AI or Not

E009 - Kimberly Greene Starks and Pamela Isom

• Season 1 • Episode 9

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Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making.

What happens when a Java developer from IBM transitions into a leadership role at one of the nation's top universities? Join us as we chat with Kimberly Greene Starks, Executive Director of Digital Transformation and Digital Strategies at Vanderbilt University, who shares her incredible journey from hardware to software development and beyond. Kimberly talks about her unwavering dedication to innovation, the critical balance between technical skills and formal education, and the transformative power of continuous learning. She offers invaluable insights into developing essential communication and collaboration skills, which are pivotal for personal and professional growth.

Discover how emerging technologies like natural language processing (NLP) are revolutionizing the way universities manage IT service documents, saving time and resources while emphasizing the irreplaceable value of human oversight. Kimberly discusses practical applications of these technologies and the importance of self-directed learning, encouraging everyone to take control of their educational path. This episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiring stories that highlight the significance of upskilling across communities and balancing technical prowess with higher education for both individual and societal advancement. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation!

Pamela Isom: 0:00

This podcast is for informational purposes only. Personal views and opinions expressed by our podcast guests are their own and not legal advice, neither health tax, nor professional nor official statements by their organizations. Guest views may not be those of the host views may not be those of the host.


Pamela Isom: 0:32

Hello and welcome to AI or Not, the podcast where business leaders from around the globe share wisdom and insights that are needed now to address issues and guide success in your artificial intelligence and digital transformation journey. My name is Pamela Isom and I'm your podcast host. We have a special guest with us today Kimberly Greene Starks. Kimberly is director at Vanderbilt University. She's a leader. She's a good friend. I know I keep bringing out my good friends, but it's true I have a lot of them. She's just a wonderful person and very powerful when it comes to education. And so, kimberly, welcome to AI or Not. Thank you, pamela, thank you for having me. And, kimberly, I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself and your official title and then, as you're introducing yourself, tell me about your career journey, how you got to where you are today. I know we work together at IBM and some other things, so tell me how you got to where you are today and maybe share some insights on what caused you to dig and dive into education.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 1:45

Sure, so I'm Kimberly Greene Stark. As Pamela mentioned, I am Executive Director of Digital Transformation and Digital Strategies at Vanderbilt University, which is in Nashville, tennessee, usa, and I've joined Vanderbilt University about seven months ago after a 20-year career at IBM. At IBM, I started as a Java developer and WebSphere administrator and went up through the technical ranks, certifying as architect and leading technical teams, before becoming the global leader of infrastructure for corporate social responsibility, with that aligned to IBM Research, before I left after 20 years and joined Vanderbilt about seven months ago. So Pamela asked about my journey. That's a bit about it.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 2:39

I was always intrigued by tell me more about how that worked and to dig more deeply into taking things apart to see how they performed and to build them back up. That translated as a child into the physical washing machines, the dryer, refrigerators, and as I progressed through school it still remained in the physical. After getting my electrical engineering degree from Howard University in Washington DC, I joined Square D Company and worked on distributed systems and the firmware so that we could remote monitor those systems, and then later on transitioning to how we could read those things remotely and develop software. So at some point I got the software bug and transitioned fully over into the software development realm and, along the way, have had a very successful career in innovation and the patent franchise. Because, along the way, always how does it work? How could we improve things? What's the white space in some technology that we could advance that technology to make lives better for our communities?


Pamela Isom: 4:06

Yeah, that's just fascinating. I know you from when we first met and we were talking about mentorship and how do I grow and advance my career, and so we have just kept in touch and it's just so nice to see how you have progressed. And congratulations on being executive director at Vanderbilt. I think that that is just a catapult to your career trajectory. So that's a really good thing. And I know you. I know you as a person that is about educating. I mean, I was just not surprised when you informed me about this move you were making, because all the things that I know you've done and things that we've been exploring together, even it was about educating. So let's talk some more about that Upskilling.


Pamela Isom: 4:55

So what do you think about upskilling and workforce development? I know, to start out with, I personally think that there are significant opportunities to upskill. I am an AI person, but not total AI. So in this digital transformation world, I have concerns that our communities out there, communities at large, not just the African-American community, but rural communities, all communities I think we should focus a bit more on getting the skills in addition to the education, and so I'm excited to see that there are programs out there that are really pushing for skills development, but I am not in favor of not getting the education. I'm in favor of getting the skills while you get the higher education, and I always say to people that I'm talking to, whether it's a company or individuals. I always say to them don't be swayed by the emphasis on skills, make sure you keep a level head and get that education in there and then build those skills while you are being educated. So do them in parallel, but let's talk some more about upskilling and workforce development. What's your perspectives?


Kimberly Greene Starks: 6:17

I definitely am a skills first kind of person that if you have the skills necessary to perform the roles, then you should be considered. But I also agree that education cannot be discounted. I believe that, given the vast degree of levels of job, roles that are necessary for us all to achieve success, are necessary for us all to achieve success, there's a place for everyone. And so, whether your skills, your education journey, concluded with whatever degree you might have embarked on, from high school to higher ed and beyond that, there's a place for a lot of people, given the kinds of things that have to be done. And so, with your education, to embark on a skills journey that you never conclude, that you always learn something new, so that you enrich yourself but also enrich your community and help whatever country you live in, help position your country for the best possible outcome for the people of that country, which helps our world globally. So, while I truly believe that skills are what catapults people to success, there has to be underpinnings of education. You can't just be a technical person.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 7:48

You can't just have the skill to write this code and make this model do something. You have to have the education behind you that teaches you how to communicate well and work together with others and collaborate and all of the things that being in the education system affords us. So it's not so much technical skill focus, just really a complete person in your education. And when it comes to upskilling, I think you're never done. So. People ask me how were you at IBM for 20 years? How is that even possible? It was possible because I always reinvented the way I looked at things so I could find something new and exciting to go do next. And so IBM is about business units and I worked in the consulting practice, I worked in at headquarters, in corporate social responsibility, I worked in research. So to always evolve and find something that interests you and take that forward and pull that thread to see how can I apply what's necessary into something I actually like to do, so that you can get fulfillment but also be of benefit for the organization with which you work.


Pamela Isom: 9:23

Yeah, no, that's amazing. So there's some key messaging that came across in what you just said, and I think one of the things that I heard loud was be creative and allow yourself to continuously learn and evolve, and some research that I saw that's been coming out as of late, which we already know. But one of the skills is highly valued in individuals is a curiosity for lifelong learning. So that comes up more and more because employers are wanting people that are curious, that are willing to continuously evolve because of the changing world in which we live. And another area was digital literacy, which I think makes a whole lot of sense. Let's take myself, for example.


Pamela Isom: 10:12

I was never one to switch jobs very often, so I would stay at a place for I don't know, anywhere from seven to 12 years, which is a long time considering today's norm, but I would shift, as you mentioned, within the organizations. And then, finally, if I decided that it was time to move on, I would move on. But I think that it's so important to be flexible in your learning and take advantage of the environment that you're in, because there's so much to learn within that environment, if at all possible. So I like that idea and I do want to just reemphasize the fact that we need to really emphasize being lifelong learning because of the world in which we live and so that brings about I don't call them soft skills anymore because they're so critical so they're critical skills. So you need to be analytical when you want to be creative. You want to have that willingness to learn and see what you can learn in circumstances. So I agree with what you're saying and I actually appreciate what you're bringing out here.


Pamela Isom: 11:18

I want to go more into workforce development and talk some more about that from the standpoint of in the workforce development era, and I'll do workforce development and business operations. But what should organizations be thinking about when it comes to developing their people? I'll go there first. So what should organizations be thinking about? What should they be doing in the area of developing their people? But think about emerging tech in the middle of this, like working with AI as a companion. What should organizations be thinking about from a workforce development perspective?


Kimberly Greene Starks: 11:58

So first it might not be popular, but I think that organizations make sure they set the rules for their organization first, so people have a framework within which to work when they explore emerging tech.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 12:13

So what are the policies and procedures and guidelines that an org puts in place so that everyone's comfortable if they make use of an emerging tool, of emerging technology, that they're not going to be shown the door just for exploring? So make sure everyone knows what's the board look like, right? That's the first thing. What are the rules? What are the rules so that everyone is clear and there's no misunderstanding. After that, show people how to use the things in a way that will benefit not only them as an individual in getting their work accomplished, but also contribute to the mission Okay. And then after that, give people space to explore. Give a space to explore the things and apply it to their work product, if you will, because everyone approaches the problem from a different perspective and individually and then allow those people to collaborate collectively so that they can see what's possible, so that they can see what's possible.


Pamela Isom: 13:29

Yeah, so that's great. So here's the thing. So I agree with you 100%. I agree with you Set the rules. And the reason why I like that is because if you don't think about establishing rules and establishing where the boundaries are, then you are setting the organization up, not just the workforce, but you're just setting the organization up for unsuccessful outcomes. And if you haven't thought about setting rules or setting the boundaries or establishing some policies, that's an opportunity right now. So, when I'm talking to organizations about what should we be doing to prepare our workforce, to prepare our environment for emerging tech like AI and VR and different things, what should we be doing? Well, that's one of the first things that you want to do, and if you don't have policies, you should be thinking about. That's an opportunity right there. We need to start creating policies. So maybe we don't want to bring the tools in play yet because we haven't thought through what are some key policies or what I sometimes associate with, what's our governance model, what's our governance playbook going to look like for these emerging technologies, and then what are the rules? Goes along with it. So you mentioned that guiding the teams on how to use it to support the mission, or having brainstorming sessions and allowing the teams to come up with how we can collectively use these types of tools to advance the mission. But your point being, I should be on the mission, keep your eye on the mission, keep your eye on the mission, yeah, and then give people space to explore. So remember, proof of concepts used to be really popular, and now I guess I think they still are. But proof of concepts and pilot programs are really good at those types of things. So giving people room to explore, even if it doesn't turn into a proof of concept, it's given them an opportunity to feel like that it's okay to use the technology. So you should know.


Pamela Isom: 15:31

I was in a conversation recently with someone and we were talking about this and they said what some organizations are doing is just coming along and they're saying, no, these tools are not allowed, they are disallowed. So I'll say chat GPT in this example. So they said chat GPT is disallowed, unallowed. What happens is it opens the door for what me and my colleague call shadow AI, because they're going to do it anyway, people are going to do it anyway. It's like back in the email days, when you couldn't use your personal email in the office, but they have it on their phones. So what are you going to do? So we started doing it anyway. So what we need to do is cultivate our policies to accommodate these types of things and, considering the workforce and the people, and, if we engage people to come up with some criteria, that's a bit more inclusive anyway from my perspective. So that's good, yeah, so clearly I agree with you.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 16:38

But if you bring people into the governance discussions, then they'll behave.


Pamela Isom: 16:45

Yes, they will.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 16:47

I agree, agree, they were part of the solution, so yeah, and we're a part of the solution.


Pamela Isom: 16:52

It's hard to kick against something you've thought of. You want cooperation and you want people to not kick against it. Then include them in the discussion and include them in the decision making, or figure out a way to make us feel a part of the solution. So let's talk about organizations. I have companies that I work with today that are struggling with operationalizing emerging tech. In my case, I deal with AI and cyber, but this podcast is about digital transformation at large. So organizations are struggling with how do we go about operationalizing policies and how do we go from ethical principles to actual practices in the operationalization of technology. We talked quickly about some perspectives that you have. Can you share some of?


Kimberly Greene Starks: 17:46

those, sure. So once you get the policy laid down, the governance in place and you've allowed people to experiment, experiment, pick up one of those experiments and take it farther, take it to a proof of concept and, if it meets the needs of the business and you can show traction, operationalize it. Try it. We used to always say I'm a huge fan of agile practices fail fast and fall forward so that you tried it, you showed it can work and if it does what it needs to do for the mission, then let them do it. I'll give you an example that we're working on here around a transition of an IT service management tool.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 18:50

We have tens of thousands of policies, guidelines, standards and procedures that we want to single source and put in a cadence for how we will renew them, make updates, all of that. How many hours of people's time does it take to read a procedure document and modify it? And how often do they have to modify things as new vendors come on, as new tech comes on, as we change our integrations, that those documents have to be touched? How often A lot, and it takes several people across an organization to do that maintenance over time. That is the perfect example of something that you can send off and let natural language processing Put those templates, classify them, make sure everyone followed the definitions and they've marked them right all the way to.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 20:09

Let's change the template because we're changing our ITSM solution. Change it to this template, rewrite them all, go do that and give it back to me, and then people are spending their time in more review mode, not writing from scratch. Implementations of knowledge articles. Change the voice of this document and change it to the audience of the fifth graders, who are smarter than all of us, by the way but change it to the audience of the voice of the fifth graders, who are smarter than all of us, by the way but change it to the audience of the fifth graders so that it's written in their tone, for example.


Pamela Isom: 20:49

Right, and you can tell the technology to do that.


Kimberly Greene Starks: 20:52

Go, do that and give it back to me, and so I spend my time not on that very manual, labor-intensive activity, but I can spend my time on something else, bringing more value in another place. So that's one example of the way we're using an emerging technology to operationalize and move the mission forward Things that we have to do, that we can do better with emerging tech.


Pamela Isom: 21:25

Yeah, and that's a good example. It's a really good example and it's a real-life example, which is what we want. We want to understand the real-life use cases so we can understand that these tools are there to drive productivity and provide some really good examples as far as how it's really working and being effective for folks today. So that's a really good example. And what's really fascinating about that is you're at a university I have some colleagues who sometimes think that universities are not supportive of emerging tech for a certain reason and so this is a good example of how you find it valuable and you have identified a use case, not a high risk use case, and I also heard you mention there's still the humans in the loop. So you've got a mediocre risk use case that you have guardrails in place to ensure that the outcomes are going to be what you need, because I heard you say template. You said it creates a template, so that's why I caught on to that, because that's what we want to do. So when we're talking about guardrails of these tools and making sure that these tools are not going to introduce or exclude the human elements, that is a really good example. There was an example that I was discussing with someone recently on, the government has the FAR and that's that big document that's there for acquisitions and it's a big document. It's sometimes hard to process, it's sometimes hard to follow, and we were discussing how a thought would that the FAR becomes the data inputs and outputs for the large language models. So you mentioned natural language processing and so for NLP and for large language models in general, the models would use the FAR as one of the documents, so it eventually goes to it actually goes to ITSM as well, but for the procurement officers, the acquisitions and procurement teams. So that's really good. So it's a really good example and I try to help people understand that. Start with some of the simple, fundamental things and let's try to help people understand from a practical perspective what these tools really mean and how they can be helpful and effective. And let's try to help people understand from a practical perspective, what these tools really mean and how they can be helpful and effective. And then, how do you safeguard which are some of the things that you talked about, which you didn't call it out, but you said it's a template that you use and you build upon that and then you spend your time on other things that are high risk higher risk to the organization that needs your attention. So I appreciate that. I think it was a really good example.


Pamela Isom: 24:27

Yeah, so I don't have any more questions or discussion points for you. I usually will ask at this point just before I ask are there words of wisdom? So get ready. Are there words of wisdom? So, before you share that, I would like to know is there anything else that you would like to talk about while we are together on this show? It's okay if you don't have anything else. I don't think I have anything else. Okay, so I've covered everything that we said we would be discussing here, and so at this point, I'd like to know do you have words of wisdom or experiences that you would like to leave with the listeners?


Kimberly Greene Starks: 25:13

I think we covered it already Be creative in your learning journey, and if you have a topic that interests you, explore it until it no longer interests you. Explore it until you think you know everything that you need to know not what someone else thinks you need to know, but what you think you need to know on a topic. And I'll also say that regardless of your role. And so I sometimes think people think, oh, I'm not technical or oh, that's not my job, or I'm not in that department, and so they feel like they don't have an opportunity to explore something. No one can put limits on what you learn except you, and so take that to the fullest and continue to explore until you no longer want to explore.


Pamela Isom: 26:13

Okay, so I usually will play back what you said, but you were pretty clear. No one can put limits on you except you and what you learn and explore a topic. Continue to learn about something until you decide that you're no longer interested. Yes, so I really want to thank you for being here and talking to me today. It's so good to see you again. You, too, you did a really great job and congratulations again in your role.