Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Nata Kuribko of Strivr

VR can create unique and consistent learning experiences at scale. For large enterprises that must continuously train thousands of employees across hundreds or even thousands of locations, VR provides the ability to offer engaging, impactful training experiences consistently and at scale.

The Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality Industries are so exciting. What is coming around the corner? How will these improve our lives? What are the concerns we should keep an eye out for? Aside from entertainment, how can VR or AR help work or other parts of life? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Nata Kuribko.

Nata Kuribko is the VP of Product and Data at Strivr, a leading immersive learning platform that partners with Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, Bank of America, Verizon, and more to provide VR training to their employees. Nata is leading Strivr’s Immersive Learning technology development and pioneering immersive data science techniques that analyze people’s behavior in virtual reality to evaluate their skills, traits, and performance in the real world. She has a long career in research and data science, formerly leading teams at Facebook and Stripe.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

My story began in Kiev, Ukraine, where I was born and raised. It was a very interesting time to grow up in eastern Europe, especially during my school years as I witnessed first-hand, the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I watched history written right in front of my eyes as political unrest and people’s foundational beliefs turned upside down. I believe this experience heavily contributed to my own beliefs and behaviors later in life, especially in decision-making when it might go against widely-accepted beliefs.

I moved to the United States to pursue a graduate degree in Economics after completing my undergraduate studies in the Ukraine. After graduate school, I went into ligation consulting, where I learned a lot, but soon realized that the job was not necessarily the right fit for me. There were many precedents set and many rails to follow, so I felt I was missing an environment that promoted more trial and error of new ideas. This led me to leave consulting to join Facebook and then to a payments company called Stripe to focus on product analytics. This was a much better fit for me and it was my intention to stay in this industry, until I came across Strivr.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Early in my career, I read an article that really resonated with me. It argued how the path to success cannot — by definition — be the one that is taken often since only a few ever make it through to the top. The quote from the article that stuck with me is, “The path to success is lonely.” You are often the only one on the path, and there is a lot of pressure from the outside to veer off to a more widely accepted path. This quote was a culmination of my upbringing, my education, and career experience, giving me an important north star to help guide my career. It also helped give me validation and the courage to make riskier decisions that might not have been perceived as the most rational and safe.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

A career in the VR industry was never something I had planned or expected. In fact, Strivr reached out to me as I was about to accept another offer and my mind was already made up by then. So, I rejected a generous invitation to try Strivr’s demo, even though -ironically- I imagined spending my break between jobs experimenting with VR. Not long after that, I mentioned my decision at a family dinner and my daughter told me that she would have never given up the chance to try out VR and encouraged me to give it a go. So I thought, why not?

The next day I reached back out to the company and shared my interest in trying out Strivr’s Immersive Learning platform. I was then able to experience some of the most engaging and impactful training modules I’d ever seen. First, I was a Verizon employee facing an armed robbery at gunpoint, which as you can imagine, left my heart racing and my hands sweating. I was so impressed by the way VR captured the exact intent of the training and how it actually works so much better than traditional training. Next, I was a technician doing a safety inspection for a JetBlue plane, and then as an associate at Walmart engaging with a customer. When I took the headset off, I immediately knew this was where I needed to be.

I realized that VR was about to bring a new era to learning just as the Internet had done with sharing information. And it was not the question of “if”, but “when” VR would re-shape how we interact with learning content and provide us the ability to experience situations exactly like we would in the real-world, but in a safe environment. Immersive Learning wasn’t a trend or fad. Strivr was driving real evolution in learning, and leading the “wave” of innovation that will change the way people are hired, trained, and promoted. I decided then and there that I didn’t want to pursue a position simply because it could provide more compensation in the short term, but instead I wanted to play a part in defining a new industry and guide its developments from a product and data perspective.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

One very memorable story was a trip to a FedEx facility in Chicago to get feedback from users on VR and Strivr’s Immersive Learning technology. I met an older gentleman who told me that he was absolutely thrilled from using our technology, and for the first time he was able to go home and share something his grandchildren could get excited about. This moment stuck with me to this day. We are driving real impact across generations.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My parents have provided me with a tremendous amount of support, especially when I became a mother and had to balance my career with raising my daughter. Having my parents step in and help with childcare allowed me to feel comfortable and free to continue pursuing my aspirations. With their help, I haven’t felt guilty for working full-time. In fact, I hope that my daughter sees me as a role model based on my commitment and dedication to my career.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

One of the most exciting projects that my team and I are working on is the ability to evaluate learners based on their behavior in VR rather than what they say or claim to have experience in (based on past roles/jobs). For companies hiring or promoting their employees, this can provide unique insights to complement a candidate’s resumé. Traditionally, most recruiters and hiring managers rely on a resumé as the best reflection of a candidate’s abilities, but what if they can see a candidate in action? Sure, they may be able to test for technical or “hard skills”, but evaluating someone for harder-to-measure “soft skills” like leadership or communication abilities is very time-consuming and challenging to do in a typical interview process. This is where VR comes in to allow companies to simulate real-world scenarios such as de-escalating a situation with a difficult customer, which can provide a clearer view of how a candidate might respond. Rather than making a decision based on appealing credentials, background, age or other bias, businesses can decide with the added insights of real performance.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?

1. VR can create unique and consistent learning experiences at scale. For large enterprises that must continuously train thousands of employees across hundreds or even thousands of locations, VR provides the ability to offer engaging, impactful training experiences consistently and at scale.

2. VR allows learners to practice potentially dangerous situations in a safe environment. Take a driving test for example. There is a multiple-choice exam and a behind-the-wheel driving test. We can use e-learning to prepare for the written exam, but there isn’t a substitute for real-world driving lessons, which can be terrifying, dangerous, and potentially expensive for new drivers. With VR, however, we can put on a headset to practice driving in an immersive, safe environment, with the ability to make mistakes that can be corrected and practiced.

3. VR provides the ability to evaluate learners based on behaviors that most closely resemble real-world performance. As I said earlier, VR is going to allow us to evaluate learners in a new way — based on their behavior in VR rather than what they say or claim to have experience in (based on past roles/jobs). So, rather than making a hiring or promotional decision based on fancy credentials, background, age or other bias, businesses can decide with the added insights of real performance.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

1. Data Privacy: VR can be an incredible tool for gathering information from individual responses and behavior, but my concern is the need to have specific security and privacy policies in place to ensure personal information is not misused or compromised. With Strivr leading the industry of Immersive Learning, we responsibly partner with the provider and developer ecosystem to guide the security and privacy policies around this new modality.

2. Hardware advances and consumer space is ahead of the enterprise space. Many enterprises are still in the phase of replacing manuals and classroom training with e-learning. Or many are resistant to changing their learning practices at all. When discussing the power of VR with some of these companies, we often feel our competitor is the status quo.

3. We tend to overlook the learnings we can take from learning, and the impact human analytics / intelligence can have on our business. “Learning from learning” is a very important aspect of what we as solutions providers should recognize and promote. When companies come to us, they initially think about putting in new learning technology for time-savings and more effective learning. This is great, however we often also discover insights about how their procedures could actually be improved as we start to design and initially deploy certain training. VR provides unique insights and very few companies have actually been able to uncover and integrate knowledge gained from learning back into their operational procedures. This would ultimately require less training! For example, a company may learn from training that most learners do not notice a stop sign which proves to be the most common hazard in their warehouse. They may address it with additional training, which is great, but we want / expect in the future, that the company will not stop there but will follow up to adjust the physical environment — e.g., make the stop sign more visible by adding blinking lights to it. It can be taken to the next level, where each warehouse setup is tested for the most common hazards and made safer based on people’s behavior.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

There are many ways XR technologies can help us at work. First, studies have found that VR-based Immersive Learning is much more effective and engaging than most traditional training and e-learning methods. Another benefit is the ability to practice without dangerous consequences and risks from failure. Finally, VR offers a simulated environment where users can act freely within scenarios and see the outcome of their actions first-hand.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

With the rise of automation, there have been fears that workers will be replaced and become unnecessary in certain fields. However, the advent of these new technologies can drastically improve an individual’s capabilities through training, upskilling, and active assistance. This may allow employees to grow their career path in ways they may never have been able to before, which can lead to longer-term success for both the individual and the company overall. These technologies can also enhance a worker’s capabilities to accelerate their on-the-job performance and results. For example, a construction worker can practice a new task in VR, have safety alerts through AR glasses, and use MR to help design building plans. We are just scratching the surface of these technologies’ capabilities and future advancements will bring even more benefits to our daily lives.

Let’s zoom out a bit and talk in broader terms. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? If not, what specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

Overall, I think society (specifically in the U.S.) still battles with the perception that women are not good at STEM. I have witnessed this first hand in America after living here for years and now raising a daughter here as well. The issue I believe starts within the schools. Studying or focusing on STEM subjects is not encouraged at a young age, and this has a discouraging effect on young girls who may become reluctant to pursue the STEM field. I personally had a different experience growing up in eastern Europe, where girls were believed to be better at sciences (and studying in general) because boys were believed to be less focused at young ages. Regardless of the perception, girls were indeed top performers so I don’t believe there should be a socially-constructed ability gap.

Furthermore, traditional social expectations of a good mother were ones that sacrifice her career for her children. Certain careers, including those in STEM, require putting in 100% presence during working hours. As young girls grow up observing their mothers acting on this, they pick up on these social cues and feel confident that they could pursue the same for themselves.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

Many people believe that building a scene in VR is costly, resource intensive, and time consuming. This belief many times keeps learning leaders from leaning into the technology and choosing to leverage as part of their learning programs. However, today there are off-the-shelf modules that make it more accessible and cost-effective to acquire, as well as point-and-click authoring tools that make it easy for a non-expert to put an immersive environment together.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Having a senior female leader increases chances of women to be hired, promoted and “taken seriously” in the company.
2. We are often not given the benefit of doubt. The first couple of months are the toughest while we prove ourselves.
3. You have to be strong to be a successful leader, but you cannot act like a strong man without being considered aggressive. Finding the right balance is an art.
4. Strong does not mean not showing vulnerability. Admitting that you don’t know everything and accepting that you make mistakes is the best strategy. Otherwise, others will point it out for you ;)
5. Being comfortable being yourself, being different.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire 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. :-)

WIth VR being such a powerful tool for learning, I believe providing access to school kids as part of their academic education would open up a whole new world of learning. To experience something that they previously could only read about, or exposing kids to scenarios that place them in someone else’s shoes to provide a different perspective and to develop empathy would elevate the level of learning we could provide. This could be especially powerful for students who would otherwise never have the opportunities to travel to visit other cultures, or for students who would otherwise never be exposed to underprivileged situations. The opportunities to learn and grow are endless.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

There are many prominent leaders I would want to meet for so many of their admirable qualities. But if given the opportunity to choose a person that I think would be interesting to meet, I would choose someone that faced hardships and criticism in their career so that I could learn from how they responded (or didn’t) to touch situations. In this case, Marissa Mayer comes to mind. She is definitely not a “fan favorite”, but to me, it would be very interesting to hear firsthand how she chose to navigate so many tough situations that a successful woman could face. I’d like to understand what influenced her actions and decisions.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!