Running toward the unknown: How Samantha Stark pivoted from the arts to build an AI-focused communications firm

The useful part

Upgrade your browser today or install Google Chrome Frame to better experience this site. Long before Samantha Stark founded an AI transformation consultancy, she was a musician, painter and self-described theater kid who assumed her future would unfold in the arts. Then an internship at a small Baltimore public relations agency introduced her to the strategy behind storytelling and changed the direction of her career.

How it works

• What attracts Stark is the intellectual work of understanding a new technology deeply enough to make it useful.
• "Learning how to prompt it, refine it and produce something meaningful is part of the challenge, and the fun." Stark's instinct is to run "toward the unknown" when she believes it will have an extraordinary...
• "I think there was a moment where the click happened," Stark said.
• She leaned into Napster and Pandora as they changed how people discovered music, joined Twitter and Facebook when social media was in its infancy, and taught herself search engine optimization and online...

What to take from it

Stark said this can be especially difficult for women because professional and personal expectations can leave little room for reflection. Without space to consider what creates energy, where passion lies and what success should look like now, it is difficult to choose the next step intentionally. Contact [email protected] or 1-800-878-5331 Trouble logging in?

Example or evidence

• That pivot launched a 25-year career spanning public relations, marketing, digital innovation and executive leadership.
• The common thread throughout has been her fascination with technology, and the moments where it has reshaped culture.
• When generative AI arrived, she tested an early version of ChatGPT by asking it to develop a crisis communications plan for a fictional hotel emergency.
• This is only the beginning of what this technology can do for communications.

Details worth keeping

AI felt like the continuation of that pattern but on a far larger scale. The quality of its response stopped her cold. "Working with AI is like working with a different life form," she said.

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