Transformation of the Week
Anna Tucker

October 11, 2024

Chris Lusk

In this Transformation of the Week by AI Makerspace, I chat with Anna Tucker of Belong For Me. Listen to how she made the jump from the HR department to the AI development team with no background in programming.

Transcript

Lusk: I want to give people a little background into who you are, and what you’ve been doing.

Anna: I am Anna. I have been working at Belong For Me for about 6 years now. Before that I was working for Amazon for about 3 years, in HR, as a multi-site lead there.

And then I made the transition to Belong For Me so I could focus more on tech which was what I was interested in.

Lusk: So what first got you interested in taking a Gen AI course?

Anna: So I initially started getting into Gen AI due to the buzz of it, I started playing around with all the various tools that were available to the general public. It was very accessible and I was very interested in what I was finding.

And then thankfully, through Belong For Me, I was given the resources to take classes like this one where I’ve been able to learn a ton more about what really goes into a lot of these tools, and how to use them effectively, and super efficiently.

Lusk: So you’re currently taking the AI Engineering Bootcamp, Cohort number 4. Have you been able to take anything that you’ve learned in that class, and apply it to work, or something that your making personally?

Anna: Absolutely! A lot of the assignments we’ve been working on have been extremely valuable for the work that we’re doing. Specifically in the marketing department. We had one assignment on using multi agents to generate LinkedIn posts. As you all know there’s a lot of buzz about some cringy LinkedIn posts that can be out there with AI writing things that don’t necessarily sound too human.

But we’ve been able to take a lot of the tools in the class and make it sound a lot more genuine and convey our message and communication style that we want our company to be speaking in.

Lusk: So you come from this HR, non-programming type of background. What has the transition been like for you, into the Gen AI space?

Anna: Yeah coming from an HR background was a little challenging getting into this space. I think the main thing that I had to focus on was gathering a bit of Python knowledge so I could use that in the class. Again I had very little going into the class so a lot of the challenges and hurdles that I had to jump through were really just on the programming side.

Lusk: So you’ve been building, shipping, and sharing every week in class, inside and outside of class, what words of wisdom do you have for someone watching this who has a similar background as you?

Anna: Class gives you the concepts and how to utilize the tools and get them implemented, but when you’re looking at a lot of code that you have no idea what’s really going on underneath, it can be a little daunting. But I think that’s kind of what’s cool about AI. And coming into it as somebody, I guess fresh eyes is, it’s changing everyday.

So even if you’re somebody with zero experience, in about two months a lot of people are going to have zero experience because it’s evolving that quickly that you have to be rapidly evolving with it.