LD Breakfast Club: Thriving in the Tech & AI Era - Women Leading the Future

Featured Speaker Sunday Domingo sharing on her experience on navigating in the AI era

The YWLC Leadership Development (LD) Subcommittee hosted the first Breakfast Club session of the quarter on the 20th September 2025, on navigating and thriving in the Tech and AI Era. The panel of speakers featured Sunday Domingo (Global Head of Digital Channel Solutions at Standard Chartered), Karen Tay (Founder of Inherent Journey) and Sabrina Wang (Founder of Futurist & Founder of People’s Inc. 360), who shared their experiences on this emerging topic.

During the session, a central theme that emerged was the importance of adopting a human-centric approach to thrive in the age of AI.  While AI offers transformative possibilities, essential human skills like communication, empathy, and critical thinking, are required alongside the use of AI to enhance, and not replace, unique knowledge domains and leadership abilities.

Here are the key takeaways from the session:

Round Discussion with Featured Speaker Karen Tay

1. Leadership and Communication are Paramount in the age of AI: The most critical skills for the AI era are not technical, but human. Leaders must focus on being effective communicators who can lead change, build trust, and leverage empathy to guide both their teams and the technology.

   1. Balanced approach: Temper excitement about AI with a focus on responsibility and establishing necessary guardrails, such as having governance structures that define accountability for AI decisions.

   2. Authenticity and connection: Resist the "authenticity trap" by embracing multiple versions of yourself while investing time to build genuine, organic connections.

   3. Leveraging AI for Communication: AI itself can be a tool to improve communication. Leaders can use AI for tone-checking and to rephrase emotional or sensitive wording into professional, client-facing communications, benefiting from an iterative process that refines the message.

      
      

2. AI is a Partner, Not a Replacement: Instead of seeing AI as a threat, we should view it as an extension of ourselves. AI handles the 80% from drafting, data analysis, to automation, while we provide the essential 20% of critical thinking, institutional knowledge, and human direction.

   1. Give clear directions to AI: Just as a clear structure provides good input for AI, our role as the human user is to provide clear direction. AI, in its current form, lacks a comprehensive understanding of context, nuance, and your specific goals. We must set the objective, define the scope, and specify the desired format in order to get a quality and usable output from AI.

   2. Increased productivity with partnership: This partnership allows for a fundamental shift in how we define productivity. Productivity will be measured by our ability to leverage AI to generate smarter, more strategic results and reinvest the time saved into higher-order work.

      
      

3. Embrace Discomfort and Curiosity: Thriving with AI requires a mindset shift. Leaders

   must be willing to experiment, ask questions, and accept that feeling uncomfortable means they are growing. This curiosity drives new ways of working and problem-solving.

   1. Cultivate a growth mindset: Feeling uncomfortable when exploring new technology is a sign that we are growing. A growth mindset will turn mistakes into stepping stones toward innovation. This is how we stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

   2. Experimentation is key: The only way to truly understand AI is to get hands-on experience and experiment with different stacks and tools, such as ChatGPT and Deepseek, so we gain experience with the strengths and weaknesses of different AI.

      
      

4. Prioritise Human-Centric Values: As AI becomes more integrated, the most valuable skills are those that are uniquely human. We must protect and cultivate our agency, critical thinking, empathy, and personal values, ensuring that technology serves our purpose, not the other way around.

   1. Protect your agency and purpose: It's easy to lose a sense of agency when an AI can do so much for you. We must be intentional about what we allow AI to influence and retain control over our core values, personal mission, and strategic vision. 

   2. Cultivate empathy and emotional literacy: In a world of increasing automation, soft skills like empathy, collaboration, and emotional literacy are the ultimate differentiators. They are the foundation of effective leadership and strong relationships, which AI cannot replicate. Leaders who can show genuine care for their teams and clients will build a resilient culture that thrives on human connection and ride the waves of AI.

Attendees after the insightful discussion on Thriving in the Tech & AI Era

Overall, the session highlighted that thriving in the AI era is not about mastering every technological tool but about leading with purpose, adaptability, and with our essential human skills. By upholding human-centric values while embracing AI as a collaborative partner, leaders can drive innovation and impact without losing sight of what makes leadership uniquely human.

Author: Min Jiayi

Organising Committee: Maxine Mak, Ho Zhi Hui, Xian Aini, Hemaa Sekar