
Fiona Passantino is a passionate AI Integration Specialist, with expertise in the human elements of engagement, communication and culture. As a speaker, trainer, workshop facilitator, and professional executive coach, she helps leaders and teams understand and integrate AI into their workflows. Through her podcast “Working Humans” and her “Comic Books for Executives” – including the upcoming “AI-Powered Professional”, Fiona makes the world of AI accessible to those who aren’t tech-minded. Discover how Fiona’s unique blend of technology and human understanding is shaping the future. Read on to learn more.
What motivated you to move from the corporate world to being an independent AI consultant?
I had been working in Corporate for about 12 years, doing employee engagement and internal communications. Over time it became very clear that my role was not actually about increasing engagement and having greater democracy, inclusion in the workplace or employee empowerment, but to simply go through the motions of engagement – just throw yoga classes at people and say: “okay, you’re engaged now”, and ignore the stress, burnout and lack of agency working people were experiencing. I noticed the policies we were implementing were the opposite of what would actually engage and inspire people.
I had studied AI as part of my Master’s, and that was really what hooked me in from the very start. It was clear to me that AI is not just about data analytics, but about human engagement at work. And I was exhausted, I think a lot of people can relate to this – being on a perpetual treadmill, dealing with the workload and stress myself.
So about a year and a half ago, I decided to set up my consultancy. I knew I could teach people about AI because I understand it, and it’s easy for me to explain. I became a keynote speaker, trainer, and facilitator. I do panels, and I even recently got involved in stand-up comedy about using AI, because it is so effective to use these tools for company keynotes or event moderation. My goal is to explain AI and empower people, and now I do that as a consultant. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it, and I’ve never looked back.
“My goal is empowering non-technical people to understand what AI is and to have a seat at the table, so that it is not just the ‘tech bros’ determining policy and where AI takes us.”
How did you stay motivated during the initial phase of establishing your consultancy?
There was just no turning back. I saw the effect that corporate was having on my mental health. You know, these jobs are so intense and just not human. I saw the people around me go into burnout, drop out, have major physical health challenges because of overwork, stress, negativity, constant cycles of annual reorganizations. I was absolutely determined there was no way back. So, every time I’d get tired – you know, at 8:00 at night when I’d want to wind things down but I still had another couple proposals to write – I would think: I’m not going back, I will not work at corporate again…. It was that determination, and maybe a little bit of stubbornness, that allowed me to follow every single lead and do a lot of work, some of it for free, in the beginning.
How have female-led communities such as Female Ventures impacted your success, both in your personal life and your work life?
They’ve been wonderful. Before I had paid gigs, Female Ventures gave me a microphone and a platform, and I started talking about AI. Through these events, I can interact with the women afterwards, find out what they want to know, so I can tailor what I’m talking about to make it really relevant, and I can fine-tune my message. I have learned so much and become inspired by these wonderful, strong professional men and women who attend the events.
And it is always a pleasure to hang out, grab a glass of wine and chat after an event. A lot of the people I meet there are doing what I did: starting on their own – leaving a predictable corporate job to become an entrepreneur, which is not comfortable, but very exhilarating and rewarding. We all share this desire, and the fear that it could go south.
“This is about our future as a complete society; non-technical people have to be part of the larger AI conversation.”
Tech is a male-dominated sector. Did you face any challenges related to that?
Sure. A lot of the research I do involves talking to what I call the “tech bros”. And they don’t take you seriously. They’ll say: we want an AI expert. But there’s an assumption that as a woman I’m more a soft skills expert. To be fair, I am coming at it from the human perspective. I’m a human expert who knows a thing or two about AI. My goal is empowering non-technical people to understand what AI is and have a seat at the table so that it is not just the tech bros that are determining policy and determining where AI takes us. That’s a big part of all this. After a while, people started reading and listening to what I was saying, attending a lot of the free events that I do and going to conferences and so on.
This is much bigger than the highly empowered tech bros building AI in Silicon Valley. This is our future as a complete society, and non-technical people have to be part of the conversation. The way I got through it was asking lots of questions. I don’t care about looking dumb, or what faces the tech bros make; I’ll ask anything. I want to understand it so I can explain it to non-technical people. I’m fighting for the rights of the non-technical employee – that’s really important. So now I have this reputation of being like a gadfly, but it’s kind of fun because they know what they’re getting, you know? When they answer with technical jargon I keep pushing back with more and more questions until I understand it and can explain it.
What advice would you give women who want to get into the tech space right now, either working in a tech company or as an independent consultant?

I do think that women have this way of connecting with people and intuitively understanding what people need and want. And we’re missing that in tech. If you learn enough to become a bridge between the tech and the human, then you can play a very powerful role in this sector. We need to get late adopters and analogue people on board so that they’re part of the AI narrative. I think that for a lot of the tech bros, it’s tech first and humans second. Women have an edge when it comes to this they tend to have humans more top of mind, human happiness and fulfilment, and balance. It’s a cliché, but because of that, women bring something special to tech culture.
“My big message for people, especially people in the creative industries, is: don’t have an emotion about it, just learn it and make it yours. And then you can drive the conversation.”
What are the implications of AI being a very white-male-dominated industry? What can be done to make AI and its development more inclusive?
AI is one of the least inclusive industries out there. Only 33% of tech workers are women, and only 20% of AI workers are women. We just now saw one of the only women in AI leadership, Mia Mirati, OpenAI CTO, step down rather suddenly and without explanation. Now it’s really only the bros at the top. It is extremely female-unfriendly and there are a lot of reasons for that. The culture is all about building fast and building hard, it’s very competitive. There’s a “mine is bigger than yours” sort of mentality. So it’s not a place that women tend to gravitate towards. Unfortunately, this culture is baked into the algorithm. And that’s why I do what I do, so that we can all at least get in there and say, hey, wait a minute, let me see that data again. It’s my way of counterbalancing this very culturally non-diverse approach to AI.
TECH BRO CULTURE AND AI |
AI has three layers of intelligence.
But who’s deciding all these things? Young white American males. Remember when Chat GPT voice activation came out over the summer? Everybody had this flirty female voice – you’ve got your AI girlfriend in your pocket, how great is that? That’s why it’s important that people who are not young, white American males living between Seattle and the middle of California, get involved. We can’t have what’s basically a tiny sliver of the actual humanity out there making these huge decisions. The bros have a vision of where all this is going, and we’re along for the ride. Regulators can’t predict and make laws for something that they don’t even know is coming. The tech bros care about being the first. They want to plant their flag on the moon. They want to be the one who builds AGI (artificial general intelligence) and that’s the tech bro culture. There’s no stopping the AI train so we need to make the train bigger, to include more of us. This is doubly important because regulation is not able to keep up with such fast-moving technology. Europe is trying its best. But that also has a chilling impact on what reaches Europe. For example, Apple announced recently that it’s not going to be rolling out its AI for the rest of us in Europe. |
What advice do you have for people working in creative jobs?
My big message for everyone, especially people in the creative industries, is: don’t have an emotion about it. Just learn it and make it yours. And then you can drive the conversation. My advice to creatives is to incorporate it into your work. That’s the path I’ve taken. My comics used to be 100% hand-drawn, and now I use AI for backgrounds and brainstorming, because this saves me time. My thing is more about storytelling, that’s more important than the books being 100% done by hand.
To other artists, I say: double down on the human element. Make your work guaranteed 100% human. If you are a creative digital artist, try to make your experience a physical one – so people are in the room with you and they’re paying for a physical experience – or make it multimodal. If you’re in the digital field as an artist, you have to adapt. Most of us are not ready. For most of us, when good enough is good enough, AI will be put in place to do our work as an artist or as a writer, as a copy editor, as a musician, as a filmmaker.
If you’re not working for the absolute top, the Pradas and the Guccis of this world, you’re in grave danger of being replaced. So try to become like a cyborg artist – use AI to be more productive, but make being human a selling point. Really focus on the live experience, because that is one thing where AI really cannot take your place. That’s why a lot of what I do is live keynotes and live workshops and live events and stand-up. That is one place where I have a longer window before the Optimus robot can do it better than I can. That gives us a bit more time. Whatever you are doing, focus on the live element, because that’s the one thing that you know is real. One thing that cannot be disrupted by AI is a bunch of humans gathered in a room becoming inspired by one another.
Where do you see AI going?
There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re going to have embodied AI within the next five years. We already have the Atlas robot. The Figure 02 robot has ChatGPT in the brain. You can communicate with this robot based on natural language, it’s like a colleague. It can carry out basic commands using natural language. AI has empowered robotic development.
FROM ROBOTIC WINTER TO EMBODIED AI |
We had a “robotic winter” where huge amounts of money were dumped into robot development, but it didn’t really get anywhere; it stayed very blocky, not very useful. AI has made it so there’s enough data, and with quantum computing and the new chips that are being developed, we’re going from CPU (central processing unit) to GPU (graphic processing unit), which means a giant leap forward.
GPU chips were originally made for video games. If you have a computer that has a gaming chip, it can execute 100 times faster than a traditional CPU computer. At the same time, we now have quantum computers, which use quantum mechanics to write code on a subatomic level rather than atomic level. We’ve had this explosion in the amount of compute that can be thrown at the problem. Now, we’re seeing this AI-empowered robotic development. Month after month, new models are being rolled out; it’s extraordinary how fast that development is going, and how quickly the AI brain is learning predictive reasoning. We’re heading towards humanoid robots, like the ones we might have dreamed of when we were kids. We might see them within five years. We’re already seeing them in warehouses. The BMW factory uses Figure 02 robots in their assembly lines. Amazon uses Proteus in their picking and packing warehouses. Elon Musk has just launched his Optimus humanoid robot. The only thing preventing the AI brain from taking action as a free agent is that it does not have a physical presence in the world – and that is changing with the creation of these humanoid AI-robots. |

The other place we’re heading is something called AGI (artificial general intelligence). This is when AI is smart enough to do any task a human can do, and you can’t tell the difference anymore. A lot of us do our work online, some of us never go into an office. An AI agent could send emails, read emails, summarize things, create a PowerPoint, give a training, etc. You could be talking to an AI, and you wouldn’t know it.
It’s not going to be too long before we have to question everything we see. If there’s a digital layer between you and what you’re interacting with, it could be fake – whether it’s a photo, a video, music, art, a workshop, etc., it could be non-human generated. We have to get comfortable with that reality and start preparing for it.
“Whatever you are doing, focus on the live element, because that’s the one thing that you know is real. One thing that cannot be disrupted by AI is a bunch of humans gathered in a room becoming inspired by one another.”
Could you share some specific strategies for staying updated on the latest AI trends and technologies?
I do a podcast called “Working Humans” every two weeks where I talk about how AI affects our working landscape, as well as human-driven stuff like leadership and how you can change and adapt. I also write a blog about this.
Podcasts I listen to to stay up to date are:
- Traceroute
- This Day in AI
- AI for humans – this one is my favorite because it’s funny
- AI Breakdown
I also do an event once every few weeks called Wine, Cheese and AI. Last time we had a psychologist, an AI coder and a human expert on the panel, talking about how the AI brain differs from the human brain. The next one I want to do is on sentience: How do we know when these systems become conscious?
When you’re not focusing on AI and work, how do you manage your work-life balance?
I have an interesting balance now: I live in two countries. I have a work life, and a fun life. Which suits me because I’m very much one half extreme extrovert and one half extreme introvert. I love being out in public, speaking, mixing it up, doing these big events. Nothing is more exciting and wonderful. But I also love being a little turtle and just closing off the world. I live in the Netherlands about three weeks a month and one week a month I’m in Genova, Italy. So it’s like a natural boundary. I can’t do any physical events there. I can only write, read, brainstorm, research, draw and think. And drink cappuccino. And then when I’m in The Netherlands, I’m on stage and doing the work.
Thank you, Fiona, for this inspiring conversation.
Has Fiona’s story inspired or concerned you? Connect with Fiona to discuss more: