Me, Myself, and AI

You might have seen Land O’Lakes’ dairy products on store shelves without giving much thought to how they got there, but that’s something CTO Teddy Bekele thinks about every day. While the farmers and agricultural retailers of Land O’Lakes work to produce the cooperative’s products, starting from the seeds used to grow animal feed, Teddy Bekele is focused on supporting agriculture’s “fourth revolution” — one that’s embracing technologies like artificial intelligence. On this episode of the Me, Myself, and AI podcast, Teddy explains how Land O’Lakes uses predictive analytics and AI to help farmers and other agricultural producers be more productive and make better decisions about the business of farming. Read the episode transcript here.Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders.Read more about our show and follow along with the series at https://sloanreview.mit.edu/ai.Guest bio:Teddy Bekele is the CTO of Land O’Lakes, leading the organization’s digital transformation by leveraging existing and emerging technologies to discover, implement, and deliver solutions and ecosystems. Previously, Bekele served as vice president of ag technology for WinField United. Bekele holds an MBA from Indiana University and a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University. His community leadership includes serving as chair of the Minnesota Broadband Task Force and the Federal Task Force on Precision Ag Connectivity, and as a board member for Stella Health, Genesys Works Twin Cities, and the Minnesota Technology Association.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.

Stéphane Lannuzel has worked in the beauty industry for 15 years and now directs the Beauty Tech program at L’Oréal. His team uses artificial intelligence to improve customer experience in a variety of ways, including helping them try on cosmetics virtually and providing product recommendations. L’Oréal recently developed TrendSpotter, an AI-based social listening tool that tracks macro-influencer posts and other online content and informs the cosmetics, skin care, and hair products company of upcoming trends that can then inform new product development. Listen to this episode to learn how Stéphane sees AI, and technology more broadly, as a force of good and the enabler of more meaningful professional and customer experiences. Read the episode transcript here.Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.Guest bio:Stéphane Lannuzel is director of L’Oréal Groupe’s Beauty Tech program, which aims to personalize the customer experience through technology. He started his career in project finance in Australia at Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, a large French bank, after graduating from École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris) and Imperial College (London). He then spent seven years with Kearney, a consulting firm specializing in the luxury and consumer goods industries.For the past 15 years, Lannuzel has been working in the beauty industry, first for Shiseido and then for L’Oréal, where he has been for the past seven years. He has held various positions in the role of operations director, most recently serving as chief digital officer in charge of Operations 4.0, a large-scale digital and tech transformation program within L’Oréal Operations. Lannuzel is also a member of the GS1 management board.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.

Frank Nestle, Sanofi’s global head of research and chief scientific officer, was inspired to enter the health sciences field after reading an Albert Camus novel and realizing his calling was to help others. In his current role, Frank oversees the pharmaceutical company’s transition from primary care to specialty care, which includes developing medicines for immunology, oncology, and rare diseases. In this episode, Frank explains how artificial intelligence enables Sanofi to work toward drug discovery in more agile ways. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.Guest bio:Dr. Frank O. Nestle is global head of research and chief scientific officer at Sanofi, with responsibility for its main therapeutic research areas of immunology and inflammation, oncology, neurology, rare diseases, hematology, and genomic medicine. Before joining Sanofi in 2016, Nestle was a professor and chair of cutaneous medicine and immunotherapy at King’s College London and practiced medicine at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital. At King’s College, he led research, translational clinical trials, and teams in dermatology, allergology, and immunology. He also held several executive roles, in particular at the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Biomedical Research Center.Nestle is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a senior investigator emeritus at the National Institute for Health Research, and past president of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies. He has published over 220 scientific articles and has received several awards and honors, including the Alfred Marchionini Research Award at the 20th World Congress of Dermatology.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.

Me, Myself, and AI returns on Tuesday, August 2. Hear what others are saying about the show — and leave us a review!(Your review comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.)Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.

It might seem like cosmetics and perfume are products shoppers need to try out in person before buying, but artificial intelligence is opening up new avenues for reaching and understanding consumers — as well as new ways to manage supply chains.In this episode, we learn how Estée Lauder’s Sowmya Gottipati leveraged her earlier technology leadership experience in telecommunications and broadcast media to deploy brand technology projects for a portfolio of cosmetics, fragrances, and skin and hair care product brands. She talks about AI’s role in product development, a virtual try-on tool for lipsticks and foundations, and a fragrance recommendation engine, as well as an application for supply and demand planning. Sowmya also explains why, despite AI’s power, she believes human-machine interaction will always be necessary. Listen to the episode transcript here.Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.Watch Shervin Khodabandeh's recent TED talk on human-machine collaboration here.Guest bio:Sowmya Gottipati is an accomplished business and technology leader who has managed and delivered products across the telecom, media, and retail industries. She is currently vice president of global supply chain technology at Estée Lauder, leading digital transformation and providing oversight of all technology solutions globally. Previously, she was the company’s vice president of technology in the capacity of brand CIO.Before joining Estée Lauder, Gottipati was vice president of digital and emerging technologies at NBCUniversal. She also served as a technology leader at AT&T, where she managed and delivered products in data, web, mobile, and cloud services. Gottipati has a master’s degree in engineering from North Carolina State University and MBA from Columbia Business School, as well as a private pilot license.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.

As Boeing China’s regional director of airspace and airport programs, Helen Lee is helping the aerospace giant work toward improving airport and airspace operational efficiency and enhancing flight safety for its aviation customers. In this episode, Helen discusses ongoing research that involves using AI to analyze the wake turbulence of aircraft with computer vision systems, using speech recognition to analyze interactions between pilots and air controllers to minimize the potential for human error, and using image recognition to scan planes for needed repairs. Helen also talks about the challenges of implementing such technology across a complex industry in which there’s no tolerance for error and systems must be impenetrable to hackers. Read the episode transcript here.Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.Watch Shervin Khodabandeh's recent TED talk on human-machine collaboration here.Guest bio:Helen H. Lee is responsible for managing and coordinating Boeing’s airport, airspace, and air traffic management programs in the Greater China region. She also initiates and provides technical guidance and insight to related programs in the region. She is the first China-based employee to be selected as a Boeing Technical Fellow, the company’s most elite team of technical experts.Previously, Lee served as air traffic management (ATM) research lead for Boeing Research & Technology-China, where she planned and managed all ATM-related research projects involving Chinese domestic research partners. Before joining Boeing, she was a senior consultant at Boeing Jeppesen Airspace and Airport Services Group, where she led a project team that provided simulation and consulting services in support of major airport and airspace modernization efforts worldwide. Lee earned a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Minnesota.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.

eBay is familiar as an e-commerce site that facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers. But as eBay’s first chief AI officer, Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov is focused on the role artificial intelligence technology can play in enhancing the user experience for everyone who engages with the platform.In this episode, Nitzan shares examples of the AI tools eBay is building, such as a 3D visualization tool for sellers create their own models, and intent detection tools to enhance customer service. He also discusses his academic background in biology and neuroscience, his purposeful progression from health care to financial services to online travel and finally to e-commerce, and the challenges of scaling up AI capabilities organizationwide to drive transformational value. Read the episode transcript here.Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.Guest bio:Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov is chief AI officer at eBay. He leads the company’s vision and strategy for transforming how it delivers value to sellers and buyers around the globe through AI-led experiences, such as semantic recommenders, reasoning systems, visual understanding, and immersive visual experiences. Mekel-Bobrov has led the AI organizations at some of the largest brands in health care, financial services, and e-commerce, spanning AI science, engineering, and product development. He holds a doctorate in computational genomics and a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Chicago.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey. 

Over the course of her nine-year tenure at LinkedIn, Ya Xu has held technology roles with increasing responsibility. Today, she heads the data function for the online professional networking platform.Ya joins hosts Sam and Shervin in this episode to discuss AI’s essential role in helping LinkedIn create the best “matches” — content creators with content consumers, job seekers with employers, and buyers with sellers — within its three key marketplaces. Ya also describes how the company has fostered a data-first culture from the top down, and how its vast amount of economic activity data is helping governments and policy makers worldwide. Read the episode transcript here.Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.Guest bio:Ya Xu has been a driving force in transforming LinkedIn into a data-first company since she first joined the organization in 2013. As head of data, she leads a global team of about 1,000 data scientists and AI engineers whose work is at the core of delivering economic opportunities to LinkedIn’s members and customers. Xu’s emphasis on responsible AI and data science ensures that LinkedIn’s AI systems put people first and enables the company to empower its members, better serve its customers, and benefit society.In addition to her work at LinkedIn, Xu has coauthored the book Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments (Cambridge University Press, 2020), has been named to Fortune’s 40 under 40 in tech, and was nominated for VentureBeat’s Women in AI Awards. She has delivered countless speeches, including a commencement speech to Stanford’s class of 2019 in mathematics, statistics, and mathematical and computational science. Previously, Xu worked at Microsoft and earned a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University

Specialized teams — particularly technology teams — often face challenges as they strive to work cross-functionally, especially at legacy organizations. For Kobi Abayomi, vice president of data science at Warner Music Group, addressing such challenges starts with hiring strong talent into the technology function.In this episode, Kobi joins Sam and Shervin to explain how the music company is moving its infrastructure into the digital era, how it leverages vast amounts of consumer data to make informed decisions in an increasingly challenging landscape, and how AI is helping customers discover new music they’ll love. Read the full episode transcript here.Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.Guest bio:Kobi Abayomi is the senior vice president for data science at Warner Music Group, where he and his team enable the company to understand, respond to, and predict trends and opportunities in listening.Abayomi has authored novel work in statistics (multivariate data imputation), econometrics (measures of inequality), and probability (distributions with fixed marginal and information theoretic measures) and has two patents pending in fraud detection and audience activation. Abayomi serves on the Data Science Advisory Council at Seton Hall University and on the Ivan Allen College Advisory Board at the Georgia Institute of Technology.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.

Katia Walsh began her career as a journalist in her native Bulgaria and is now the global chief strategy and AI officer at retailer Levi Strauss & Co. Over the course of her career, she has developed a passion for three things: the power of information, the power of technology, and the power of machine learning. Her enthusiasm for these subjects is evident as she describes how she is ensuring that a well-known legacy clothing brand remains relevant through technological transformation.In this episode, Katia explains how she has organized digital transformation and employee engagement at Levi Strauss around five C’s: connections with consumers, commerce, creation, careers, and culture. She also describes the machine learning boot camps the retailer has offered to nontech employees to boost innovation and outlines how the company thinks about responsible AI practices. Read the episode transcript here.Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.Guest Bio:Katia Walsh is senior vice president and chief global strategy and AI officer at Levi Strauss & Co., where she focuses on setting the clothing company’s holistic digital and corporate strategy. Previously, she was the first chief global data and analytics officer of Vodafone Group and held strategic data analytics leadership positions at Prudential Financial, Fidelity Investments, and Forrester Research. Walsh was named the U.K.’s Data Leader of the Year for three consecutive years by the Women in IT Awards series. She holds a doctoral degree in strategic communication from the University of Missouri-Columbia.We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.