Reimagining Leadership for a Digital World

On this episode of Digital Squared, Tom is talking to Julia Alexander, a pioneering leader in online education and master innovator in our industry. Julia is the Co-Founder of ExecOnline, a groundbreaking platform now recognized as one of the top EdTech companies globally. Julia provides us amazing insights on future-ready leadership, cultivating creativity and curiosity and adapting to rapid technological change. She offers a compelling vision for how we can navigate the evolving landscape of work and learning in our increasingly connected world.

Transcript

Speaker 1  0:00  
Welcome to Digital squared, a podcast that explores the implications of living in an increasingly digital world. We're on a mission to inspire our listeners to use technology and data for good. Your host, Tom andreola is the Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and data and Chief Digital Officer at the University of California at Irvine, join us as Tom and fellow leaders discuss the technological, cultural and societal trends that are shaping our world.

Tom  0:29  
On this episode of Digital Squared, I'm talking to Julia Alexander, a pioneering leader in online education and master innovator within our industry. Julia is the co- founder of exec online, a groundbreaking platform ahead of its time, now recognized one of the top ed tech companies globally. Julia provides us amazing insights on future ready innovation, cultivating creativity and curiosity and adapting to rapid technological change. She offers a compelling vision for how we can navigate the evolving landscape of work and learning in our increasingly connected world. 

Tom 1:09

Julia, welcome to the podcast. 

Julia 1:10

Thanks so much for having me. Tom really excited to have you today. 

Tom 1:12

I'm going to start with a little bit about the introduction, but you have such an interesting background that I've learned in talking to you so many roads that you've traveled to get to where you are now. But how does one travel the road to become Julia Alexander?

Julia  1:27  
That's such an interesting question. Thank you for asking it. When I think about my journey, one of my most prized possessions, one of the things I think about most is my passport, and not just the blue document that says that says that I'm an American citizen and I can travel to almost anywhere in the world, but it's also a living scrapbook of my life. I grew up in New York City as an only child of two working and professionally striving parents, and I learned a lot through their professional journeys through the corporate investment world, but it also just meant I was able to explore the city quite a bit, and I would always love going and go to talk to our neighbors who are from different cultures, different countries. And for those of you and I know that Tom, you've been in New York a lot, every block is a different story and a different country. And so I before the age of five, I was actually speaking four different languages. I've forgotten them. Now, I wish I could have held on to them, but that's where I started, as part of the global community. And every Tuesday, my mom and I would sit down with the New York Times at the Science times, for those of you who remember when the paper version was actually available, they had the science times every Tuesday. And the topic of content every Tuesday was, what's in the science times, what have you learned? What new innovations? What new scientific breakthroughs are happening? What's happening in space? And so I had innovation and data and analytics early in my growing up, and so that's part of how I became a little bit of this Curious George or as a woman. But after attending my top educational institutions, I entered the high-pressured world of investment banking, and as an African American woman, growing up professionally on Wall Street, it was, I was feeling like pressure cooker, hard to sometimes find community in those spaces as you're working 90 and 100 hours a week, but I gained the skills that you really need and also a strong community of folks. I ended up working under the CEO in the chairman's office, and that was really where I had my first professional breakout opportunity, if you will. It was my first leadership development opportunity as a 20 something. Helped to lead the largest leadership development program initiative at the company, and it was my first foray into the space that I'm now in several turns later, which of course, is leadership development at scale, part of when folks asked me, how did we get to where we are? It's not really a linear path. Even after my investment banking days, I was in business school, I took some time to a political campaign. Did another company before this company, and so I call it steering by starlight. There's a book by Martha Beck that has guided me since she wrote it back in 2008 and the idea is to really continue to go where it's warmer, rather than to take the road as it's paved for you. To follow your principles and your values, what you want to learn, of course, but just continue to go where it's a little bit warmer, where it feels like you're in the right direction, and then you'll find the path for you. 

Tom  4:32  
So it doesn't just mean going to Florida? That's where every New Yorker seems to end up, is in South Florida.

Julia  4:39  
I'm a fan of Florida, also, like Arizona, New Mexico, those places are sunny and nice for me too. 

Tom  4:48  
When we met, we talked a little bit about your work internationally, some of the travel you've gotten to do, and your work in the Middle East, the Sub Saharan Africa, I'd love you say a. Little bit about that, but a question first, which is my international assignments actually taught me more about what it meant to be an American, because I really felt like you take so much for granted growing up in this country, you only really get to see it and challenge it through a different lens when you've gone and been other places for significant periods of times. What did you learn about being American with all of your international travels and adventures?

Julia  5:28  
I learned so much about being an American, about being myself, who I am, really challenging so many of the preconceived notions of how things should and should not be. I really cannot recommend global exposure and travel more. And really, over 100 countries really may have made it around the world and back. I think, from being an American, part of my American Experience is seen through the lens as being an African American, as being a woman. And so what I learned about being an American, first and foremost, it's a tremendous privilege. It's a privilege that in when you're in America, you don't quite think about almost like a fish underwater, but when you realize the privileges that come with that American passport, that American citizenship, can go almost anywhere, and with proper precautions, you really don't have a lot of restrictions. Almost anywhere you can go. You can speak English, and English is a default in many countries. You have an embassy in an American government that if you get in hot water trouble, most likely will come try to find you, which is really an incredible privilege. You've got a currency that's on your side. And as a person who comes from, if you will, a more marginalized background. In the United States, it was really in some ways freeing for me to go travel. Because the first thing that folks saw when they saw me and they see me outside the United States is not as, if you will, a black woman, which is what people see here in America. What they see first is an American citizen. There's a freedom that comes with that, a privilege that was really like, wow, you can really shape your own narrative. But with that also comes in a self awareness that I am coming from a background that allows me to relate to all different types of folks, so not just to spend time in the five star resorts, but actually to get out of the hotel and meet people where they are using some of that New York background, walk the streets and really engage. 

Tom  7:22  
That's great. I love those insights, and I knew you'd have a great answer to that question, because again, the travel is one thing. I've had the opportunities to live in Europe and to live in Asia, and I'm so with you on there's so much you take for granted, and that American passport thing, it's a real thing. It's a real thing. It is very interesting to hear the comments through your lens in terms of who you are, but it is such a thing that so many Americans just don't realize, and with what's going on and how we might be impacting how people view us as American is an interesting conversation in of itself to have in today's world. So let's fast forward though to 2013 you helped co found ExecOnline. What that said to me when I saw it, I was like, wow, this is a person who is not afraid of nascent technology. I know it was going on in 2013 the concept of what you all started was not mainstream by any stretch of the imagination. Tell us a little bit about that experience, and I'm really interested to hear what were the objections that people were giving you, because so much of that is been just accepted now. But I'd love to hear the 2013 story of ExecOnline.

Julia  8:33  
When I co-founded ExecOnline, you, as you said, it was 2013 and exec online is an online leadership development platform and has served half the Fortune, 500 global 2000 partnering with top business schools and top universities, providing online leadership development at scale to hundreds of 1000s of leaders all around the world. And today, we look back and think, of course, online learning, online leadership development is something that every company needs to have if you're an organization and you're not able to provide leadership and training at scale, what are you doing? And I think that's a sign of a transformation and impact that I've been able to be part of that something that 10 years ago was, as you said, unheard of. Now is the default. So that's when I think you've had a really exciting journey, but back then, it was certainly not the case. Back in 2013 we had partnered with UC Berkeley, wonderful heart of the UC system, and a number of other business schools, to take their content and CO curate their content, bring it online and sell it to heads of human resources and C suites at top Fortune, 500 companies, and it convinced them that instead of going out to California, as lovely as it is, they could keep their leaders in seat and train them on topics like innovation strategy, core leadership development, topics that at the time, folks said to. US online training isn't that for just minor things. You can't train leaders online. It's not possible. So we spent a lot of the selling portion of our early days trying to convince folks that you can have as much or greater impact. You can track data, you can do all these great things with this online technology. But there was a lot of skepticism. And in fact, we as entrepreneurs, in our very first website, did not actually even have our photos on the website. We just had our BIOS, because we didn't even want it to be about us. We were really focusing on our great schools and the customers we were with, and trying to not seem as entrepreneurial as we were, one of the tricks of the trade, to seem a little bigger than you are as a business. But folks didn't think it was possible. They didn't really believe in online learning at all. They thought it was low quality. Didn't scale. They were worried about their professional reputations for promoting these technologies. What are people going to think about me in this organization if I do this? I could lose my job, or I could look bad. So just so many concerns and fears. Then what the great thing is, we were able to get a cohort going, and they had a wonderful time, and the feedback that came from those leaders was so outstanding that it actually powered our company for another two years. And so sometimes I think even though the traditional ways of thinking can really be a real barrier. If you can just get something going and get folks that are on your side and able to speak on behalf of you, can get a lot of credibility from them. The technology, I will say, since you asked about I know you have some folks that are into technology at that time, we actually did not even have an integrated platform on the first day. I can say this now in retrospect, because it's over, but we actually were running the online portion off GoToMeeting. For those of you who remember GoToMeeting, our friends at GoTo Meeting, we even had talk box before we were even building our own at least, we were patchworking the platform together because there were no platforms. And so it was a technology adventure as well.

Tom  12:05  
I know exactly where that technology would have been for you. It was not integrated. There was very little support for you to capture and measure learning outcomes, which you needed to be able to show people that the quality of what you were delivering and what people were walking away with had value for the price point. Like I said, it's just to look at that and know where the world was. 2013 I was myself just coming into higher education, just joined the University, and spending the last two decades before that in healthcare. Only now I had healthcare and education, and people wanted to get my opinion. They wanted to size me up over MOOCs. And it's like, what do you think MOOCs good or bad? And I'm like, here's what you do as a technologist. You don't think about where the technology is. You think about where the technology is going. So it's not about whether a MOOC is good or bad or even works or doesn't work today. It's what's a MOOC going to offer in terms of access and quality five years now and 10 years from now. And of course, what you dealt with, you were on the cutting edge of what can we piece together to make this a cohesive experience for our participants today now is what is very much a comparable offering, right? And one after the post pandemic world, people actually even almost orient towards first and then discuss the merits. I'm going through this right now. I'm discussing the merits of the in person component as a compliment to what we do it online because of the scale. I love you. You've used her at scale multiple times already in this conversation, because I know that's a big thing about the topics you work on for our audience. For the record 2014 Time has recognized, ExecOnline as one of the top ed tech companies in the world. Julia, what you have done, the journey you've traveled here, what you all created, it's not only recognized, it's recognized in the world. And so it's just amazing to be able to recognize you today in mentioning that to our audience.

Julia  14:05  
Thank you so much. Yes, in 2014 that was really a surprise too. Sometimes the awards maybe you have a little bit of an inside track on knowing that it's arriving, or maybe we're able to apply for it. We had no idea. We just woke up one morning and said, Wow, we're number eight in the United States, number 23 in the world. It is exciting. Thank you.

Tom  14:25  
Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. So that journey continues. What comes next?

Julia  14:31  
Yes, I'm so proud to have been a co founder and for the entire period of those years, a Chief Product Officer at ExecOnline, so responsible for the learning experience and that award winning learning and coaching experience, as you said, and a partnership with wonderful educational institutions. Now I'm transitioning out of my operating role as co-founder into an advisory role, still saying co-founder, but transitioning out of the Chief Product Officer role, and beginning to think really about my next adventure and what's needed now. We've proven the democratization of learning is critical. What do we need to do now? And what I'm really focusing on in my next iteration is the democratization of learning, still continuing to embed more ai, ai driven AI powered learning into our universities, and we share that passion, into our companies, organizations and really as part of the fabric of what will be our lived human experience over the next decade. But really expanding that to Democratizing Innovation is how I'm now looking at my emerging next platform and perspective. Similar to learning and where we're thinking about the question of democratizing learning. We realized that we have wonderful education at the top universities, top companies, but it's not available to everyone, right? It's by virtue of a lack of online and systemic barriers. It's only for a few. Now we're entering this AI world, and we're going to need to innovate so rapidly. Innovation will be happening faster and faster, and that means that every person, every team, every organization, is going to need to really be an innovator within themselves. One of the things that I learned as I was an entrepreneur coming up is how hesitant I personally was to use the word innovator when it came to my to me, I just felt like it didn't apply to me, and I had to really work on that. I thought, why do I think I'm not an innovator? Here I am innovating. And part of that I realized is when you think of innovator, you think of like Albert Einstein or certain Steve Jobs, and you think, Oh, I'm not an innovator. I'm just a person that's trying to solve a problem. What we want to do now is reshape the idea of what it means to be an innovator, what future ready innovation means at the individual, team and organizational level, and build the pathways, pipelines and capabilities so that innovation isn't something that just sits on a product team or innovation team, but it's something that is embedded across an entire organization. And what's going to be required to do that are really three key pillars. The first, in order to build future ready innovation and to be a future ready innovator, is really first to drive AI powered transformation. AI will be the key driver of so much of the innovation that is happening over the next three, five, and certainly 10 years, mastering those skill sets and capabilities and competencies. The second is embracing adaptability and agility. Because of all the changes that will be happening, we're going to need to embed agility as part of our day to day operating system as individuals, as organizations and teams. And the third is something I'm particularly passionate about, which is cultivating curiosity and creativity. Curiosity and creativity are not words that you find in a typical, if you will, business presentation, but it's something these are capabilities that we're going to need to really lift up and encourage as we're entering new frontiers. And so building innovation as a capability of competency that expands an entire platform is something that I'm going to be exploring a lot more in the coming months.

Tom  18:21  
And that would be something that applies to an individual, but then a collective of individuals as a company to be able to build a DNA of innovation, rather than a department of innovation or a chief innovation officer.

Julia  18:36  
Exactly, exactly. A lot of organizations view innovation as something that is only for a few people. We have got the innovators over here. They're the ones that are locked behind the door, and we'll let you know when the innovation happens. But innovation needs to happen at every level of the organization, and part of that for C suite leaders is going in order to really embrace next level innovation and future ready, innovation will be releasing some control over that process, and that's really hard. Innovation isn't linear, as you very well know, and it means that things will be popping up in parts of one's organization that you may or may not have had anything to do with. And part of that, then is getting culturally comfortable from a mindset perspective, that is not only okay, but it's what needs to happen in order to keep your organization relevant.

Tom  19:26  
I can speak directly to your point from my own experiences of leadership in itself, a journey of coming to under understand that the only way to get greatness from your organization is to let go and create the right environment where people can think creatively about what's possible. And we're going to talk a little bit about the two letter word that is that is engrossed our world that we can't even get seen to get away from. But let's just say these new tools are not just tools about being more effective or automating or even. And just being more innovative, I think they they really represent something that I like to quote from Einstein is Einstein once said creativity is more important than knowledge, and to me, these tools have curated knowledge to the point where it's freed us up to do things like say, what's the right question we should be asking ourselves about the way we want to serve our customers tomorrow? And then the tools will support us in answering that question, rather than working on what's the right information for us to understand our customer right? So the questions are changing thanks to these tools, but you're right. It does mean we need to open up and trust our employees more, but by giving them the right tools and training so that they know how to be more curious and then creative. I love that. I love that. So now we know a little bit about what you know you'll be working on. The other part that in talking with you is this is not just a US thing. For you, this is a global thing. Talk a little bit about that, especially as we talk about the developing world and how you think it brings opportunity to all.

Julia  21:09  
Absolutely, I think it's such an opportunity for the developing world, emerging markets, folks that may feel that they're on the outside of the progress that they see happening. And that doesn't need to be the case. It may be the case today, but that's one reason I'm rolling up my sleeves and I want to be on the case, because creativity, innovation, curiosity, these are inherent human qualities. These are things that really do make us human. And the ability to go from identifying a need to actually creating a solution right now is really too hard in a lot of places. It requires too much capital. It requires too much education. In a lot of cases, it really shouldn't be as difficult to solve the myriad of challenges that we're going to face as it is so one is to just reduce the barrier from problem identification to actually creating a solution. Another part of this is communicating across different languages. Still, most of our LLM systems are in English, so we need to work on that. We're going to need to democratize the languages and the ways that AI can appear. But the thing that I'm probably most excited about is from my travels and from yours, that folks look at these issues and challenges in completely different ways. I've had wonderful opportunities to spend a lot of time with indigenous communities around the world, and the way they think about stewardship of nature and our climate challenges is so different than how we would think about it here in New York City, San Francisco or Los Angeles. We need the perspectives from folks in those communities in order to address the global challenges, needs, opportunities and growth that we want to have. So we've got to harness the best of humanity, and they're all over the world, not just in our backyard.

Tom  22:53  
It's been interesting to watch how the telecommunications revolution has played out in some of these developing nations, how the mobile movement has brought empowerment opportunity through that handheld device, which we'll pay top dollar for here, but just getting it into someone's hands, and then watching the entrepreneurship that comes out of that, to quote, unquote, building a way to support themselves and to support their families and to support their communities, it's really interesting. I think one of the things I've learned in my work around the world is never think you know the answer. I'm so curious and wanting to see how some of these some of these countries and some of these communities, just how they come to use these new tools. We don't know. We think we know, because we know how we're using it here, but I am sure you would say the same thing. We just don't know, and we're going to go, huh? Wow, never would have gotten there. And that's what makes it so amazing, and actually a lot of fun is put it in their hands and just see where it goes. 

Julia  23:57  
Absolutely, absolutely, I'm really excited for this next phase. It's almost like a playground of innovation. We have a lot of governance, a lot of work to do. We're not in a world of top down management and organizations anymore. We're managing across the matrix, and we're certainly in a multi polar, geopolitical world, in a space where there's not a single power really, increasingly managing the governance at a global scale, but the day to day folks that you spoke to the telecommunications revolution, I remember I was in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the eastern Congo town of Goma, which continues to be war torn for many years. But I was there probably about 15 years ago, and I was in a refugee camp. And in refugee camps are very difficult places. They essentially give you a cup of grain every day to that's all you have to eat, unfortunately. But what I saw was folks would get their cup of grain and they would sell. They would walk two hours down to the market and. Sell half of that cup of grain in order to get some mobile phone credits and top up their phone so they could call a loved one in another refugee camp across the way. And it was really then I thought, this is going to be an incredibly powerful technology. If you have a limited amount of resource and you're willing to trade that just to stay connected, look at what we can do. And now mobile phones are all across Africa, all across the continent, and have been incredible tools of empowerment for folks. And so I love that example, and it really just shows the ingenuity that can exist even in very limited resource environments.

Tom  25:36  
Absolutely, absolutely. Talk a little bit about Lead and Flow. 

Julia  25:41  
Lead and Flow is a community. It's a platform that's emerging to really begin to explore this next era of innovation, AI powered and global transformation, and really to bring together a community of leaders and conversation about these questions. So I consider it to be leadership in community, which is something I really believe in a lot of times as leaders, we've all heard that saying it's lonely at the top, but it really doesn't need to be, and it really can't be as we continue to go forward. So we're going to have to create spaces to have conversations leaders that care about the types of issues that we've been speaking about and are really wrestling with them. A friend of mine referred to it somewhat as 'the middle of the river', the idea that we're all in the middle of the river, we're on the middle of this bridge, we're not on the other side of it. And a lot of times, when you create content or media or public conversations, the typical advice is, wait until you've got it all figured out. Wait until you're on the other side of the river, on the other side of the bridge, and then you can tell everyone to come with you and give them a playbook of exactly how you did it. We can't wait for that anymore. We're all going to have to become a little bit more vulnerable, a little more authentic to say, I'm still in the middle of trying to figure this out. I'm on the bridge with you. We're all trying to get over to this other side of the river, but we're going to have to all come together, and that's what lead and flow is going to going to be focused on. It's focused on leadership development with a strong bend towards encouraging the type of innovation, creativity and curiosity that I think we'll need to get there.

Tom  27:14  
Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Consider me a participant, because that's where I love to be. And we've learned so much from watching how other leaders do it. But I think the difference between as I came up through my career, where I tell people I had an opportunity to work with a lot of people, work for people, work with people, I always watch how leaders conducted themselves, behaved, dealt with different situations, figured out which ones I thought were more effective than others. Figured out how to maybe take that technique and put it into my strategy, right my toolbox, but in a way that was more authentic to me. But that model doesn't scale well, and it certainly doesn't meet the criteria of adaptability and agility that you're talking about that we need today. So we need community and things that are just much more platform oriented and network effect, to be able to just keep up with the rapid pace of change, that's fantastic. All right, so I'm going to end on one thing that this is the question that all of my guests get now, which is, we are in the age of AI, different people have different views, but I like to ask this question: What is the coolest or weirdest thing you've seen people use AI for in the last 90 days?

Julia  28:27  
I have a group of friends, and we all love music, and we use music to communicate, and not just playlists that you like, but actually to almost reflect your feelings, if anyone has ever done that. So you just want to listen to the music that reflects whatever your emotions are and your thoughts. And I think it's been really cool to use AI to analyze music and ensure that we understand the different emotions that you're communicating to be able to understand yourself better. So I was on, I was traveling the other day, and I made a playlist that was a combination of jazz, which I love, at Indie rock, and I sent it to another friend, and they used AI to analyze my playlist and say how I was feeling and what I must be thinking based on the music that I was listening to, and I think we can use AI and our different modes of self expression to understand ourselves better. I had another friend of mine is dating someone new, and he sent her a song. And for those of you who have you ever had a friend, he said, What is this person that I like? What are they thinking? We use a song to analyze that actually, this was great. He really cared about her. This is something of high school, high school activities, right? You were talking about your kids. Does he like me? Does he not like me? You have so much at your fingertips now. AI will analyze even songs to understand. The emotional landscape, and so I've used it to really help myself understand myself better, and to generate some laughter and community with others too. 

Tom  30:09  
That's great. Okay. Example number one was essentially what we used to call a mood ring. You essentially have created a mood ring through AI, which is, that's it. That's it. And the second one, I can't wait to go home and tell my kids that, and because my wife and I, we joke about this, because I never did this, but my wife had boyfriends growing up who did this. They create the mixtape for it and give it to your girlfriend. And so now you're not just giving the mixtape, but now your mixtape is going to be analyzed for what your true feelings are. Because we as we as young men, we're terrible at expressing our feelings, wonderful. So now women will really know how inept us men are awesome. That's it. It just really is interesting to ask this question, because people bring, first of all, such different answers, right and but I think it also, as we pull out all of these examples, if I were to put them in a book and just give it to someone. People like it's just amazing how people are taking these tools and think seeing how they can take something in their life and just take it to a new level, hopefully a better level. It's just really interesting with some of the examples that we've given them, people have given us. Julie, I want to thank you so much for joining us. We knew this was going to be an interesting, fun conversation, and you've brought so much to the things that you've done, the things that you're focusing on going forward. So I just want to say thank you, and really enjoyed having you today.

Julia  31:32  
Thank you so much. This has been a really energizing conversation, and really enjoyed seeing you again and spending time with you, and thank you for your leadership. Applause.