Emily Scovell is all about encouraging conversations about AI this International Women’s Day.
It speaks right to the heart of the 2025 theme: accelerate action, with Harvard Business School research showing women are adopting the technology at a 25% lower rate than men.
Working from this basis, on March 6, Scovell and the GroupM team organised a panel discussion with four female leaders: Fern Castellanos, Marketing Director at Nestle, Sarah Kenny, Associate Director Marketing at University of Auckland, Jodi O’Donnell, TVNZ CEO and Aimee Buchanan, GroupM CEO for Australia New Zealand.
The women spoke of their experiences of using AI in the workplace in a Chatham House rules discussion, sharing tips and lively anecdotes.
Speaking to Scovell after, she says that she likes to think of AI as her co-worker. As Chief Strategy Officer at Group M, her role can be a bit “island-like” and in AI she has a much-needed thought companion.
“I’ve been trying to think of AI as someone I can have a conversation with to get help me articulate what I’m thinking and to help challenge my thinking.”
She had previously felt a little resistant towards AI because the use cases presented to her – synthesising information, summarising and injecting creativity into writing – were all parts of her job that she enjoyed and had built her career on.
“I want AI to do the mundane things that I’m not interested in so I can concentrate on the creative, fulfilling human elements… I want AI to do my time sheets.”
The second element holding her back was feeling like she didn’t have the time to experiment with the tools to figure out what she could use it for.
Internet parallels
But that all changed when she read that Harvard Business School study.
“The research for me was motivating because I think actually confronting the stats and acknowledging them and acknowledging the wiring that is likely to make us think like that and exacerbate things that are already in play,” says Scovell.
There’s already parallels to the adoption of the internet, she adds. Pew Research shows it took two decades for women’s internet usage to equal men’s – meaning Web 2.0 was built largely by and often for a male audience.
Flip the mindset
Many reasons exist for this disparity – lack of confidence, experience, exposure, concerns over ethics – that won’t be fixed overnight, but Scovell says this is exactly why it is so important to talk about AI and actively work against this trend.
“I think we have to acknowledge that that is a potential scenario and do our best to not let that happen and make sure we’ve seen that collective responsibility in training it and training people how to use it.
“Be curious, see it as a space for play, but make sure we understand the hard wiring and the risks of being left behind if we are not opening ourselves up to that experimentation.”
Organising the panel discussion was one such way of doing that, says Scovell.
“I thought it would be a really galvanising conversation in terms of flipping people’s mindset about how they want to use it and how they want to push themselves to make this year that they really embrace it and see what it can bring to their work.”
Share your prompts and hacks
At GroupM, Scovell says AI has been instrumental in bringing to life ideas that the team is trying to pitch – a new brand logo or an activation – and has helped clients better see their potential.
The organisation also tries to normalise fact that it’s using it: talking about the prompts, sharing the hacks, so everyone can learn from each other, she adds. This includes sharing how you correct and give feedback to the AI platform, another key in its training.
Scovell recommends people start by using it their personal life as well as at work – like using it at home to put paper invites straight into the digital calendar.
“How can you inject it into your hobbies, where is it going to save you time and where are you going to have fun with it?
“It’s only through playing around with it that you can ever get comfortable with it and understand what it can do but also what its limitations are.”
Let it be your starting point, she adds, the same way Google and desktop research has been for over two decades, but ensure the focus is on understanding the shortfalls and the bias.
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