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Artificial intelligence capabilities have rapidly shifted from nice-to-have extras to essential requirements across industries and job levels. Employers now prioritize candidates who can harness AI tools to multiply productivity, accelerate innovation, and solve complex problems with lean resources. In this article, experts reveal how mastering AI skills can unlock career opportunities, faster promotions, and competitive advantages in today’s job market. Own One System and Share Insights For me, the secret to standing out in the age of AI was pretty simple: if your company is starting to use AI, use it. Don’t wait for someone to tell you where to start. Pick one tool, go deep, and let curiosity lead you. When I was a learning designer at Zapier, I decided to focus on one thing, a new tool that had just rolled out: AI Agents by Zapier. I pushed everything nonessential to the side and gave myself two weeks to learn it inside and out. Along the way, I realized that to make my Agents even better, I needed to understand other tools too: AI fields in Tables, Chatbots, and AI steps in automation workflows. That one deep dive became a crash course in the future of work. I started filming myself as I learned, sharing the process and mistakes with others. Soon, teammates were reaching out for help. Product teams asked me to test new features and give feedback. And before I knew it, I’d become the go-to AI person without a technical background. Eighteen months later, I was promoted to senior AI automation engineer. If you want to stand out and make yourself indispensable, start there: Go deep on something. Master one AI tool instead of dabbling in many. Share what you learn. Help your teammates, post your insights, and be generous with your knowledge. Be strategic. Know when AI is the right solution (and, importantly, when it’s not). Being proactive about AI isn’t just about saving time. It’s about showing that you can drive change, not wait for it. That’s what makes you valuable, no matter how much technology evolves. Emily Mabie, AI Automation Engineer, Zapier Start Companies With Generative Help Generative AI is not just a differentiator; it’s a career accelerator that can expand career opportunities far beyond traditional paths. AI literacy empowers individuals to create entirely new opportunities that would previously have been inaccessible to them without significant resources or institutional backing. One powerful example is how generative AI tools, even free ones like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, can enable someone to launch a company instead of simply searching for yet another corporate role. With AI, an aspiring entrepreneur with a business idea is empowered to research and draft a well-thought-out business plan in hours, create and iterate on a brand identity without hiring a creative agency, develop a full-fledged marketing plan, and even simulate customer feedback by asking AI to role-play as an ideal customer persona to review, critique, and evaluate offerings through their lens. This ability to work with AI on tasks that once required significant investment and teams of consultants, designers, and executive focus groups fundamentally changes the opportunities for career advancement. It lowers the barrier to entry for entrepreneurship, allowing individuals to test ideas, refine messaging, and build expertise at a fraction of the cost and time it would take without AI. It’s like having an entire team of executives, business planners, marketers, and writers at your fingertips. When I began building my consultancy, I used free generative AI tools to do just that. One of the biggest advantages my AI skills created was being able to use AI to role-play as my ideal customer persona, asking it to critique my offerings, evaluate my positioning, and highlight my blind spots. That iterative feedback loop gave me insights into how the C-suite would look at my services so I could better address their needs and concerns, and “speak” their language so it would be easier for me to build trust and, ultimately, close the deal. I believe the real power of AI skills is not that it just makes you better at your current job, but that it opens doors to entirely new ones. It helps individuals transform from simply being a “job applicant” to being an “opportunity creator.” That’s how AI is truly going to reshape the future of work. Because AI skills don’t just prepare you for the future they give you the agency to create it for yourself. Kristin Ginn, Founder, trnsfrmAItn Scale Impact With Lean Force Multipliers AI skills are no longer optionalthey are becoming fundamental for every job seeker, regardless of profession. The reason is simple: AI is transforming how work gets done in three very clear stagesfirst by automating routine tasks, then by enhancing our abilities, and finally by transforming what individuals and small teams can achieve. Most people stop at the first stage, using AI to save time on emails, reports, or documentation. But the real opportunity lies in the next two stages. When you use AI to enhance your thinking, creativity, and output, you suddenly operate at a much higher level. And when you reach the transformation stage, AI becomes a force multiplierenabling you to do work that previously required large teams and significant resources. I’ve experienced this personally while building my company. Thanks to AI, we have been able to build and scale one of the best all-in-one AI platforms for teachers and students with a two-member team. Everything from product management to engineering to content, design, marketing, and operations has been streamlined because AI handles a significant portion of the heavy lifting. What would traditionally require 2025 people can now be executed by a lean, agile team that is able to move quickly and deliver high-quality output across every area. This is the true power of AInot just automating tasks but transforming the very structure of how teams and companies operate. This is why AI proficiency is becoming a defining skill for today’s workforce. People who know how to use AI don’t just work fasterthey think better, create better, and adapt better. They become more strategic, more creative, and more capable. In every fieldteaching, engineering, design, marketing, HR, sales the professionals who embrace AI will accelerate, and those who don’t will find it increasingly difficult to stay competitive. The reality is that AI is not here to replace human talent; it is here to elevate it. It levels the playing field, giving individuals access to capabilities that once required entire departments. For job seekers, students, and pofessionals, mastering AI tools is the most direct way to stand out in a crowded job market and open doors to opportunities that simply didn’t exist a few years ago. And if a two-member team can build and scale a platform like ours using AI, imagine what individuals can do in their own careers with the same mindset. That’s the future of work. Binit Agarwalla, Founder, TeachBetter.ai Pair Technology With Irreplaceable Human Strengths AI skills are essential because they sit at the heart of how work gets done now. But here’s what matters more: AI can’t replace the human skills that truly differentiate uslistening, building relationships, making judgment calls. When people master AI tools, they gain time and headspace to focus on what makes them irreplaceable. You can work faster, produce better quality output, and tackle projects that once felt impossible. Combined with your human abilitiesempathy, curiosity, strategic thinkingyou become far more valuable to any organization. When I built my company, AI became my operational backbone. While I focused on listening to clients and shaping their transformation stories, AI helped me analyze feedback, test messaging, and turn rough ideas into polished content. This meant I could build a coaching practice at startup speed while staying focused on the deeper human workunderstanding what people really need. AI gave me velocity. But the human insightthe listening, the connection, the meaning-makingthat’s what made the work valuable. That combination opened doors to bigger stages and leadership conversations I wouldn’t have reached as quickly otherwise. The future belongs to people who can combine AI efficiency with irreplaceable human skills. Tünde Lukacs, Founder Executive Coach Keynote Speaker, The Change Republic Launch Software Through Prompt Mastery AI tools are erasing technical gatekeepingopening up high-value, technical jobs and paths to starting companies to nontraditional candidates. There used to be a four-year coding college prerequisite to building production-quality software, gluing stuff together, or making things happen. The most striking effect of AI I’ve seen in the last year is people bypassing it. One of the most impressive career leaps I’ve encountered was of a former VC CFO whom I talked to recently. He used Replit’s AI pair programmer to build and launch his own SaaS app in under 3 months. He had zero software experience. He just sat down with Excel and workflows he knew from his finance job and threw them right into AI co-pilot to make an app. This was not possible two years ago. He couldn’t become a “real” engineer, and this app that he’s making is not an Excel-based macro. He literally taught himself how to make software with the AI acting as his partner in the driving seat. Prompt engineeringtalking in English to make AI do complex thingsis now as valuable a skill as coding was 10 years ago. We see that the primary accelerant is not coding per se, but prompt engineering. Many of the most effective users of our service are not coders. They have to figure out how to give the AI goals and constraints and hammer out a detailed process, all in English. They have to turn their thoughts into instructions that involve their home context. This skill is getting to be worth more than coding. Now people can go to sleep thinking up videos they want to show, and then by morning have those videos done, without having to learn VFX or hire a studio. That’s a sea change. That’s why I tell job seekers to put “prompt engineering” on their resumes. Runbo Li, Cofounder & CEO, Magic Hour Drive Uptake and Unlock Bigger Roles AI skills are becoming essential because, obviously, they save time and effort. And it’s not about just handing everything over to a tool and hoping for the bestinstead, it’s about knowing what to ask, how to review the output, and when to trust your own experience over the suggestion. In essence, AI allows everyone to become a kind of manager rather than someone who just executes tasks. Employers know this, which is why they’re increasingly looking for people who can get better results with AI. And, if you’re the person who consistently does more without working more, you naturally become the one invited into bigger projects, strategy conversations, and cross-functional work. That’s where bigger opportunities tend to open up. A good example is our Sr. Director of Communications & Creative, who recently moved into an AI Operations Manager role. He stayed current on new tools, tested them, and openly promoted what worked across the company. In under one year, he switched from Replit to Cursor, which is typically seen as a tool for more tech-savvy users. Eventually, he also pushed for a company-wide effort to upskill by launching “AI Days”a monthly initiative where everyone focuses only on AI projects for the day. We use that time to build custom tools with platforms like v0.dev, create custom GPTs, or test new third-party AI solutions to boost productivity. Dovil Gelčinskait, Senior Talent Manager, Omnisend Adopt Smart Tools to Accelerate Advancement The requirement for AI skills is increasing rapidly, as virtually every occupation includes aspects of the artificial intelligence sector. The capacity for tools to obtain greater levels of intelligence, and the expectation that workers will be able to work side by side with technology, has increased dramatically. Those who possess the ability to effectively use AI will have the potential to work faster and achieve better outcomes. This skill has evolved to be a primary skill as opposed to an additional skill. Having an understanding of AI also opens up new opportunity avenues. You can transition to a different occupation, automate your mundane tasks, and illustrate your adaptive capabilities. This indicates that you are prepared for the future of work, not the present. A brief example from my experience. I hired a junior level analyst who had no prior experience in technical fields, but had extensive knowledge and understanding of artificial intelligence tools. This junior level analyst utilized AI tools for tasks such as data organization, analysis, and report creation. Within a few months of being with us, she became the premier person within the organization to utilize AI workflows and gained considerable recognition, leading to a promotion to a higher level role, as part of the product development team, much sooner than anticipated. The AI tools that this analyst used did not supplant her work, but rather enhanced what she was doing. Therefore, for everyone today, this is the opportunity available to them. Mr Edward Tian, Founder/CEO, GPTZero Adapt Swifly and Clarify Decisions AI skills have become essential because the pace and complexity of work have outgrown what anyone can hold in their head. The job seekers who thrive are the ones who know how to pair their human judgment with tools that help them think, create, and decide more effectively. It’s no longer about what or how much we know. It’s what we do with this information and how we apply it in innovative and influential ways. AI isn’t the destination. It’s a method of reaching it. It is the way we clear mental clutter and speed up the work that bogs us down. When we define AI as a resource and a tool rather than an identity, the whole conversation shifts, allowing us to move faster, solve problems with greater precision, and spend more time on work that advances us personally and professionally. I am an executive coach and leadership development facilitator. Two recent clients proved how much AI can sharpen career clarity. One used AI to compare three possible career paths against his 20 years of experience, which helped him choose the strongest direction and craft a short bio for informational interviews. Another uploaded her 360 feedback and used AI to distill pages of comments into a clear summary for her managers, outlining the skills she wanted to strengthen and the support she needed to evolve. But let’s be real. There’s no “mastering” AI. How can we when this tool is evolving by the hour? The real skill is learning to adapt to AI, get comfortable with it, and shape it to our own work. AI is the how behind better thinking, better decisions, and, fortunately for job seekers, better storytelling about our value. When job seekers show they can work with a rapidly changing tool set, they signal agility, curiosity, and the kind of problem-solving that sets them apart in an AI-shaped workplace that’s changing in real time. Tina Robinson, Founder and CEO, WorkJoy Gain Capacity and Elevate Quality AI skills will transform an individual’s ability to be able to increase efficiency creating capacity to either do more or to utilize excess capacity to improve quality of their deliverables. The ability to do more and improve their effectiveness will allow those earlier in their career to develop quicker and accelerate through the organizational stack sooner. For more senior folks, in addition to the personal benefits of the above-mentioned efficiency and effectiveness principles, the knowledge and exposure of AI skills will allow them to build and transform their organizations to have higher levels of throughput, distinctive competitive muscle, and an ability to serve existing as well as gain new customer segments. For me, this was transformative when I was launching my podcast in Q2 of 2024. Having never done it before, I was initially relying primarily on manual editorial work using video and sound editing tools, manually transcribing interviews, and going through numerous keyword iterations to post a single video. This effort was taking over 40 hours for a single episode. In the last five quarters while I have had to invest my time in learning and keeping up with the pace of rapidly developing AI-enabled tools, my efforts on each episode are now down to less than four hours. From transcription, to video and sound editing, to intelligent copywriting, posting, and engagement, the use of AI-enabled tools has given me hours of capacity back and the product quality is far superior than what I was able to previously achieve with manual work. Rohit Bassi, Founder & CEO, People Quotient (PQ) Prove Relevance to Overcome Bias I’ve reviewed hundreds of job postings in the past year, and the common theme is showing some understanding of how AI can be used to become more efficient. You don’t necessarily need to be an AI expert, but you do need to show that you are upskilling and aware of how you can use AI to do your job better. This is important for job seekers of all ages, but especially for experienced job seekers who can often face ageism and/or assumptions that they aren’t staying on-trend with current technology. However, demonstrating AI skills can definitely mitigate ageism risk. I recently worked with an IT analyst client in his late 60swe led off his résumé/LinkedIn with his generative AI experience and he landed his dream job within months in spite of the challenging market. The key is being clear that you know how to leverage this technology to improve the company’s bottom line. Colleen Paulson, Executive Career Consultant, Ageless Careers Harness New Leaps to Build Empires Many fear AI will replace white-collar jobs. I argue that AI will instead re-skill them, favoring those who master it as a strategic tool. Our primal “fight or flight” response makes us see AI as a foe, but every technological leap in human history has been driven by those who dared to harness a powerful new force. Consider the transition just a century ago: horses were the dominant mode of transportation. Those who daringly mastered the automobile and aviation, often through self-teaching, built the next generation of empires. Today, early adopters of AI are positioned to dominate the next half-century. New enterprises will be founded, and a new cohort of technology leaders will emerge. This is simply the natural progression of every technological revolution, from controlling fire to inventing the wheel. In my own case, I started small, using ChatGPT and Gemini to research and draft content for a liquor store blog I was operating. Initially, my prompt engineering was clumsy. However, as I improved, the tools made producing content (listicles, cocktail trends, spirits history) significantly more efficient. This AI-fueled content strategy provided strong SEO and value, helping the brand scale from a single store to three, eventually leading to my successful exit with a 3X ROI. I am now leveraging these newly acquired skills to capture Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) businessspecifically, using AI to rapidly generate, refine, and optimize marketing content for discovery across platforms. This has enabled me to scale my marketing agency, which had not actively onboarded new clients in three years. What began as an efficient way to pump out content for a single store has transformed into a core, highly profitable service offering. At 52, I can attest that this proficiency is not age-limited; mastering AI adds tangible, immediate value to clients and unlocks significant career growth. Mr. Steven Paul Matsumoto, Founder, Chief Strategist, Stigmare Inc Prototype Solutions Fast to Win Offers Many companies today test candidates’ creativity by giving them a very specific problem to solve with little to no time. This is precisely where AI can help you in your next job application. Four months ago, I started at Productive, and one of the tests I had was to create a functioning cold outreach campaign from scratch in four hours without spending too many resources. In those two hours, I learned the baics of n8n and used it to create an almost completely autonomous sequence by connecting tools like Ocean.io, Apify, ChatGPT, and Reply.io. Of course, it did not work perfectly, but the concept was enough to get me the job. Milos Radic, Marketing Partnership Manager, Productive.io Automate Workflows and Earn Rapid Promotion I had a content manager at our marketing agency who was mostly responsible for ensuring his content team was creating the right content and enough of it, but he’d often have to help them out himself. He’s always been a huge AI fan, talking about new advances and boring most of us. Over a period of 35 months, he’d occasionally want to show me something he’d built that either integrated with or utilized AI to automate or semi-automate tasks and processes that were responsibilities of his content team. After about four months of this and him getting better and continually creating more automated tasks/work by AI, he’d reduced the amount of human work needed by the content team by almost 60%. My concern was always quality or mistakes, so I’d test things and double check, but the end result was consistently BETTER than human work. Long story short, he quickly received a promotion to a new job that didn’t exist at our company before, so I made it up, and his title became chief operational efficiency officer. He went from a lower-level manager to an executive in a few months due to his AI proficiency and ability to implement. Landon Murie, CEO, Goodjuju Marketing
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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Last week, Modern CEO shared reader recommendations of books leaders should read to get ready for 2026. Lyft CEO David Risher submitted a classic, writing: If youre looking for inspiration on how to write a comeback story for your company, theres no better tale than The Odyssey. Risher knows a bit about penning comeback stories. Hes undertaking the Homerian task of reviving rideshare company Lyft and narrowing the gap between the company and rival Uber. Taking on a turnaround When Risher became CEO of Lyft in April 2023, after serving on its board of directors for almost two years, the companys stock was trading at about $9 per share, well below its IPO price of $72 per share. At the time, its U.S. market penetration was about 26% or 27%. Lyft, once hailed as an innovator and a whimsical alternative to Uber, was stagnating. Risher had previously worked at Amazon, where founder Jeff Bezos instilled an ethos of customer obsession, and he quickly assessed that Lyft had lost sight of its riders. Its employees also tended to overthink issues. Risher has sought to address both issues: Early in his tenure, for example, he noted that customers experienced a cancellation about 15% of the time. When Risher expressed concern over the stat, employees shrugged it off. Eventually a driver would show up, and rides were completed 99% of the time. I said, Okay, but 100% of the time, its annoying, Risher recalls. When some team members suggested they address Rishers concerns by conducting research, he replied: I dont think we have to do a study. I can tell you right now, its just really annoying. So, lets stop doing that, please. Getting driver cancellations down required operational and technical work, but Lyft has made progress, with rates now below 5%. Risher believes that reliability helps customer loyalty. Other rider-centric moves include the national rollout last year of Lyft Silver, a service for older adults, and Women+ Connect, an opt-in feature that increases the odds of pairing female and nonbinary riders with female and nonbinary drivers. Still, Lyft has been called out on safety issues: A recent New York Times investigation into sexual assault by Uber drivers noted that Lyft bans all drivers with convictions for violent felonies but it, too, is facing sexual assault lawsuits from passengers. Were committed to continuously strengthening our systems and working with safety experts, advocates, and regulators to set the highest standards for our industry, the company told The Times. Risher has also worked to expand Lyfts reach via the recent acquisition of Freenow, a European mobility platform, a move that he says doubles the companys addressable market. Now we truly are a global company, he says. Under Rishers leadership, Lyft has eked out gains: Its market share has climbed to about 30%, and the stock now trades at about $19 per share, up about 40% over the past 12 months, outperforming Uber and the broader market. Some analysts have speculated that Lyft could be an attractive acquisition for Amazon, Tesla, Google, or Waymo as they look to expand their autonomous transportation ambitions. As a public company, were on sale every day on the market, Risher responds. People can buy our shares anytime they want, but were not out looking for suitors. Indeed, Risherwho was a comparative literature major at Princeton Universitysounds like someone who hasnt finished writing Lyfts comeback story. When I asked what stage the turnaround is in, he says, It might well be 10%. Whats left to be done? Having really focused on people, customer obsession, and a deep culture of operational excellence, he says, now, frankly, its asking: How do we grow in new ways? He calls autonomous vehicles one of the biggest opportunities weve had since the beginning of the company and envisages a hybrid network that allows riders to decide whether they want a self-driving car or one with a driver. I think thats going to be a big unlock, he adds. Tell us your turnaround tales Are you trying to turn around a company? What are some of the tactics youre deploying to increase sales, grow market share, or restore your brand? Send me a few lines about what youre doing at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Well publish top insights in a future newsletter. Listen and read more: comeback kids Brian Niccol, Starbuckss $100 million man, shares his vision Elliot Hill on his mission to make epic shit at Nike How to turn your company around after a crisis
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To an outside observer (honestly even to the average American), the jurisdiction of the United States government appears convolutedit’s a collection of states with one set of rules that can be overturned by the larger federal government. Holidays can sometimes fall into liminal space, and it can get confusing as to what is open and closed on days such as today (Monday, January 19), Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Lets take a look at the man behind the holiday and the fight to get his birthday recognized, before we dive into how the day is observed. How was Martin Luther King Jr. Day established? Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) was a civil rights leader, Baptist minister, and social activist whose legacy cannot be overstated. King was instrumental in organizing the Montgomery bus boycott, which began in 1955. He cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to continue the advancement of Black people in American society. He also organized the 1963 March on Washington, which helped usher in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and he was the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. The movement to create MLK Day started just four days after Kings death in 1968. Representative John Conyers introduced the idea in the House of Representatives, but it would take 11 years before a vote would be held on the motion. It would take even longer for the vote to pass. Stevie Wonder got involved, dropping a single in an effort to get Kings birthday formal recognition. Another march on Washington was organized by King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, where around 500,000 people took to the streets to show their support of the cause. Finally in 1983, the House passed the bill, although the Senate proved to be another battle, as Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina attempted to block the bill with a filibuster. President Ronald Reagan signed it into law in 1983 and the first federal holiday was observed three years later. It wasnt until 2000 that all 50 states recognized the holiday. Now that we know the history behind the observance, here’s what to know about the potential disruption of normal day-to-day services. Are banks open on MLK Day? No. Most banks are closed because it is a federal holiday. Online banking is available. ATMs are available if you need fast cash. Is the post office open on MLK Day? No. The United Sates Postal Service (USPS) is closed on federal holidays, and most physical post offices won’t be open. Mail will not be delivered. Are Fedex and UPS operating? UPS will be closed in observance of MLK Day. FedEx will remain open with modified service. Is the stock market open? No. Both the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nasdaq exchange will be closed. Are schools open? No. Most public schools will be closed in observance of the holiday. If your loved one attends or works at a private school it’s a good practice to double check. Are restaurants open? Yes. Most large chain restaurants will be open but some will modify their hours. This includes major fast-food chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and others. Smaller mom-and-pop establishments can make their own rules so it is best to call ahead. Are retail chains open? Yes. Most major retailers and big-box stores are open. This includes Walmart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot. Are pharmacies open? Yes. If you happen to catch the flu or a cold that always seems to go around at this time of the year, Walgreens and CVS are available to soothe your ailments. Are grocery stores open? Yes. Groceries stores are typically open, including major chains such as Whole Foods, Kroger, and Aldi. Are national parks free on MLK Day? Not anymore. Under President Trump, the National Park Service changed its policy and eliminated the free admission days that were previously available on both MLK Day and Juneteenth. Free admission is now available on Flag Day, which coincides with the presidents birthday. Many civil rights organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), are upset about this change because of the gravity of both of these observances. Ways to observe MLK Day There are many ways to honor the legacy of King on this day. You could volunteer at a local nonprofit and help your community, or you might consider visiting a Black history museum. You could even honor the day by simply reading a book about the visionary leader or watching one of his many moving speeches.
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