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Jennifer Schwab, Founder and CEO of ENTITY Academy, on the Future of Education
41 Plays1 year ago
Join Responsible AI hosts Patrick Ip and Alex Alben as they sit down with Jennifer Schwab, founder and CEO of ENTITY Academy, to explore the intersection of education and artificial intelligence.
Jennifer shares her journey from founding ENTITY Academy to adapting its programs for online learning during the pandemic. Dive into the future of education and the potential of AI to revolutionize learning experiences.
For more discussion, news, and thinking about responsible AI, visit our website, The AI Forum.
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Transcript
The Future of Education and AI Impact
00:00:08
Speaker
We are delighted to have Jennifer Schwab with us today to focus on two very important topics, the future of education and how artificial intelligence technologies are impacting the future of education. Jennifer was the founder of Entity Media, which included both a program for educating and empowering women and mentoring them both online
00:00:36
Speaker
and in a classroom type setting. Jennifer has also started many innovative programs related to both women in data science and also an educational program that really, I think, has the potential to be disruptive in terms of empowering people and getting them
00:01:01
Speaker
to level the playing field in terms of their educational opportunities.
Jennifer's Background and Career Journey
00:01:05
Speaker
Just a brief background, Jennifer is a Fulbright scholar. She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Arkansas and a master's in urban planning and design from the University of California in Irvine. She began her career Ernst & Young in Chicago.
00:01:26
Speaker
and has been an entrepreneur, a speaker, television personality, et cetera, over the last decade. And that's why we're delighted to have this opportunity to chat with you about these issues. So welcome.
00:01:42
Speaker
Oh, thanks so much for that lovely introduction, Alex, and happy to be here. Thanks, Patrick, too. Yeah, I think it's a fascinating topic in terms of the future of learning and education.
Entity Academy's Mission and Evolution
00:01:54
Speaker
This has been my daily bread since.
00:01:57
Speaker
early 2016. So we're embarking upon the eighth year of our journey at Entity Academy. And while disrupting education is probably one of the biggest challenges on the planet in terms of category, it's been a delight. And I will say that I've been in a constant state of learning
00:02:17
Speaker
since February 16, 2016, when I started this charge towards really making a difference in both women and underrepresented minorities' lives. Just in terms of your background for the audience, your journey in education has been very interesting, and I think you have been pretty unique in bringing your skill set and your entrepreneurial frame of mind
00:02:47
Speaker
to institutions such as education, which are not usually characterized by innovation. Maybe you can walk us through just the last few years of your experience and experimenting with education and innovation at the same time.
00:03:06
Speaker
Sure. And I think there is a tie-in to how we've thought about AI and the future of education as it relates to AI. So started the journey in 2016, as mentioned, and we initially were all in real-life programming, meeting every student would come to our headquarters. We had a vast
00:03:31
Speaker
14,000 square foot building to host all of our educational programs. And this was a really kind of unique four story building that allowed students to fully immerse themselves in the experience of education. Developed a ground up methodology that had four pillars.
00:03:51
Speaker
hard skills, soft skills, mentorship, and outstanding experiences that allowed students to tie their learning into something emotional, which triggers long-term memory. So we had all of that going for us for the first three years of our business because we were eye-to-eye with our students.
Adapting to Online Learning due to COVID-19
00:04:12
Speaker
We weren't delivering education online. We were just
00:04:15
Speaker
your instructors, your mentors, your coaches, we're going to work directly with you. Pandemic comes along in 2020. We had always had on a roadmap that we were going to go hybrid with in-person training as well as online. But it forced our hand to go completely online. And thank goodness that we made that decision to do it, because we had no idea how long the pandemic
00:04:40
Speaker
was going to last. If we had just gone on what the government initial messaging was that, oh, we're going to be back to business as usual in the next three, four, five months maximum, we could have really been in trouble because we would have looked up a year later going, oh my gosh, we're in the same position. We're not able to conduct any programs in person.
00:05:01
Speaker
So anyway, March 2020, we started moving towards a completely online business and the Albin Foundation actually launched our first data science program online, which we experimented with in 2020 and then launched it, started to scale it in 21 and 22. That was a really big moment for the company.
00:05:24
Speaker
being able to not only pivot online, that allowed us to kick up in the doors and make our programs much more accessible to a larger contingency of women across the United States. Previously, we had no financing and we were in person, so it was a self-selecting group that could attend our programs.
00:05:48
Speaker
You basically had to have means to make it to Los Angeles, put yourself up or take our housing option, and then pay for our program up front. When we went online, we were able to also access a lot of financing that made us a much more diverse player in the industry, which was quite exciting. We also were able to attract a lot of women that wanted to go
00:06:11
Speaker
do a career change. So that was quite exciting because previously we had been mostly 20-somethings in our programs. We were able to extend our reach to women that were in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even a few outliers in their 60s. And that was just a game changer. So we enrolled over 2,000 women in our programs for 21 and 22. But we appreciate them.
00:06:39
Speaker
opportunity to help jumpstart your efforts there. And it was ambitious to do something for a cohort of women that hadn't really had the opportunities that they needed to get education in a scientific realm.
00:07:03
Speaker
Maybe you can talk about the difficulty and the challenges there. I know that one of your solutions was to do a lot of mentorship.
00:07:12
Speaker
Correct. And you're speaking my language here. With every positive force, there is also usually something that comes along that is a counter force. And we certainly started to feel that as we scaled up into the thousands of students.
Challenges with Scaling and Diverse Student Needs
00:07:33
Speaker
When women that were coming to us didn't have any STEM experience,
00:07:38
Speaker
And they had not, you know, meaning they hadn't even taken like a coding course or they hadn't taken math in many years, like since high school. And that was where we started to really hit some roadblocks. Additionally, as we scaled up, we
00:07:58
Speaker
started to enroll women that didn't already have bachelor's degrees. So they were coming straight to our program with a GED or a high school diploma. And when we started to work with them, and our goal is to really get them into Fortune 1000 companies, get them into high profile foundations, get them to work with reputable agencies.
00:08:26
Speaker
that we had to upskill them both personally and professionally, meaning soft skills became a huge part of our program. Time management, understanding how to manage up, down, and across.
00:08:43
Speaker
Doing what you say saying what you do just very things that as professionals and in a a demographic that is very well educated and usually has parents as role models that are also professional it was night and day for us because we realize if you've been working in a restaurant as a bartender a waiter a waitress or cashier
00:09:11
Speaker
you may not understand how to operate in an office, a large corporation, how even some of the dynamics work with managers and your peers. And so we found
00:09:29
Speaker
reason to develop rigorous programs around soft skills, critical thinking skills, and just general business acumen training. It was a real push for us to develop that curriculum at first, but the upshot is we have found that not only is this good for our consumers, this has been great as we've introduced it to corporate America because there's also a need for these skills with entry-level talent in large corporations.
00:09:58
Speaker
focusing on employees that don't have bachelor's degrees or they're just new to professional environments.
00:10:06
Speaker
Maybe I can jump in with a question. Last week, ChachiPT 3 celebrated its one-year anniversary. Obviously, part of the reason that we started this podcast is to look at how AI has changed education, changed different industries. How has it impacted how you're mentoring and teaching and thinking about skill building?
00:10:30
Speaker
Sure.
AI's Role in Mentorship and Learning Acceleration
00:10:31
Speaker
Okay, great. Yeah, I saw the news releases about the one-year anniversary. Certainly, it's been impactful, but I think it's the tip of the iceberg of what Chat GPT is going to do to business. In terms of how it's impacting our mentorship program, we have two different types of mentors. We have mentors that are more
00:10:55
Speaker
coaches and then we have mentors that are corporate mentors and they are traditionally industry practitioners and they come out of Fortune 500 companies and this is not their first radio to mentoring junior talent. So anyway, the changes that we're going to see as the coaching business is going to completely be upended by
00:11:19
Speaker
things like chat, GPT. The reason being is companies are looking at their high potential talent and how to accelerate their learning curve so they can uplevel them quicker. And with AI,
00:11:35
Speaker
You know you're dealing with a batch of employees that have already shown the ability to self start so they can use. Tools related to i to have them self train to up level themselves.
00:11:52
Speaker
but still have a human accountability coach making sure they're deriving the information expected to get them on that path to up-level quicker. I think that when you're looking at certain folks within a corporate structure,
00:12:14
Speaker
that have already demonstrated an ability to self-start and get ahead on their own, you can utilize AI extensively to accelerate their learning curve. And I think that's quite exciting. Now, this is not to say it can be AI and AI alone. The human accountability piece cannot be discounted, even for
00:12:38
Speaker
people that are already known entities to want to get ahead and they're intellectually curious, it's always better to have somebody that's a couple echelons above you be checking in to making sure that you're getting what you need from the material and that you're doing it within a prescribed time period. We emphasize that in all types of coaching. It cannot be AI alone.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think really observations that I've seen is like, you know, AI is replaced like chatbots. And even for like, fitness coaching, you know, there's a company called future, where they use AI to dictate your workouts. Do you see that playing a role in mentorship to it sounds like the accountability aspect, that's not replaceable? Are there other elements? Like, how do you how do you do the math? What what AI can jump into?
00:13:34
Speaker
I think we do something called Mentee Reflection Day before they meet with their mentors. And that is designed for the mentees to be prepared to meet with their mentors. One thing that we
AI in Mentee Preparation and Learning Efficiency
00:13:51
Speaker
have seen over and over again is both mentees and mentors are often not prepared to get the most out of their session.
00:14:00
Speaker
And we know that mentors, if they are in a management position or they're a couple levels beyond the mentee, there's an opportunity cost to their time. And we want to make sure these mentees are ready to go and they're ready to ask pertinent questions that they can't get off Google with their mentors.
00:14:24
Speaker
We see a world where that reflection day doesn't have to be facilitated by live coaches, but rather we pass worksheets to them, like strengths and weaknesses. We can test their learning style. We can test, you know, what type of management situation is going to fit well with their personality. And
00:14:47
Speaker
then pass that information asynchronously to the mentor so the mentor can then understand the vantage point that the mentee is coming from. And this can all be done without a human in between. So that whole preparation piece can be done in an asynchronous manner, and we don't think it will take anything away from the actual session.
00:15:10
Speaker
Now we do one hour mentorship sessions for eight weeks. So eight hours in total in our program. And those are one to one human interaction, mentee to mentor. We think we can cut down on the hour with the actual human to human component.
00:15:28
Speaker
We can actually have that be about 20 minutes eventually because the mentor has already gotten a baseline of information on the mentee before they've even started their session and is able to reply in an async format before they actually meet for the accountability piece. So imagine the first 40 minutes of the session that normally would be
00:15:53
Speaker
human-to-human interaction can essentially be eliminated, and the last 20 minutes could be the accountability with the mentor, touching base, having that eye-to-eye contact, building the relationship, which cannot be done with an AI chatbot.
00:16:11
Speaker
We're chatting with Jennifer Schwab, the CEO of Entity Media. And Jennifer, you've been an innovator. I think it's safe to say with respect to education, with respect to financing education, and now you're using AI.
AI's Complementary Role in Education
00:16:30
Speaker
Do you think that AI is really going to be the game changer that everybody is talking about in the education space?
00:16:39
Speaker
That's a great question, Alex. I don't know. It really remains to be seen. I think there'll be impact. But as someone who really subscribes to human relationships, driving that
00:17:00
Speaker
Again, like that emotional connection that triggers your long-term memory, it triggers retention, and it also makes the learning experience more enjoyable. I don't think AI can replace that human touch. I think it can complement it, but it will not replace it, ultimately.
Public Perception of AI's Integration Timeline
00:17:22
Speaker
What do you think the biggest misperception is that the public has about AI?
00:17:29
Speaker
with which speed it's gonna take over. I do think it's the game changer that the internet has been, but I don't think it's gonna be this brisk couple year turnaround. I think that we're looking at a decade before this really takes hold where AI is omnipotent in our life and it's in every corner of our world and it's making our life easier in a lot of ways, but it's also got a lot of risk attached to it.
00:17:59
Speaker
So I think we're looking at a decade before it really upends the world the way the internet did. When I talk to other entrepreneurs, I feel like they've started to embed AI into their normal workflows. Has your workflow changed since all these AI tools have come out? Do you use anything? How do you interact with this technology personally?
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, we've found some use for it in wrangling our data in Salesforce. Now, we've also had a very robust data journey in the company since 2016. And I've always had my eye on, okay, what happens when this AI transformation takes hold?
00:18:41
Speaker
And we don't want to be left behind. So Entity has collected a tremendous amount of student data on preferences, learning styles, any number of
Leveraging Student Data with AI Models
00:18:52
Speaker
things. What's your favorite sneaker brand? What's your latest Netflix?
00:18:57
Speaker
series you've watched, what are you reading? We've collected all of that information in our data journey to better understand our audience. We've never sold one line of data. So we're not looking to sell it, but we always have used the data to adjust our curriculum and also make the learning experience more enjoyable for the student.
00:19:18
Speaker
I think we've used it really well, but it's mostly been in an analog manner. What AI will do for us eventually is that we will be able to take one of these large language models, probably purchase through an Amazon or Jasper or any number of these outfits that have the capability to give you a great foundation, and then we will put our proprietary data on top of it.
00:19:41
Speaker
and utilize it in that manner. So we're not having to build LLMs from the ground up. We're able to just use what we're great at, which is collecting student data to make the learning experience all the better and layer it on top of their LLMs like Amazon. And that's the world that I see us moving towards in the next couple of years.
00:20:04
Speaker
Jennifer Schwab, it's been great having you and we always ask a question about journalism. Now you've had a lot of national exposure in media ranging from Good Morning America to TechCrunch to Bloomberg. And I'm thinking, do you think journalists understand AI when they tell the AI story? I'm just curious. Great question.
00:20:31
Speaker
Great question. I think some journalists understand it. I think that if you get journalists that have specialized in studying this, that they have a much better
00:20:47
Speaker
chance of getting the AI narrative right, but it's changing so rapidly. It's hard to imagine not being a practitioner in the depths of it and really getting it right. If you look at our government, I think we have the same issue.
00:21:06
Speaker
They aren't equipped to understand AI and the rapid speed of change. So how are they going to regulate it? You can look at journalists the same way. They're not in the trenches of AI day-to-day. They haven't been studying it for years. They haven't been going to the conferences or reading the white papers or in the best universities, writing the white papers. So how are they going to write about it in this really informed way?
00:21:35
Speaker
I think we have this issue across many different areas of society, government, media. Yeah, I think we had this conversation in one of our previous podcasts. And I think one of the difficult things with regulation is I think even the technologists don't completely know what they've made and the consequences of their product.
00:22:03
Speaker
Let's say you're a policymaker or an executive you got called up to DC to give your recommendation on how to regulate this. What would you guide policy makers to do?
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, again, it's really tough. It's almost the equivalent of having Goldman Sachs help advise on how to fix the economy in 2008. It's like the fox guarding the hen house. So you have to turn to Google, Amazon, Sam Altman to ask how to write
00:22:40
Speaker
policy for it. And I think that is nothing short of terrifying. Or you can go to academics. But then, of course, the academic lens can be limiting in terms of the commercial prospects of a new technology like this. So it's really challenging. And it does at times keep me up at night thinking about what the world's going to look like in the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years.
00:23:10
Speaker
And I don't know, maybe I'm aligned with some of the boomers that say, I hope I'm dead by the time this all occurs. I said, well, my generation's gonna be embarking upon stem cells. So we're gonna put an extra like 20, 30 years on our lifespan. So we're gonna be here for this, but I don't know what the future holds.
00:23:38
Speaker
I will tell you one area though of education that I think is totally untapped that AI could be an incredible tool to be a massive game changer. And this is just by virtue of the experience I've had running Entity Academy last several years. If we could use AI,
00:24:01
Speaker
To look at people's past job experiences as well as life experiences and develop a customized or personalized curriculum to use examples relating back to those job and life experiences. I think the uptake of.
00:24:18
Speaker
curriculum information will be so much greater and students can learn faster and they can be more engaged and they can also develop this real expertise based on what they've already done. So let me give you an example. Instead of having a one size fits all curriculum for call it data science or cybersecurity,
00:24:42
Speaker
You look at someone's background, they provide you their resume and it includes, okay, I've spent the last 10 years as a mechanic, okay? Well, a mechanic to a data scientist is quite the upskilling leap. But if you could take examples from his world of being a mechanic,
00:25:06
Speaker
and put them in data science problems such as like car parts or number of hours worked on certain models of cars. I think the uptake on a data science curriculum would be much greater for that mechanic than just doing a one size fits all curriculum. And we could do this at scale utilizing AI. You could be an ice skater and we could use
00:25:33
Speaker
examples from your days of being an ice skater to learn cybersecurity, to learn digital marketing. I think it could be a real game changer. And that's what entity would go after if we were really embarking upon AI. Jennifer, that's really interesting. And you commented a little bit on government and the fact that many people in government don't even really understand this technology, and yet we're expecting them to regulate it.
AI Regulation and Biden's Guidelines
00:26:02
Speaker
Have you had any chance to think about the big executive order that the Biden administration issued on AI, which was really a series of guidelines, I think, on how it could be used? Have you had a chance to reflect on that at all?
00:26:18
Speaker
I haven't really put a lot of thought into it besides I do appreciate that they're attempting to do something. I think that there's been enough alarm bells sound in the last couple years about the government getting involved sooner than later. There's always this fear factor, too, though. If we over-regulate in the United States, then China and other players in the world pull ahead, Russia.
00:26:46
Speaker
and what happens then.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah, because the AI edge is going to be part of the world order going forward. So I think that we have to walk into this, eyes wide open, and we honestly do need some players that have deep experience like the Eric Schmitz of the world and are willing to put their time, energy, resources into ensuring that we have an edge
00:27:18
Speaker
in the economy without it going rogue and i admire what he's been trying to do and i can actually see that suggest things he's he's put his money and his is big brain behind last five years. That relates to just that making sure that we stay ahead and i without going off the deep end.
00:27:42
Speaker
I know for your entity focus on women in the underrepresented population, what do you feel like they misunderstand about things like AI at all? Do you see it as something that they want to learn more about an approach or are they kind of afraid of this new technology? What's your perception there?
Women's Engagement with AI and Tech Economy
00:28:02
Speaker
Sure. Women are definitely intrigued by it. They want to be a part of the conversation in their companies around AI. And one of the reasons we found that people choose our tech programs or women choose our tech programs is to understand how they can participate in the tech economy. And some say even specifically AI, machine learning,
00:28:28
Speaker
They want to be on the bleeding edge of this, not trying to catch up as women really did in software development. They want to be part of this conversation much earlier. I think it's also noteworthy that
00:28:46
Speaker
We have a number of women that come out of HR roles and upskill with us. And they are already seeing the power of AI and how certain things that they used to do are now being automated. So you look at ATS software that weeds through resumes and looks for keywords. When a job description is put out there by a company, they no longer need human eyes on that.
00:29:14
Speaker
They look at things like video interviews where they can have a camera with no person behind it interviewing a candidate and getting the first one or two interviews locked down without even having to spend
00:29:30
Speaker
salary, spending compensation or time resources on deploying those first couple interviews. So we found that women and things like payroll, HR, even sales, they're already seeing efficiencies, cost efficiencies that companies are leaning into and they're saying themselves,
00:29:51
Speaker
My job is either going to be dramatically changed or it's going to be gone. I need to find my next gig that takes advantage of the technology, doesn't leave me irrelevant from the technology. Jennifer, we're thinking about AI in a much broader context. You have experience and academic background in urban design, environmental design.
00:30:21
Speaker
Just wearing your futurist cap to see ways that our cities are going to look different, our homes are going to look different with respect to new technology like AI.
AI's Impact on Urban Design and Planning
00:30:34
Speaker
Well, I've got a great example of this. But one of our mentors is Dr. Richard Matthew from University of California, Irvine. And he happened to be my mentor when I went through my Urban Planning and Design master's program way back when. And he is actually the director of the Blum Center at UCI.
00:30:56
Speaker
They have done extensive modeling on what would happen if there's a 100-year flood in the Southern California, specifically LA, area. What would happen to low-income residents?
00:31:11
Speaker
And where would it displace them? What kind of financial position would it leave them? So they're modeling that type of work. They've also have conducted large language models of the coastline. So how far will the coastline, and we're talking the Pacific coastline in Southern California, which is eroding every year, how far up towards the PCH?
00:31:39
Speaker
will the erosion eventually be? And they have 10-year models, 20-year models, 50-year models, and it is frightening. And that will impact housing for sure. Expensive housing right on the beach, along the PCH, some of the most expensive real estate in the world could eventually be in the Pacific Ocean.
00:32:03
Speaker
I think when we talk about tech and AI, there's often a lot of fear mongering around the new technology. But I think one thing about this conversation is you're very, very hopeful about AI's ability to better tailor education, better ingest data, and make recommendations.
Democratizing Resources through AI
00:32:22
Speaker
Out of all the positive stories, what makes you most hopeful about AI?
00:32:28
Speaker
Well, I'm not necessarily just categorically optimistic about it. I think that you almost have to look at it with a somewhat positive lens. Being in the type of position I'm in, it's encouraging people to learn data science and participate in the AI economy.
00:32:52
Speaker
But the thing that gets me excited is it can make life easier for a lot of people, meaning the general populace. Things that have been really held to the 1%, things like personal assistance,
00:33:09
Speaker
having your grocery list devised by somebody else having your travel itineraries devised by someone else there are certain things that were already using chat gpt for that previously wouldn't have been accessible.
00:33:25
Speaker
To most people because it would it would it would cost an hourly rate to be able to get these things And so I think that makes me quite hopeful It's flattening the the playing field and giving more people access to some of these perks that will allow them to then embark upon their their creative human journey that excites them and I think that that is quite
00:33:51
Speaker
That's a positive in all of this that as scary as the flip side of AI is, there's some really good things coming down the pike as well that make it democratization of access to certain things. Well, Jennifer, Patrick and I have very much enjoyed this conversation. We've covered a lot of ground ranging from innovation and education,
00:34:18
Speaker
and changes in employment, changes in how mentorship will be affected by these technologies and even our homes. So we want to thank you for your time and any thing you want to add or mention to us about your programs or how to find them.
Future Goals: Partnerships and Skill Training for 2024
00:34:36
Speaker
Sure. Go to www.entityacademy.com. And right now we are really, we are pushing to add more companies to our docket that embrace our career catalyst program. That's our focus. We're going into 24. We also have cohorts for customers if they want to come in individually. We'll do two of those next year. And that's really focused on our soft skills, critical thinking, and business acumen training.
00:35:06
Speaker
Great. All right. Thanks Alex and thanks Patrick. Great seeing you guys.