, and working on-site at Google Headquarters? The shiny was so alluring. After long nights, multiple point of sale releases and hotfixes, card reader updates, and countless Google app updates, I stood at OfficeMax headquarters, my heart racing, ready to demo the results of this partnership. The room buzzed with anticipation. Executives shifted in their seats. Store managers hovered nearby, ready to take back training to their associates. When the moment came, our demo worked flawlessly.

The audience gasped. Applause erupted. Woo hoo! Then the CEO asked a question, When can our customers start using this? I took a deep breath and replied, well, if they have this one Motorola phone and download the Google app, they can start today. The energy from the room drained like air from a punctured umbrella. I watched excitement transform into disappointment in real time. Eyes that moments earlier had sparkled now avoided mine. In our pursuit of technological brilliance, we created the perfect solution for practically nobody. We had built expensive art, not useful technology. Google has since evolved the product over the years for this very reason. That painful silence taught me the most powerful lesson of my career. We were asking, can we build this? But we should have been asking, should we build this, and for whom? In that failure, I found a new lens.

One that didn't start with systems, but with souls. Who are we building for? What keeps them up at night? What do they need? Not just what can we create? Because technology without empathy is just expensive art. But when we design for real people, in real life's messiness, you build magic. When you build with true human understanding, you don't just solve problems, you transform lives. Let me show you what happens when we truly place humans at the center of our technology. Picture this, April 2020. The world shut down. Fear hanging in the air like fog. In my kitchen, my son's medication bottle sat on the counter, three pills remaining. His ADHD medication that helped him focus and made remote schooling possible, medication that required monthly wellness checks with his doctor.

I stared at those three pills while my TV flashed horrifying images, hospital corridors overflowing, masks disappearing from shelves, toilet paper sold out everywhere, medical workers in garbage bags because PPE had run out. Looking at those three pills, I felt completely trapped. Take my child into a medical facility during a pandemic or watch him spiral as his medication ran out? The thought filled me with raw terror. I could almost visualize the invisible threat, microscopic virus particles suspended in the waiting room air, hovering on clipboards, lurking on doorknobs. Then my phone buzzed. Your appointment has been converted to telehealth. Check here. I clicked, and the next day, we sat at our kitchen table seeing our pediatrician's warm face on the screen. It wasn't just convenience. It was a lifeline. That moment cemented something profound. Great technology meets us in our fear, and it says, I see you. I'm here to help. But this solution revealed a more profound truth.

If telehealth could help my family in suburban America, what could it mean for the grandmother in Appalachia, 40 miles from the nearest specialist? I don't have to choose between my health and my savings account? The single parent who loses a day's wages sitting in the waiting room, I can keep my job and my family healthy? The person with modability challenges for whom every medical visit is a logistical marathon, I can access care with dignity, not difficulty. The individual trapped due to a natural disaster, even when isolated. I'm not alone. As a board member of HealthAI, we have been expanding our vision. We are building bandwidth light systems with trauma recognition through Image AI to help these very individuals. We aren't building features. We are building trust. We are building safety nets.

We are not chasing innovation. We are chasing relief. This same human centered lens transformed my work at Capital One. Have you ever reached for your wallet and felt the drop in your stomach? Your card is missing. The surge of adrenaline, the rapid mental replay of every place you've been, where you use the card, where it might be, what might somebody be doing with your account right now. So we built card lock, a simple feature, letting you freeze your card instantly from your phone. The technology took a PI to build, but the peace of mind it created, immeasurable. As one customer told us, I was at a concert when I realized my card was missing.

Instead of leaving in a panic, I locked my card in ten seconds, and then I stayed for the encore. For the time in my life, I felt control during a crisis. The feature saw 2,300,000 uses in its month, not because the technology was revolutionary, but because it addressed something deeply human, the need to feel safe, in control, and empowered during a moment of vulnerability. In these examples, the breakthrough wasn't driven by technological complexity. It was born from the depth of human need. Empathy wasn't just a nice to have. It was the accelerant that made everything possible. I didn't learn empathy in business school. I learned empathy in the ER, holding my toddler with a broken arm. I was a single mom. I was exhausted, terrified, and trying desperately not to cry in front of her.

There's something about those moments when you're both completely vulnerable and absolutely necessary to someone else that rewires your operating system. As a single parent, there is no one to tag in when things get tough. No room for ego, no space for anything, but seeing through my child's eyes, hearing words she couldn't yet say, and showing up completely. That skill, seeing what isn't said, became my superpower. Years later, I spotted that same expression, the one I wore in the ER on a young engineer's face before her architecture review, shoulders hunched, shallow breathing, ours eyes darting to the exits looking for a way out. I recognized that fear instantly. So I pulled her aside and sent something simple. You belong in that room.

I realized that what made me effective as a mother, seeing through my child's eyes, anticipating needs before they're spoken, showing up completely even when I'm exhausted, when I'm stressed, when I'm frustrated. These aren't soft skills. Empathy isn't soft. It's fierce, and it's how we lead. Now let's talk about another fear, a fear in a lot of people's minds. Will AI replace me? Wrong question. The real one is, what can AI never replace? I've watched interns brilliantly coding one minute and then spiraling the next after seeing chat chat GPT generate in seconds what took them hours. But here's what they're missing and what we all need to understand. AI can mimic knowledge, but it cannot replace wisdom. AI can generate answers, but it doesn't know which questions matter. AI can process data, but it cannot feel impact.

The question isn't whether AI will replace us, but whether we'll recognize the uniquely human capabilities that no technology can replicate. The future belongs not to those who can code the fastest, but to those who can bring both technical brilliance and human understanding together to solve the most complex challenges. AI can crunch data, generate code, but it cannot feel joy or frustration. It can't sense when a customer's silence means they're afraid or angry, and it can inspire a team at 2AM to navigate a hotfix. Let me give you an example. As I was preparing for this talk, I spoke with peers about AI collaboration and the concept of human AI consilience. Someone shared how their team was rolling out a new feature for their customer support platform.

The AI had been meticulously trained and was flagging and routing tickets with impressive speed and accuracy, at least according to their dashboards. Oh, sorry. They were patting themselves on the back. They were talking about efficiency gains and cost savings. Then came a seasoned support specialist who's been on the team for years. During one of their weekly team syncs, she raised her hand hesitantly. The AI seems to be categorizing the can't log in issues correctly, she said. But I've noticed a pattern in the follow-up escalations. It's like the initial solution the AI suggests isn't actually resolving the underlying problem. The team dug deeper. The AI was identifying keywords and routing based on them, technically correct. But with her years of experience fielding these calls, she recognized subtle nuances in the user descriptions, frustrations, a sense of being locked out, a feeling of helplessness that wasn't being captured by the text analysis.

If I were a user, she said, and I was completely locked out of my account, I wouldn't just calmly describe the technical issue. I'd be stressed, maybe even angry. The AI is missing that emotional layer, that urgency. So users are going through the automated steps, getting nowhere, and then escalating even more frustrated. That hit the team. The AI was optimizing for speed and categorization, but it wasn't understanding the user experience. This associates empathy. Her ability to put herself in the user's shoes revealed a critical blind spot in the AI's logic. Her insight led to a complete overhaul of how they approached those can't log in tickets. They integrated sentiment analysis to better understand the user's emotional state, and then they prioritize those tickets for human intervention, ensuring a more empathetic and effective response.

The metrics did initially drop, he told me, because they introduced more human touch points. But within weeks, customer satisfaction escalated, and the escalation rates to the initial tickets plummeted. That associate didn't have a fancy didn't have fancy algorithms or terabytes of data. What she had was something equally, if not more valuable, human empathy, domain expertise, and the ability to connect the user on a fundamental level. AI and ML are powerful tools. No doubt. They can process vast amounts of data and identify patterns that we humans may miss, but they are at their core tools. And like any tool, their effectiveness is amplified when wielded by skilled and insightful humans. The magic truly happens in that collaboration, that synergy between the logic of the machine and the empathy of the human heart. That's the real competitive advantage.

AI isn't the threat. Forgetting our irreplaceable human value is. We don't need AI to replace us. We need it to free us, to free us to focus on deeply human work only we can do. And that's not just a comforting thought. It's a strategic advantage. But that empathy, it just can't live in one associate's heart or in one leader's heart. It must be built into the very structure of our organizations. I faced a challenge in my organization at Capital One. Brilliant teams were stalling because they lacked not because they lacked talent or resources, but because they were disconnected from the impact of their work. They were building features without seeing faces, so we did something that felt radical. We let the team self organize around the customers they most wanted to serve.

We gave them clear problems to solve instead of solutions to build. We gave them the ownership of problems, not just tasks. We turned projects into purposes. At echo, we've made a similar bet. We organize around customer domains. Each domain has a specific customer that we're designing for. Engineers aren't just writing code. They're solving problems for Sarah, a real person with real needs. This isn't just about process. This is about purpose. When people understand who they're serving, why it matters, they bring their whole selves to work. They solve problems they never knew existed. The lesson was clear. Empathy isn't just a sentiment. It's a strategy. When people truly understand who they serve and why it matters, everything changes. They take ownership. They innovate. And most importantly, they build technology that actually matters. When we build technology with human understanding, we don't just solve problems. We transform lives.

I am passionate about tramic transforming lives because I believe every person has unlimited potential, not as a nice theory, but as a proven reality. Let me tell you about Sam, not their real name. When we met, Sam was working in DevOps, technically competent, but invisible to leadership. During a project meeting, I noticed some things others missed. The way Sam's eyes lit up when discussing the user experience. How their questions went beyond the specifications to how people would actually interact with the system. Curious about the ways to bring that experience to life. Weeks later, I bumped into Sam in the office, and he confided in something in me to me that broke my heart. He said he wasn't happy. He felt stuck, and then he said something that stopped me cold. I don't think I'm ever gonna move beyond this role. I'm not seen.

I'm not the kind of person that gets the big opportunities. I saw in Sam what perhaps he didn't even yet see, a hunger to grow, a curious mind, not just about how systems worked, but how they delivered value. So I invited him to join my software engineering team. The transition was challenging. Sam had to navigate new tooling. He had to shift his mindset and master test driven development. I remember late nights, bugs that refused to resolve, and moments where doubt crept in. But then came the breakthrough. Sam and his team deployed a know your customer compliance feature to production. It worked. And not only did it work, it delivered the intended value precisely as designed. That moment, that was the click. That's when he realized I can do this.

He never shied away again. He took on harder problems. He led peers and pushed himself. And today, well, today, Sam leads an enterprise architecture organization. His journey wasn't about luck. It was about opportunity, belief, and the kind of leadership that says that says, let's build on your potential. I see it. You have greatness. Sam needed to be seen. People grow when someone believes in them before they believe in themselves. That's how we combat imposter syndrome. That's how we elevate underrepresented voices. That's how we build better technologists. Look around your organization tomorrow. Who's your Sam? Who has potential you haven't yet recognized? Take that person to coffee. Listen to their ideas. Invite them into a conversation that they wouldn't normally be part of. Sometimes, the most powerful architecture we build isn't our systems. It's our belief in others. I've distilled everything I've learned thus far in my career into what I call, sorry, the epic framework, four principles that can transform how we build technology.

E, empathy before engineering. Start by deeply understanding the human experience before writing a single line of code. Feel the frustration, witness the workarounds, share the struggles. P, problems over products. Fall in love with the problem, not your technology. Bill be willing to abandon your favorite technical approach if it doesn't actually solve the human need. I, inclusive by design. Create with, not for. Bring diverse perspectives into every stage of the development. Remembering that works for that what works for the few may oftentimes fail the many. And see connections that count. Technology should strengthen human bonds, not replace them. This framework doesn't just build better technology. It builds better technologists. When we value empathy alongside engineering, we create the space for different kinds of brilliance. We are at a crossroads.

We can build tools that detect disease before symptoms, mental health support that whispers you're not alone, educational tools that adapt to different learning styles, making knowledge accessible to everyone, technologies that assist us in aging with dignity and grace. But these tools that we build only matter if they honor human dignity, if we choose empathy. As we stand at this technological crossroads with AI automation, digitalization, and digital transformation accelerated at unprecedented rates, we face a choice. Will we pursue technological advancement for its own sake, or will we harness these powerful tools to address our most profound human needs? I'm asking you to make a commitment. Tomorrow when you return to your desks, ask yourself, what problem am I actually solving? Who am I solving it for? Have I talked to them, understood their struggles, walked in their shoes? If you are a leader, create space for the voices with different perspectives.

If you're fighting with imposter syndrome, remember, your unique viewpoint isn't a weakness. It is your superpower. Fall in love with the problems you're solving, not the shiny tech. Ask should we more than can we. Measure success not by complexity, but by human impact. Fourteen years ago, I stood that in that OfficeMax conference room with revolutionary tech that worked on exactly one phone. Today, I stand before you with something infinitely more powerful, not a piece of technology, but a way of creating it. Technology with empathy doesn't just connect devices. It connects hearts. It doesn't just process data. It honors stories, and it doesn't just solve problems. It transform lives. Thank you. I'm sorry for all the technical difficulties.