The One About Leading in an AI Space

Podcast 09 January, 2026

Everyone knows or “knows” about AI. From a deep lack of understanding to an almost mythical sense of its ungraspable impact and power, everyone has an opinion, informed or not. You can love it or hate it, use it or avoid it, use it or be used by it. Books, podcasts, videos, interviews, masterclasses, experts, “experts”, papers, research, reports, studies, predictions. And this is only the first layer. What about new roles and new specialties? Completely new products and services? Products and services that already feel archaic? Or boosted solutions that are actively redefining entire industries?

The reality is simple. AI is here, whether we like it or not. It is too complex to fully predict and too powerful to ignore. That means we don’t just need to learn how to use it. We need to learn how to relate to it. And this is what this episode is about. How can women understand, claim, and shape power in an “AI-lized” space?

To explore this, I want to unfold four core angles.

Becoming an authority in emerging spaces

It is well documented that women tend to require more time and external validation to fully inhabit their credentials and expertise. Not because it should be this way, but because this is still the reality. Change is not happening overnight.

If this is the context, then AI, even when it feels complex, cold, or overly technical, can actually become a powerful entry point. With the right setup and support, emerging spaces like AI allow women to move before rules are fully written, hierarchies are fixed, and authority is gatekept. AI rewards those who move early and visibly, and that creates a real opportunity to reclaim confidence, voice, and positioning.

Power, access, and inequality in the AI era

AI is not neutral. It amplifies existing structures, social, economic, organizational, and technological, along with their inequalities. From funding and design, to training and deployment, AI inherits and reflects the values of those who already hold power, visibility, and legitimacy. This reality is undeniable, but it is not a reason for paralysis. Amplification does not mean inevitability. Structures can be questioned. Metrics can be redesigned. Leadership can intervene. This is where agency lives. Not only human agency, but especially female agency, with its capacity to question norms, redefine value, and introduce more conscious ways of building and using technology.

Redefining leadership, not copying old models

In recent episodes, we’ve explored how culture, communication, and community are spaces where leadership can be defined on our own terms. The same applies to AI.

In an era where power, access, and equity are increasingly shaped by technological systems, conscious understanding and intentional implementation of AI become leadership acts. While AI often pushes efficiency and speed, leadership emerges in how we combine AI with creativity, critical thinking, and systemic awareness. Understanding our power and understanding the system allows AI to become a lever, not a threat. AI should serve us, our values, and our futures, not simply reinforce existing demands or extract more from us.

Collective agency instead of individual survival

Community is crucial, especially in topics like AI. Learning AI is not just about acquiring new skills. It involves sense-making under uncertainty, unlearning deeply ingrained assumptions, testing ideas without clear right answers, iterating in public, and failing without a clear map. These processes are cognitively demanding and emotionally destabilizing. Community provides something essential here. Mirrors to calibrate ourselves, language to name confusion, and psychological safety to experiment without shame. In collective spaces, learning stops being a solitary performance and becomes a shared process of exploration, reflection, and adaptation.

This episode is not about having all the answers. It is about asking better questions together. It is an invitation to approach AI without overestimating its complexity, but also without underestimating its impact. To resist the extremes and instead choose curiosity, discernment, and agency. This is an invitation for women to explore AI as a space of possibility. To ask, to test, to unlearn, and to learn again. To challenge what feels given, to question what is presented as neutral, to redesign what no longer serves us, and to share our experiences so learning does not happen in isolation.

Because AI is not something that will simply happen to us. It is something we are already shaping, consciously or not. And when women engage collectively, with clarity and courage, we influence the direction of change.

Guest

Lisa Stamm is an AI Marketeer and Entrepreneur, with experience in education, technology, community building, and AI, of course. Her personality, background, and ambition place her in the intersection of power shift: AI, work, education, hiring, and leadership. Lisa is the Co-Founder of Lumen Career, a platform powered by the bright usage and implementation of AI that is changing how the Dutch market recruits tech talent.

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