- Justina Nixon-Saintil is Chief Impact Officer at IBM and a member of the BI Committee. Workforce Innovation Council.
- Corporate social responsibility leader says businesses need to expand access to AI skills training.
- This article is part of “Workforce Innovationa series exploring the forces shaping business transformation.
Business Insider’s Workforce Innovation series features an advisory board of experts, gathered from a wide variety of roles and industries, to discuss how to drive positive outcomes across four key drivers of change: artificial intelligence, diversity, equity and inclusion, worker well-being, and executive transformation.
As IBM’s vice president of corporate social responsibility and chief impact officer, Justina Nixon-Saintil sits at the intersection of some of the most pressing workforce issues.
“When you look at all the different areas — artificial intelligence, DEI, executive transformation, and worker well-being — there are relationships between them at all levels,” Nixon-Saintil said.
Nixon-Saintil comes from an engineering background and believes leaders need to take a practical approach to technology and its impact on employees and communities.
“I love technology. I love learning new technologies. I have to upskill myself to understand these technologies and how we can use them for social impact.”
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
You place great importance on sustainable development in your role. How does this relate to workforce innovation?
I focus on very specific populations so they can prepare for and succeed in the workforce. We also make sure to invest in communities that are most vulnerable due to climate change and environmental threats.
I spend a lot of my time on AI and how to make sure we use it to help vulnerable communities. How can we use AI to help our learners? From high school and university to adult learners, how can we upskill and reskill them in AI so they can access good-paying jobs?
There is a adage Now, everyone keeps saying: AI is not going to take your job, but someone with AI skills will. So we want to make sure that we’re bringing those AI skills to our learners so that they can be successful in these tech jobs.
Every industry is going to be revolutionized With AI, it’s a useful innovation. We want to make sure that people can take advantage of these jobs, and it contributes to the well-being of workers.
How are you evolving your leadership direction for yourself and at IBM?
During my recent trip to Singapore, we hosted a roundtable with corporate social responsibility leaders from several companies, clients and partners. They all pondered the same question: How can we use new technologies to better understand all communities and have a greater impact?
They’re also thinking about how they can use it to improve their own productivity. I think everyone is trying to understand and take advantage of this technology because it’s evolving so quickly.
I have the privilege of working in a company that has focused on the continued training of its employees.
For the past two years, I’ve been involved in what we internally call the WatsonX Challenge, where we train in AI and participate in a team to solve a challenge. I was part of a CSR team and we focused on creating an AI assistant that could help answer questions about ESG practices.
Leaders are upskilling and upskilling in AI. I think it starts at the top and we see that all employees need to be involved. This is a way for many companies to upskill their employees in a fun, competitive, and team-oriented field.
AI is evolving rapidly. What is the impact of this rapid change? Do you see any parallels?
When I was in college, it was the launch of the Internet. For the average person, it wasn’t until a little over 30 years ago that it really accelerated rapidly and there was a need to understand it as an engineer. Even if you think about the digital divide and what we, as CSR professionals, have observed for 20 or 30 years, from the time the Internet became available to where we are today, there is still a gap.
I saw a statistic that six out of ten professionals globally still need to be upskilled. digital literacy. So when you think about that and what’s happening with the acceleration of next-generation AI, my concern is: Does this widen the gap?
How can we prevent the digital divide from becoming the digital divide we have known for many years and quickly help our communities, particularly in low-income areas, to ensure that they have access to the skills they need to succeed? Because the pace of transformation is unprecedented.