We're all kind of obsessed with speed and scale and automation. What does it mean to grow well? Right? Not not just fast.So I've spent two decades building companies and launching digital products and leading ethical AI systems. And what I've learned, sometimes the hard way, is that scaling without soul isn't scaling at all. It's extraction. It's burnout. It's the illusion of progress. So today, I want to offer a new blueprint, a different way forward. One rooted in intention, inclusion, and impact. A way of leading and growing that doesn't just serve business, but serves humanity. So if you're in the chat, if you're just joining me, thank you for joining us. We haven't gotten started yet.

And but feel free to, in the chat, raise your hand or drop an emoji if you've ever scaled a system that ran faster than your team could handle. Right? So or if you've ever wondered, are we growing or just spinning? Like, are we are we really doing it? So if you've ever felt that way, let me let me know. So before we dive into the core of the conversation, I wanna give you a little context of who I am and why this work of rethinking growth, leadership, and AI matters so deeply to me. I'm Rekia Finley. I often describe myself as a coalition architect, a founder, technologist, and someone who spent the last two decades building not just systems, but movements. So on the left, you'll see where it started.

I began as a full stack developer at a time where there weren't many people who looked like me in the room. I wasn't just writing code, I was designing systems for equity before I had the language for it. In 02/2006, I founded what would eventually become Cochran Vine Studio. It's a place where we don't just build software, we scale innovation in a way that reflects people, communities, and care. We've supported Fortune 500 companies, global startups, and founders who are transforming industries. And over the last decade, I've worked as a global facilitator and movement leader, shaping DEI strategies, leading companies, like Girls in STEM. I've had the honor of working with the Obama administration and becoming the first black women woman in North America to lead an AI product firm.

So everything I do now sits at the intersection of innovation, inclusion, and integrity. And I'm here today because I believe we can scale differently. We can build powerful systems with soul, and I wanna show you kind of how we've done it over my past years. So the old growth playbook is this reality of we've been told to go faster. Right? Hire hire harder, automate everything, and it worked until it didn't work. We see we saw teams burn out, spike. We've seen it throughout the tech industry. And we've seen culture erode, brilliant people leaving industries they once loved, not because they weren't capable, but because the system wasn't built for sustainability. So last year, seventy seven percent of tech employees reported feeling burned out. Not because of complexity, but because of velocity without clarity.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Right? Growth isn't the problem. It's how we've been defining it. We've been told that to grow, we have to move fast. We have to scale hard. We have to automate everything. And while that works for a while, it often leads to team burnout, equity gaps, and systems that serve performance over people. So feel free to drop something in the chat and let me know if you've ever scaled faster than your team could handle or felt like growth was leaving your values of your company behind. And that's the that's the moment we're in. Right? That's the moment we get to talk about. So AI is scaling. Tech is evolving. But the question is, are we scaling well? Is the question that I really invite you to be a part of asking yourself and your teams of.

So the image right here says a lot. Right? Brilliant minds, lots of energy, so much happening at once, and yet, I see something else. Right? I see a system on the brink, cables tangled, whiteboards overloaded, people sprinting to keep up. It's a metaphor for what's happening currently in our industry. When growth outpaces humanity, we don't just lose clarity, we lose culture. So hypergrowth, especially in tech, has often been equated with hustle culture. We celebrate speed over sustainability, pushing people to deliver more, faster with less. But when we normalize burnout, we compromise innovation. We lose the very people who made the growth possible in the first place. So there's the secret there's the second point. Right? There's automation without reflection. We're automating decisions, workflows, and even ethics.

There was a panel that started at four, if you caught it on the on the main stage, around how we're utilizing AI without asking. Right? And we're and and with it, when we create it, we also don't ask what are the human costs of this implementation. So it's not that we shouldn't use it, we absolutely should use it, and how might we use it in a way that, we have we understand human cost. So we have to ask who is being left behind when we move this fast. Because growth should never come at the cost of empathy or ethics or well-being, and that's exactly what we're here to rethink. So really happy to be here. Now when we talk about growth in business, we often are pointing to the branches, the scale, the speed, the numbers.

But the most sustainable companies, they grow like this tree. Deep before wide. Strong roots, clear values, nourish from below. If you look at this image, right, the roots are labeled with intention, equity, and care. The first storm will shake everything loose, but when they're deep, your growth can stretch far and wide. So without collapsing under pressure, right, how might we build? So the question I want to leave you with right here is, what if the metric wasn't just scale, but how it feels to grow where we are? Right? How would it feel if we had to stand on our intention, our equity, and our care with how we implemented our AI, our digital product, our marketing, and our brand. What if we measured growth not only in revenue or headcount, but in retention, belonging, and purpose? Because growth is not the enemy. Right?

We don't we're not trying to say we don't wanna grow fast. Growing fast is fantastic, but misalign growth, that's the enemy. So it's time to really redefine success in a way that lets both the business and the people inside of it thrive. So you've probably seen this image before. It's a match, right, just starting to burn. And we all know what comes next if the flame keeps climbing without pause. Right? We're gonna get burnout. For many of us, especially in tech, this is the silent epidemic. Not just in individuals, but in teams, in companies, and in the systems we scale. I see it on a daily basis with the work I do. So that's why I believe we need a new blueprint, not just to grow, but to grow with soul. Right? And that starts with three core shifts.

So one is from velocity, moving that to values. So we've been told to move fast. We've been told to break things. But breaking things without accountability just creates more to fix. So what if we ask, does this growth reflect the values we say we hold? Let growth serve your mission. Let growth not race ahead of it, but be aware of it. Second is from efficiency to empathy. Yes. AI can help us move faster. I built a lot of really cool AI products. I'm building some this year. And we love that, but why are we moving? Are we designing to reduce harm or just to or just reduce cost? Right? Empathy isn't soft. It's scalable. So because when people feel seen with our product, they stay, they build, and they lead with you. Third is hustle to grace.

Now it took a good amount of my twenty years of my career to finally lean into grace over hustle, but we have to be honest that we've simply just glorified hustle. We've glorified hustle for years until every once in a while, one might realize it's not a business model. Right? Grace means we create systems that allow space for rest, for innovation, for failure without fear. Grace doesn't slow us down. It makes our growth sustainable, especially with our big idea with our innovation. So the match, the call, that's your call. Right? Will you let it burn unchecked? Will it just burn out? Or will you choose to lead with intention, empathy, and grace? So systems inherit the values of the people who built them. Right? I'll say that again. Systems inherit the values of the people who built them. Every product, every policy, every AI model. We're not just building technology.

We're embedding our beliefs into the systems we ship into the world. And if we're not careful, if we don't ask the hard questions, we end up scaling inequity. We end up scaling bias. We end up scaling exclusion at the speed of innovation. So we get to ask ourselves we get to ask ourselves and our teams who benefits, who's excluded, And most importantly, who are we optimizing for? Is it speed and efficiency, or is it justice and access? Because from my experience, when we design for speed, we often replicate harm. But when we design for justice, we build systems that actually work for more people. So let's talk about framework. Alright. Well, I'll share a framework that I use at Copper and Vine when we build, or when we're evaluating any text system, especially those involving AI.

I call them the three senses of ethical systems. I welcome you to use this. Right. So one is intention. Why are we building this? Not just because we can, but what human need or opportunity are we really serving? Third is second is impact. Who wins? Who loses? Every system benefits someone and disadvantages someone else. That's just good business. So we need to get honest about who's being left out. And then thirdly is integrity. Are we naming the risk? Transparency isn't a liability. Right? It's a leadership value. If your system has blind spots, say so. Build accountability into the process. So let me bring that to real life of how we've done that here. A quick example is just, this quarter, we launched an app called Our Turn. Our Turn is an AI powered self care journaling app. Right? And we use those same three ethical lenses when we were building Our Turn.

You can scan this QR code to give it a shot whenever you get a chance. So one, when we launched Our Turn and we had to think about intention. Our turn is meant to help people reflect and reconnect with their wellness through small daily entries. That's our intention. Our impact is we prioritize users who often feel unseen by mainstream wellness tech. Now you might say that's a gap in market operate. Right? That's a gap in the market. That's market opportunity. I say that's impact. And then from there, we go to integrity. Right? We were clear that our AI could personalize and support, but not replace therapy or clinical care. So ethical systems don't emerge by accident. Right? They're designed on purpose with purpose. So for so long, scale has been synonymous with speed. Go after, build more, chase bigger.

But what's often missing from that equation is the human cost. We wear burnout as a badge sometimes. We tolerate systems that break people. And we rarely stop to ask at what price. But for what if we flipped that? What if we flipped that script? Right? What if rest wasn't seen as laziness, but as leadership discipline? What if repair wasn't failure, but a sign of maturity in our systems? What if respect was more than a DEI statement, but a design principle in our growth strategy? Scaling with soul means honoring the full humanity of the people in our organizations. It means building companies that make room for grace, not just grit. And it means daring to believe that we don't have to choose between growing big and growing well. This isn't just a feel good idea. This is a strategy idea.

So I wanna leave you with, you know, scaling with soul isn't soft, it's strategic. It's how we build systems that last because they're designed for people, not just performance. That's how we build good products. And that kind of growth isn't it it doesn't start with a big campaign or a new product budget line. It starts with a single intentional choice made by yours by you, by yourself. So over the rest of the amazing this amazing conference over the next few days, over this week, I'm gonna ask you to ask yourself a couple questions. Really audit yourself and say, where in my leadership could there be more intentionality? Just where could I be more strategic? Where am I just floating? What's one system or process in my world that could use a little more grace, less grind? And where could I choose alignment over urgency?

Where can I double click on alignment and probably produce a better element of innovation and result rather than pushing go go go? Maybe that means rethinking the way you define growth. Maybe it means challenging how AI is used in your org. Right? Maybe it's as simple and radical as building more breathing room in your team's timeline. You don't need to do everything, but you need to do something. Right? So not all growth is good growth. That's what I'll leave you with. Right? If the pace we're moving in is burning out our teams, if we're sacrificing our values to hit arbitrary milestones, if our decisions are leaving us restless, anxious, or disconnected, that's not growth, that's noise. So real growth centers your people. It deepens your principles. It protects your peace. That's the difference between growing with soul and just chasing scale. So this is your reminder.

In a world that rewards conformity and punishes risk, you still have permission to lead a big idea. And let's be honest, big doesn't always feel good. It can feel uncomfortable, unconventional, scary, even terrifying. But sometimes your big idea is messy, simple. It's so human that it doesn't look like innovation, but it absolutely is. And yet the ideas that change systems, the ideas that build equity, the ideas that make room for people to thrive, they almost always start out as something others aren't ready for. So I give you permission to lead. More than that, you have the responsibility to lead. Thank you for spending this time with me today. Thank you for joining me to be a part of such an amazing event. Amazing job, Women in Tech Global. You guys continue to be great. My hope is that you leave not just inspired, but activated with one clear intention. Use this QR code to get in contact with me.

But if anything today resonated with you, whether it was the idea of leading with soul, scaling with race, or simply redefining what growth can look like, I'd love to stay in conversation with you. So use that QR code and stay in conversation with me. And as you go back to your world, remember you have permission to lead differently. You don't need to wait for the culture shift. You are the shift. So stay grounded, stay brave, and most of all, stay soulful, y'all. Thanks for letting me play with the fun theme.