C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Sarah Stockdale Of Growclass On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans
An Interview With Kieran Powell
Every business owner has to understand that their teams are getting messages everywhere that they are becoming dispensable by the day. At Growclass we take the approach that humans do the thinking, the ideating, and the creative work — and we use AI to assist and take away repetitive, annoying, or boring tasks. AI is an assistant to the team, never a replacement of any member of it.
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance and integrate into various aspects of business, decision-makers at the highest levels face the complex task of determining where AI can be most effectively utilized and where the human touch remains irreplaceable. This series seeks to explore the nuanced decisions made by C-Suite executives regarding the implementation of AI in their operations. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah Stockdale.
Sarah Stockdale is the Founder of Growclass, an award-winning Growth Marketing Certification and community of Founders and Marketers. Prior to founding Growclass Sarah helped led growth teams for Tilt (acq by Airbnb) and Wave (acq by H&R Block. Sarah is also the Host of The Growth Effect, a Globe and Mail podcast, and the Author of the popular millennial newsletter We Need To Talk About This.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I started in tech mostly by accident. I graduated into a recession and took a 3-month contract at an early-stage accounting startup over a much more secure PR gig. That company ended up raising a big round and keeping me on — beginning my career in growth marketing. I ran growth teams for financial technology companies based in Toronto and San Francisco until I left startup life, very burnt out, to start my own company. I built a consulting company called Valkerie before starting Growclass in 2020. Growclass is an award-winning course and community specializing in Growth Marketing, equipping marketers with the technical skills needed for high-growth career opportunities.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I took way too long to find my people. Early in my career, I tried to fit into the bro-culture of early-stage startups. I pretended to like ping-pong! I spent too long knocking on the doors of clubs that never wanted me as a member. When I finally found people who jived with my values and related to my lived experiences, it changed everything. That’s one of the reasons I’m so bullish on the work we’re doing at Growclass. Building a professional network that you can lean on is the most important thing you can do for your career.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We are! We are working on a multimillion-dollar project in partnership with The Canadian Marketing Association and Jelly Academy, funded by Pallete Skills and The Government of Canada. The project is to upskill 1200 underrepresented Canadians to help them get into marketing that pay, promote, and value them.
We’re only six months into the project, and we’ve already collectively trained 321 Canadians and 241 have already secured new roles. For Growclass’s last cohort, we’re seeing some incredible stats — within 60 days of graduating women increased their salaries by 26%, BIPOC grads increased their salaries by 44% while LGBTQIA alumni increased their salaries by 34%.
Our goal is to empower Canadians, specifically women and underrepresented folks, to land high-paying roles in tech and growing industries. By providing practical, focused growth marketing education, we are dedicated to helping Canadian marketers secure high-growth roles and get them paid what their skills are worth.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. In your experience, what have been the most challenging aspects of integrating AI into your business operations, and how have you balanced these with the need to preserve human-centric roles?
For most businesses, the struggle is knowing what AI is capable of. Generative AI is basically a prediction machine; it predicts the next most likely word in a sentence. Chatbots aren’t thinking or writing — so you shouldn’t sub in AI anywhere in your business where you need thought, experience, stories, or creativity. You’d be bummed out if you realized I’d used a chatbot to answer this question, and you’d likely stop reading.
Can you share a specific instance where AI initially seemed like the optimal solution but ultimately proved less effective than human intervention? What did this experience teach you about the limitations of AI in your field?
A friend of mine is a sought-after SEO consultant. One of her clients recently tried to suss out if they could replace her with a new AI SEO tool. They pushed the “optimize my site” button and undid thousands of hours of work that cost tens of thousands of dollars. They fell off the first page of Google search results overnight, tanking their sales. Sure, the AI tool was technically cheaper than an expert with decades of experience, but it turned out to be far more expensive. AI is a tool to help your business move faster operationally, not a substitute for deep subject matter expertise.
How do you navigate the ethical implications of implementing AI in your company, especially concerning potential job displacement and ensuring ethical AI usage?
We have a usage framework that is consistent with Growclass’s values as a brand. Every company needs to invest time and thought into creating one unique to its values and needs. We are building a real community that requires a lot of human care, and that work can never be automated.
We are focused on serving underrepresented groups, and we know that large language models are trained on data from our world, a world that is rampant with racism and inequality — and the content generated will reflect those biases. Those harms need to be understood and mitigated.
A lot of our students are creators, authors, and artists. AI image generators often replicate the work they were trained on so closely that you can see a smudged signature in the bottom right corner, so we don’t use image generators.
We’re focused on using AI in a way that aligns closely with our values, and what’s best for our students and the community we’re building for the long term.
Could you describe a successful instance in your company where AI and human skills were synergistically combined to achieve a result that neither could have accomplished alone?
If someone on my team can use AI to make their work less administrative, repetitive, and more enjoyable, that’s a win. I want people to get back time they would have spent on admin — not to add those hours to the business but to take time away from work. The productivity AI can bring should benefit the humans who operationalize and manage it, not just businesses and their shareholders.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans, and Why?” How have these 5 things impacted your work or your career?
- Your values
How you engage with these tools must be rooted in your organization’s values.
For example; AI tools are trained on art, writing, and data that the original authors were not and will not be compensated for. Early versions of AI image generators made this so obvious that you could still make out a muddled signature in the bottom right-hand corner of the generated images — because they were trained on the work of human artists.
Knowing that, does using image generators align with your organization’s values? Would your answer be defensible to your customers, employees, and investors? These questions get to the core of how you choose to engage with these tools.
2. Your mission
Why do you exist? Who do you serve? How do these tools enable, or potentially distract from that mission? Shiny object syndrome is real, and not every organization should add AI features to their product. Most shouldn’t
3. Your audience
Who are you serving, and what is their expectation of human vs. AI engagement?
4. Your customer experience
How will introducing AI to your user experience impact how customers experience your product? Would you be excited to deal with AI in the ways you’re introducing it to your customers?
5. Your team
Every business owner has to understand that their teams are getting messages everywhere that they are becoming dispensable by the day. At Growclass we take the approach that humans do the thinking, the ideating, and the creative work — and we use AI to assist and take away repetitive, annoying, or boring tasks. AI is an assistant to the team, never a replacement of any member of it.
Looking towards the future, in which areas of your business do you foresee AI making the most significant impact, and conversely, in which areas do you believe a human touch will remain indispensable?
AI will have the most impact when it comes to efficiency. We use AI to do, not to think. It’s a tool that helps us move faster operationally, not a substitute for a person. At Growclass, we use it in transcribing, copyediting, scheduling, data analysis and synthesis, formatting spreadsheets, note-taking, outlining, support, and marketing administration.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Capitalism has taught us that being “self-made” is a recipe for success. It’s always been a lie; no one is self-made. Every successful person has had immense help, coaching, and resources to get where they are. When we tell specifically women and underrepresented folks that their hustle is the only thing that will make them successful, . We need to move away from an individualist view of success. If more people framed their own success as the product of a community’s effort — and framed
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Readers can follow us at @growclass!
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
