Reskilling and investing in communities are crucial during the AI revolution, IBM's chief impact officer says

• Justina Nixon-Saintil is IBM's chief impact officer and a member of BI's Workforce Innovation board.
• The leader in corporate social responsibility says companies must expand access to learning AI skills.
• This article is part of "Workforce Innovation," a series exploring the forces shaping enterprise transformation.

Business Insider's "Workforce Innovation" series features an advisory board of experts, convened from a wide variety of roles and industry verticals, to talk about driving positive outcomes across four key change drivers — artificial intelligence, diversity, equity, and inclusion, worker well-being, and C-suite transformation.

As IBM's vice president of corporate social responsibility and chief impact officer, Justina Nixon-Saintil's remit sits at the intersection of some of the most pressing workforce issues.

"When you look at all the different areas — artificial intelligence, DEI, C-suite transformation, and worker well-being — there are connections between them across the board," Nixon-Saintil said.

Nixon-Saintil comes from an engineering background and thinks leaders should have a hands-on approach to technology and its impact on employees and communities.

"I do love technology. I love learning new technologies. I myself have to upskill so that I understand these technologies and how we can use them from a social-impact perspective."

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

You focus a lot on sustainability in your role. What is the connection to workforce innovation?

I focus on very specific populations so that they can be prepared and successful in the workforce. We also make sure that we're investing in communities that are most vulnerable due to climate change and environmental threats.

A lot of my time is spent on AI and how to make sure we're using it to help vulnerable communities. How do we use AI to help support our learners? From the high-school and university level to adult learners — how do we upskill and reskill them in AI so that they can move into well-paying jobs?

There's a saying now that everyone is repeating: AI is not going to take your job, but somebody with AI skills will. So we want to make sure we're bringing those AI skills to our learners so that they can be successful in these tech jobs.

Every industry is going to be revolutionized with AI; it's a useful innovation. We want to make sure that people can take advantage of those jobs, and that helps worker well-being.

How are you evolving your leadership focus for yourself and at IBM?

When I was in Singapore recently, we hosted a roundtable with corporate-social-responsibility leaders from a number of companies, clients, and partners. They're all thinking the same thing: How can we use new technologies to understand all communities better and have a greater impact?

They're also thinking about how they can use it to enhance their own productivity. I think everyone is trying to figure out how to take advantage of and understand this technology because it's happening so quickly.

I have the privilege of working at a company that has focused on upskilling its employees.

For two years now, I've taken part in what we call the WatsonX Challenge internally, where we do training on AI and participate in a team to solve a challenge. I was a part of a CSR team, and we focused on how to create an AI assistant that could help respond to questions around ESG practices.

Leaders are upskilling and reskilling themselves around AI. I think it starts from the top, and we're seeing that all employees have to engage. This is a way a lot of companies can also upskill their employees in something that's fun, competitive, and team-based.

The AI evolution is moving fast; what is the impact of that rapid change? Do you see any parallels?

When I was at university, it was the launch of the internet. For the everyday person, it wasn't until maybe a little over 30 years ago that it really accelerated quickly, and there was a need to understand it as an engineer. Even if you think about the digital divide and what we as CSR professionals have been looking at for the last 20 or 30 years, from the time that the internet was made available to where we are today, there's still a gap.

I saw a statistic that six out of 10 professionals still need to be upskilled globally just on digital literacy. So when you think about that and what's happening with the acceleration of gen AI, my concern is: Does it widen the gap?

How do we make sure that it doesn't become that digital divide we've had for many years and quickly support our communities, especially in low-income areas, to ensure they have access to the right skills to be successful? Because it's moving at a pace that we've never seen before.