Suspenders & Double Dutch: Scaling AI Without Losing the Human Touch with Vicki Deal-Williams | [Sidecar Sync Episode 143]

Summary:

 In this interview episode, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan sit down with Vicki Deal-Williams, CEO of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), to explore how a century-old organization is thoughtfully embracing AI. Vicki shares how ASHA’s AI Innovation Day sparked a cultural shift across staff—from skeptics to the “suspenders group” eager to experiment—while reinforcing a people-first philosophy. The conversation dives into balancing governance with creativity, designing impactful AI experiences even for small teams, and building tools like an evidence-based AI navigator to better serve members. Along the way, they unpack leadership lessons on change management, capacity building, and why adopting AI is less about perfection and more like jumping into a game of double Dutch—messy, continuous, and worth it.

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Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress 🔗 https://BlueCypress.io, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

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Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space.

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Read the Transcript

🤖 Please note this transcript was generated using (you guessed it) AI, so please excuse any errors 🤖

[00:00:00:14 - 00:00:09:17]
Mallory
 Welcome to the Sidecar Sync Podcast, your home for all things innovation, artificial intelligence and associations.

[00:00:09:17 - 00:01:35:21]
Mallory
 I'm one of your hosts along with Amit Nagarajan and today we've got an interview edition of the Sidecar Sync lined up for you. And I've got some advice as we kick off this episode. It's time to put on your suspenders. Now trust me that's relevant and you'll soon learn what I mean by that. But first off today's guest is Vicky Diehl-Williams, CEO of the American Speech Language Hearing Association, also known as ASHA. Vicky has spent more than three decades leading one of the world's largest professional associations. A certified association executive, speech language pathologist, and long time association leader, Vicky brings a thoughtful, practical perspective to what it takes to lead through technological change. In this episode, we talk about how ASHA is approaching AI. From innovation days that encourage staff to experiment with AI in a low pressure environment, to responsible AI governance, to building tools that help members tap into decades of trusted, evidence-based knowledge. We also discuss leading through uncertainty, bringing boards and staff along on the journey, and why culture matters more than the technology. Finally, we talk about the mindset leaders need to help their organizations embrace change.

[00:01:36:23 - 00:01:52:22]
Mallory
 And by the end of this episode, you'll understand why the suspenders group became one of ASHA's most enthusiastic AI adopters, and why Vicky says learning AI is a lot like jumping into a game of double dutch. With that, everyone, let's jump right in.

[00:01:52:22 - 00:02:10:03]
Mallory
 thank you so much for joining us on the Sidecar Sync podcast. It has been a minute since we've had a CEO of an incredible association on the podcast. We're really happy to have you here. Can you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming ASHA's CEO as we kick off this episode?

[00:02:11:11 - 00:02:18:15]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I was a clinician, a speech language pathologist at the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center.

[00:02:19:19 - 00:02:45:13]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And I always say I was discovered by the then director of the Office of Minority Concerns here at ASHA. She was doing some in-service training for our staff then. And I was working in a group called Outside Center Services.

[00:02:46:14 - 00:03:15:02]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And she needed a group of speech language pathologists to help her with a tool that she had developed to assess individuals, well, kids who were dialect speakers in Head Start. And we had all the contracts with the Head Start centers in and around Cleveland, Ohio.

[00:03:16:05 - 00:04:11:00]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And she noticed that all of my colleagues were struggling with having the kids that they were working with pass using the tools that we were using. And I was the only black clinician in our group. So I was working with them to help them understand why these kids really weren't failing on the tools. So she noticed the training that I was doing with them. ASHA had a grant, had received a grant to train speech language pathologists and audiologists to work with minority and bilingual kids. That was all I had been doing. I was fresh out of school. So I had been working just for a couple of years, which is why I say I was discovered.

[00:04:12:15 - 00:04:19:18]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So she suggested that I apply for the job to direct that grant.

[00:04:20:23 - 00:04:22:05]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I thought she was crazy.

[00:04:23:06 - 00:04:40:17]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 But because at that point, I mean, ASHA was this ethereal body that certified you in my head. So my mother actually said to me, wouldn't you have to lose? And I went ahead and applied for the job.

[00:04:41:18 - 00:04:54:07]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I actually got the job because that was all I was doing. There were many clinicians like my colleagues who were doing that as a part of their jobs. But that was all I did.

[00:04:55:16 - 00:05:06:01]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And so she and the training part of what I was doing was the piece that this grant was all about.

[00:05:07:17 - 00:05:16:12]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I came to ASHA, ran the grant with a whole lot of input from the person who then became my mentor.

[00:05:17:13 - 00:05:24:07]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I left ASHA after that grant completed. I went to work at Fannie Mae,

[00:05:25:11 - 00:05:55:11]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 convinced the powers that be there that I could do training and development because I liked the training part of what I did. The Office of Diversity at Fannie Mae became my primary customer. I came back to ASHA as a part of ASHA's RE-ORG in the role of the Chief Staff Officer for Multicultural Affairs, which was what the director of the Office of Minority Concerns became when my then-minotaur left.

[00:05:56:24 - 00:06:26:11]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And I stayed in that role for about 24, 25 years, but I had the luxury in that role of being a management liaison to a number of different units across the office and had an opportunity to co-champion our strategic management. I was able to work on the integration of ASHA's student organization, MISLA, into ASHA's umbrella

[00:06:29:05 - 00:06:51:07]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 and a number of other change management efforts. So when my predecessor at ASHA decided to retire, it was easy for me to raise my hand and say, "Okay, I think I'm ready for this role." And here I am five years later in the CEO role.

[00:06:51:07 - 00:07:26:00]
Mallory
 I love you starting off that story, saying you were discovered. It was a good discovery that person made. I'll say, ASHA is a century-old organization and it serves, I believe, more than 240,000 members in a healthcare-adjacent, highly-regulated space. And in my research for this episode, I noted that you were the fourth CEO in that century-long history, which is incredible, so congrats to you. But how does this all shape the way you think about adopting new technology in a century-old organization that has so much history, essentially? How do you think about that and also in a highly-regulated space?

[00:07:27:01 - 00:07:51:01]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Yeah, interestingly enough, there are people much smarter than I am who handle both the technology strategy and our legislative and regulatory strategy. So thankfully, I don't have to do that much of that. But from a philosophical perspective, I think my job is to try to make sure we're all staying people first.

[00:07:52:01 - 00:08:19:07]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Our professions focus on helping people. We look at communication and function related to communication in ways that are meaningful to people. That means we have to maintain that human touch. We have to stay connected to what's important to people and humanity. If we lose sight of that humanity, we lose sight of our purpose.

[00:08:20:15 - 00:09:13:17]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So that then requires that we relate our work and our members' work, whether it's in educational settings, whether it's in healthcare, whether it's in private practice, whether it's in industry, in academia, wherever it is they're working, the one thing that we all have in common is that we have to help the person function in that environment with other people in that setting to achieve their desired outcomes. And so the technology has to support them. And whether it's the way we use it or something that we put together or build for them in order for them to communicate more effectively,

[00:09:15:13 - 00:09:46:16]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 we have to... That's something that I am constantly thinking about and constantly ensuring that our staff thinks about in whatever role they're in. So that the members, the clients, the patients and the students have access to something that's simple, that's easy, that's cost effective. If not, it's not worth our investment in the time, the money, the effort. It's just not worth it for us.

[00:09:46:16 - 00:10:25:24]
Mallory
 Yep. We often talk about on this podcast, Vicky, how the technology is ready more or less. It's improving, but AI is here. It's here to stay, we believe, and it's technically mature enough to act on. But what you really have to as a leader cultivate is that culture is putting your people first, creating the systems within your organization so that the people can use this technology as a tool to ultimately advance your mission. So I love that you said you led with that message. I'm curious if you can share a little bit with us because I feel like it ties into that idea of people first. Share a little bit with us and our listeners about the AI Innovation Day that you recently held at ASHA.

[00:10:27:09 - 00:11:04:18]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 The Innovation Day was sort of a remix, if you will, of an Innovation Day that we've had before. We had an Innovation Day several years ago that was intended to give staff an opportunity to, well, basically to give staff permission to be creative and to see what barriers there were to innovating. In this case, we had already gotten feedback from our staff that they were feeling like they couldn't be innovative.

[00:11:05:19 - 00:11:16:03]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And in trying to figure out what was in the way, it seemed that one of the biggest pain points for us was their capacity.

[00:11:17:09 - 00:11:56:08]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So we were on the search for what is it that we could do to ease up some of that capacity. Ever since I took on this role, we've been trying to get them to take things off their plate, trying to figure out, you know, how do we sunset some things? And we've tried many things, but our staff is so dedicated to the work that our members do. Just asking them to do that is a really hard thing to do. So what we tried to do was to look for something, and this was the perfect marriage.

[00:11:57:09 - 00:12:21:00]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Something that would increase efficiencies and potentially free up some capacity to allow them to be more innovative, to use technology to do some things that they needed and wanted to do on behalf of the members. So the Innovation Day was one of those things where it was kind of like, "Okay, let's do this again."

[00:12:22:02 - 00:12:32:15]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 What we did was it was basically an in-house conference. And ASHA has a very large staff with 326 staff.

[00:12:33:16 - 00:12:40:11]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So we asked staff to think of this as essentially a professional development day.

[00:12:41:12 - 00:12:46:16]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 We had them come in. We moved the staff throughout our building.

[00:12:47:21 - 00:13:14:00]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 We had a number of breakout sessions to start off the day to get people engaged and participating. We had over 80 breakout sessions that, yes, all around the building. I mean, we were in one big room. The session that I facilitated, there were three of us in one big room, in different parts of the room,

[00:13:15:04 - 00:13:36:22]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 in small groups. And we asked questions like, "What kind of work do you think could be enhanced using AI? What are the kinds of things that you think or you're hearing members ask about that we might be able to use AI for?

[00:13:37:23 - 00:14:03:19]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 What are the things that we need to think about as we're integrating AI into our work? And what are the kinds of guiding principles that should inform our work?" So we had staff engage in those. And I had a group of people who were very introverted, very quiet. And again, it might've been because they're talking to the CEO. They decided they needed to participate.

[00:14:05:04 - 00:14:57:11]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Either way, everybody was actively engaged. We have a text messaging system that we use for snow days and those kinds of things. So we used that system that told people, "Okay, it's time to move to your next group." We moved people around. We moved them into different groups. So they were moving and interacting with people that they don't normally work with. So it was nice for them to connect with people that they don't normally get to connect with. We had skills labs that they participated in, you know, how to write better prompts, how to use the enterprise tools that we had put in place. How to create skill files, which I really wanted to learn how to do. I wasn't able to participate in that.

[00:14:58:22 - 00:16:38:18]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 We had demos. There's a group of staff that I call the suspender group. We have been holding them back by their suspenders. They have been ready to do this work for a really long time. So we had that group actually do demonstrations on what AI can do to show staff. So, you know, kind of this thing where staff just wandered around the office and could stop and see what some folks were doing with AI and what could be done. And we had a shark tank. So complete with shark snacks and some amazing presentations where people were able to make their case to a group of us. And we funded one of the presentations, one of the submissions, and the others have all gone into an incubator. They actually will all be funded eventually because there were some amazing suggestions that came through. But it just was a great day. Everybody was, like I said, very engaged. And I think people kind of came in at the beginning of the day like, okay, yeah, what's up with this? What's going to happen over the course of the day? But everybody left really energized. And like I said, for me, it was just a real highlight of what's possible when you get an amazingly creative staff together and you just unleash them and let them go.

[00:16:38:18 - 00:17:17:02]
Amith
 Vicky, you and I were together at a dinner with Michelle from ASAE and seven other CEOs of different associations where we talked about a bunch of this stuff. And you mentioned very enthusiastically at that meal that this was one of the best things that she'd experienced in your time as CEO. And so it immediately caught my eye and caught my attention. And I wanted to get you on the pod a lot for that reason because I don't hear CEOs speak with that level of enthusiasm about AI training, if you will, and the type of process you went through. I would actually argue that what you just described as far more than AI training, it's really a cultural shift and an acceleration.

[00:17:18:05 - 00:17:26:22]
Amith
 But why is it that in your time as CEO or perhaps your overall tenure at ASHA, you're so enthusiastic about this particular day?

[00:17:26:22 - 00:18:11:19]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 You know, I think part of the beauty of it was that it gave us an opportunity for staff to see firsthand what could be. The other part of it was it was a leveler. You know, for the folks, like I said, we had the suspender club, what I call the suspender club, the folks that were raring to go that we were kind of holding back until we had some guardrails for them. But we also had the folks who were a little afraid and just weren't sure what this thing is and not really sure what to do with it, how it could work. You know, they were concerned about there were some folks concerned about the environment.

[00:18:13:00 - 00:19:17:05]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Just all of those kinds of things. And it was an opportunity for us to kind of put all of that out on the table. And we had talked about that ahead of time. And we said to them, we know that there are concerns. Let's talk about those concerns. Come in with suggestions. So we didn't talk about the concerns. We talked about we asked them to come in with suggestions on how to address those concerns because I didn't want to spend time talking about the problems. We all know there are issues and people are concerned, but let's figure out what we what's within our purview, what's within our influence. What is it that we as a body can do that we have some control over within the work that we're going to be doing that we can do? You know, Ash is one of the we are socially responsible. We are are constantly looking for ways to give back.

[00:19:18:09 - 00:20:26:02]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 We recycle everything. We recycle glasses and batteries and you name it. We recycle it. So, you know, why wouldn't we look for ways that we can reduce our footprint here as well? So if folks had ideas, we wanted to hear them. And what we did. And again, that was a part of some of the questions that we asked at the beginning of the day. And we posted responses to those questions all around the office over the course of the day. So people could see their responses and others responses, you know, on monitors throughout the building as they were moving around between and it breaks, you know, during lunch. So they knew that, you know, we we had the information, we were gathering it and we were taking it seriously. We've got what we call an AI enablement team. And that team is taking all of those ideas and trying to figure out now how we act on any of those. And that's all staff. It's all staff driven.

[00:20:26:02 - 00:20:28:00]
Amith
 That's awesome. There's so much there.

[00:20:28:00 - 00:20:34:06]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 We have the luxury of a large staff and people with expertise in lots of different areas.

[00:20:34:06 - 00:21:28:06]
Amith
 And that's a great point. I think it's actually something we should come back to. Mallory is unpacking some of the stuff that he's talked about later in the episode and talking about how organizations with fear resources potentially can still draw inspiration ideas from this. Vicki, I think, you know, there's so much to unpack from what you shared. Very much appreciate all of that detail. I think one particular thing that I wanted to maybe spend a moment on is the cultural shift. And so you mentioned earlier, you said something along the lines of permission to be creative and then helping them forge additional capacity to then do something with that. And it goes to two kind of elements that are both critical. The permission to be creative, I think, is such a fun one to tap into. I think there's a lot of organizations that would say conceptually, they're very much on board with creativity. They love the idea of their teams being creative. They don't want to hold creativity back yet.

[00:21:29:11 - 00:21:53:12]
Amith
 The absence of capacity would generally mean that creativity is not intentionally, but nonetheless still snuffed out. If you don't have enough oxygen in the room for the creative opportunities, you're going to focus on the thing that has to be done. And I think so many of our team members at so many associations are so focused on doing the daily work that they just haven't had room for creativity. Would you agree with that, first of all?

[00:21:53:12 - 00:21:59:17]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Absolutely. And I think that's been our M.O. And I think that's what that's been the staff's complaint.

[00:22:01:02 - 00:22:22:08]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 You know, we did the intergauge survey every year and this was the one thing that kept surfacing and it just was nagging at me. Like, how do we get at that? Which was part of why Innovation Day just kept coming back to me. Like, we got to get at this. We got to figure out how we get at this.

[00:22:22:08 - 00:24:22:24]
Amith
 Well, you know, I've been an entrepreneur starting technology companies for about 33 years now. Twenty nine of them have been dedicated to the association sector. So I first stumbled across the association market basically in 1997. And I haven't looked back. And one of the reasons that this I love the purposeful nature of so many of the organizations and what you described and the rooting or the foundation in this deeply held belief that you are there for this reason. Everyone there is swimming in the same direction to serve that mission, to advance that purpose is so powerful. So it's what drew me in. And I've always been focused on how do you help associations be more effective, more efficient, of course, but more effective ultimately. And the effective piece is actually kind of cloaked in a lot of mystery in some ways because we can be more efficient. But if we're more efficient at doing the wrong things, that isn't necessarily helpful. And what I'm so excited about to put it, I think, fairly succinctly is this is the first time we've had technology that's accessible enough. There it's it's it's mysterious in a way. It's kind of weird, actually. Right. It's a weird technology. It's not like Excel or Word or something where you like learn how to click on a bunch of menus. But but therein lies. What's so abundantly exciting is that it can do anything. And that makes it harder to learn, but it also makes it the most accessible technology ever invented. And so the permission to be creative, I think, is a really key message for our CEO and other other leadership listeners to understand is you have to first kind of open the door and invite people in to be more creative, even though you also recognize at the same time that they don't at the moment have a lot of capacity to do those creative acts. And you're starting to find ways to do that. So I think the solutions that are forthcoming and some people are experiencing now, even if you can get back. An hour a week or three hours a week. It's not transformative necessarily, but it opens up that aperture just a little bit so that people can start to exercise some of those creative muscles.

[00:24:22:24 - 00:24:47:22]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Yeah. And one of the things that we were trying to help some of the folks understand were things that we all do routinely, you know, our standard operating procedures and, you know, the millions of listservice that you get in your inbox every morning. You know, to be able to get something that summarizes those,

[00:24:48:24 - 00:25:00:11]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 you know, to be able to create something that says, okay, give me the top five things that I need to know out of, you know, these 10 emails.

[00:25:01:18 - 00:25:18:20]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 There are ways that I can save time now that I don't have to read out of those emails that, you know, will make my life a little bit easier and that gives me a little bit of that time back.

[00:25:18:20 - 00:25:38:12]
Amith
 Yeah, we get really excited when we hear about those examples because they do compound. And the other thing that happens in our experience and in training a lot of different association folks on AI and many different levels, you know, we have some of the. What I love the term, by the way, the suspenders group, I'm definitely going to use that. We'll probably, we'll probably create some cover art for this episode with some AI illustration.

[00:25:39:21 - 00:26:32:02]
Amith
 It's really good fun, but it, I think it really illustrates the point well and that we've had plenty of people like that come through training that we've done and also people who are a little bit more on the other side, right? You have to drag them in a little bit. And what we find is it takes reps, you know, just takes a lot of reps to get people's, you know, experience high enough to be able to use it, which is, which is kind of interesting because it's like to get good at AI, you have to be good at AI. So it sounds like a conundrum that the answer to that in our minds is just just start, you know, start doing stuff. So that's that I find quite exciting. One quick comment also that I wanted to share is you clearly invested a lot of effort. I mean, 80 sessions, it's not in 325, 326 people in a series of rooms for a day is an investment unto itself, but with 80 different breakout sessions that is organizing a pretty significant professional conference for yourself.

[00:26:33:15 - 00:26:47:15]
Amith
 So how much time did it take you guys ahead of that innovation day to prepare for this? And if you had to estimate kind of the amount of staff energy, I don't know if you quantified that somewhere, but just the effort level involved in pulling something like this off.

[00:26:47:15 - 00:27:02:09]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Well, we had a very small planning team, the core planning team, but we have a, we have a master convention and meetings director.

[00:27:03:09 - 00:27:07:03]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And then we have a, I don't need to know,

[00:27:08:06 - 00:27:40:13]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 the brain of my operation is my administrative assistant, who is our chief executive office administrator. And she is master of all things, organizational and administrative. And the two of them together just make magic happen. We have a chief HR officer who is a master facilitator. We have a facilitator pool.

[00:27:41:23 - 00:27:45:03]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 There are a number of us who have gone through that training,

[00:27:46:09 - 00:27:47:12]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 not 80 of us.

[00:27:49:02 - 00:28:17:19]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So we expanded that to the 80 of us that served as facilitators for the training. But it took one meeting to just sort of say, here's what we need you to do. Some people were like, okay, I want a flip chart and I want markers and I want this, that and other. And I was like, I, for one was like, okay, I don't know what they're going to do with all of that. I just need some chairs.

[00:28:17:19 - 00:28:21:01]
Mallory
 Exactly. Go for it. Do whatever you're going to do. Let's make this happen.

[00:28:21:01 - 00:28:38:09]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 No, but I, so like I said, we all did it differently, but we had one meeting that was probably 45 minutes. Um, one of those facilitators led that meeting. So there was some planning that went into that meeting.

[00:28:39:21 - 00:29:02:22]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Somebody created the questions. It really didn't take that long because we didn't start the planning until fairly late. The AI day was innovation day was May 19th. And I don't think we really started planning until March.

[00:29:04:00 - 00:29:34:22]
Amith
 Got it. And that's really the punchline that I wanted to deliver home on is I sounded like you guys were very agile with this, even though you delivered an exceptional experience. You didn't spend a year planning it. You didn't do what an association would do to launch a conference of that scale for external participants. Uh, you were probably a lot more tolerant for things that were perhaps less polished, but still extremely effective. And I think that's a really key point for everyone listening to this to take in is you can make really good things happen without a ton of lead time and without a massive investment in time internally.

[00:29:34:22 - 00:30:18:15]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And we used AI to help with some of the presentations. I mean, we have, again, large staff, we have staff, subject matter experts and facilitators that a lot of small staff might not have, but there are resources available for a lot of that that are fairly easily accessible. Um, so I don't know that they would have to go find or pay people to do a lot of what we did with the, um, the prompts, for example, the skills lab that we use. That's, it's not hard to find that.

[00:30:18:15 - 00:30:51:01]
Mallory
 Vicky, I'd like to do a little brainstorm with you live on the pod, but you have a staff of over 300. And as we know, the AI innovation day sounds like it was incredibly successful. But if you were, if you had a staff of 20, let's say 20 people knowing what you know now from your AI innovation day, what would you say were the most successful parts or the non-negotiable parts? Someone listening has a team of 20 and maybe can't do this full day. You should do the shark tank or the demos. What do you think was most successful for if a small team were trying to plan something like this?

[00:30:51:01 - 00:31:48:22]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I do think the skills labs are critical. And I think those breakout sessions are an absolute because I think you've got to get people engaged and actively participating in what's important, what they think about what your members need and want, what they're hearing and how they think AI needs to be used. Those demos show them for those who haven't seen what's possible. So I think that that's critical. The skills labs, I think, are really helpful to actually help people learn. But you can do that after the fact. We're going to continue that learning. So you could do that. You don't have to do that in the day. If you didn't have that option or if you needed to do a shorter day, you could do the learning part after the day.

[00:31:50:20 - 00:32:05:09]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 But I would say the participation and the demos are probably really key for helping people understand and see for themselves what's possible.

[00:32:05:09 - 00:32:17:08]
Mallory
 Absolutely. And these skills labs were these led by your suspenders, as you call them, which I also love the name. We're going to have a sidecar suspender group real soon. So it sounds like a small team.

[00:32:18:24 - 00:32:31:16]
Mallory
 A small team. Hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast, even if you have a team of five of 10, hopefully you have a few suspenders on your team and get those in a room together, have a meeting and you'd probably be surprised with what you could come up with.

[00:32:31:16 - 00:32:37:15]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And we just had a we had a team's channel and it's still live.

[00:32:38:18 - 00:32:43:06]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 We let the suspenders channel go on the team's channel,

[00:32:44:09 - 00:32:58:05]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 you know, so they could talk about whatever they wanted to and they would put articles up and hey, have you seen this and talk about and I popped in every so often and I would read an article and I was like, I have no idea what they're talking about.

[00:32:59:05 - 00:33:05:16]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 But they would just kind of carry on and do their thing and it was like, uh huh.

[00:33:08:14 - 00:33:26:06]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 But I think, you know, it helped me see kind of where we needed the guardrails and that that was, I think, part of our leadership team. We took a stab at even before the AI day. Um,

[00:33:27:09 - 00:33:28:21]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 a precursor to this.

[00:33:30:02 - 00:33:35:08]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Boy, we did our performance reviews last year.

[00:33:36:19 - 00:34:09:01]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 There were a whole lot of it was AI everywhere and one of the things that I noticed all of the performance reviews roll up to me. And again, we had 325 people read all 325, but I read a good two thirds of the performance reviews. Even if I don't read all of them, I'm reading parts of them and I saw AI in a lot of them, you know, people experimenting people trying to educate themselves.

[00:34:10:05 - 00:34:26:08]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 We came up with an AI policy and gave it to our IT unit. And we have someone whose job it is to look at IT security, gave it to him and he redlined it.

[00:34:27:19 - 00:34:51:13]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 It ended up being 30 some pages that nobody's going to read. And so we just held on to it and said, we can't give this to the staff because it's not. Gonna serve us well and then talk to someone else in the association industry and in talking with them, their policy was eight pages. And we said, can you share that?

[00:34:53:05 - 00:35:39:22]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Fortunately, they were generous enough to do so. And they said that AI had helped them with it. And we looked at theirs and theirs wouldn't really work for us. But as we ashaized it, we were able to come up with some general principles, some guiding principles that for us worked extremely well. And then we were able to do a deep dive in a number of areas that for us worked and we were able to say, okay, we can make this work for ASHA and it's not too detailed, but it's detailed enough.

[00:35:41:02 - 00:36:04:08]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And once we were able to get that part done, then we could release those foundational principles and we had an off staff to go over those principles and make sure that they were clear to staff before we even did the AI. Innovation day.

[00:36:04:08 - 00:38:06:22]
Amith
 That makes a lot of sense. I think the policy process for AI that you described is I've heard that story from a lot of people that, you know, the way you create policy classically in most organizations, associations and others is to basically think about all the bad things that could happen. And then you write a document that tells people what not to do in order to avoid the bad things. And the challenge with that with AI is, of course, there's many bad things that could happen. But the first of all, the absence of a policy or the existence of a restrictive policy both kind of have the same effect is that people basically don't pay attention to either the absence of the policy or the existence of an overly restrictive or voluminous policy. So, you know, and I've heard a lot of people publish documents similar to your first draft and they get surprised that nothing really changes. They're like, well, people haven't been adopting the AI tools that we authorized. And I think a lot of times it's because of fear. People are worried that they're going to, you know, cross the line in some way unintentionally. And then the flip side is you have some people, a lot of times they're people that would be in this suspenders group that do not really care that much about what your policy says. It's not that they have want and disregard for the organization's rules. It's just more that they're going to go and experiment. They're going to try different things. And so a lot of times, you know, policies don't stop people from doing things that they're going to do anyway. And so how do you how do you teach people in a way that helps them understand what is smart for the organization? What's a risk that's worth taking? What's not? And it sounds like those are some of the types of principles that you you ended up with. I want to ask you one other question about your Innovation Day. And we can come back to this later in the conversation as well. But I'm really curious how much of the content of the 80 sessions focused on internal operational use of A.I. at ASHA versus things that ASHA could do to help their members take advantage of A.I. better. Was the latter at all part of what you guys discussed?

[00:38:06:22 - 00:38:12:11]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 It was half and a half because there was there were two sections.

[00:38:13:17 - 00:38:17:06]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 First section was internal and the other section was for members.

[00:38:17:06 - 00:38:35:21]
Amith
 So it sounds like you guys feel that it's a key part of ASHA's mission to help your members navigate the transformation of A.I. with with this profession, like every other professional score is going to get affected by A.I. So are you guys helping the members like think through how I will affect their worlds?

[00:38:36:24 - 00:38:43:15]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Yes, we actually had this whole A.I. initiative for us as three buckets.

[00:38:45:00 - 00:38:59:02]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 One was our staff bucket, which we kicked off with the Innovation Day. The second was or is how members and staff interact.

[00:39:00:09 - 00:39:19:11]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So as staff come to us, how we use A.I. to help respond to member inquiries, how we use A.I. to provide services to staff. How staff uses A.I. to respond to members.

[00:39:20:22 - 00:39:45:11]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And then the third bucket is and this one we literally just kicked off this month. And that is the development of resources and tools for members and how we're helping members to do what they do more effectively. Using A.I.

[00:39:46:16 - 00:40:02:04]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 We've had a number of tools that not tools, resources that we've put in place in the past for members, more educating them on what large language models were,

[00:40:03:08 - 00:40:32:24]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 how those could be used in their work, those kinds of things. Our foundation with some assistance from ASHA last year for our Centennial sponsored an A.I. summit pulling together a lot of the research related to A.I. So we were now moving that into the practice area.

[00:40:32:24 - 00:42:10:06]
Amith
 That's exciting to hear. I'm really happy to hear that too. It's interesting because associations have for a very long time been much of the center of the professional development for their professions, for their fields. Yet in the world of A.I., a lot of associations have been a little bit slow to the game to try to teach their members about how A.I. applies to them. And I've seen this in various branches of health care. I've seen this in the world of law, of accounting, a number of fields. And a lot of associations say, well, it's not our expertise. We're not sure how to approach that, which is a reasonable concern, of course. But contextualizing A.I. for your world is very different than contextualizing it for physical therapists or occupational therapists or surgeons or for people in totally different domains. And so the association, we think, is so well positioned to deliver extraordinarily important context and context that's sensitive to what the profession understands and their starting point. What I also find that's interesting, at least to me, is that the more technically adept a particular field is, the more the association tends to assume that they shouldn't provide A.I. training. So in a lot of, like, doctors' groups, they're avoiding doing A.I. training because their perspective is, well, our members already know a lot of this stuff or in advanced areas of scientific research or in the areas of engineering, you know, where you have very technical people. So I think it's just an interesting thing to reflect on for a moment that what is the role's association when it comes to A.I.? But how do you I think the broader question is how do you help your members continually get better at what they do, which is, of course, the core of what you described earlier as your mission.

[00:42:10:06 - 00:42:16:15]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Yeah. And it's interesting, too, because I don't think that for us,

[00:42:17:15 - 00:42:21:00]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I don't think we're where we should be.

[00:42:22:00 - 00:42:33:00]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 But I think you may have heard me say this at that dinner. To me, this is like playing double touch. You just got to jump in when you can.

[00:42:34:16 - 00:43:39:15]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So, you know, we've been we've been doing this for a long time and just sort of, you know, waiting to figure out when we can jump in and and we're jumping in when and where we can. And I do think that for our members, we're looking now at how we serve up information relative to that content that they need to inform their clinical decision making, which we know has to happen in bite sized chunks and quickly. We're looking at it through the way we connect them to others with similar interests to challenge their thinking so that they're they're looking at each other's approaches to service delivery and the latest research. We're looking at it through the approaches that they use to apply the latest clinical tools and business models, all of those things that might simplify their lives.

[00:43:40:15 - 00:44:29:00]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Things that might enhance their reimbursement potential. All of those things are the things that we're now thinking about and how AI can be applied to any of those and simplify so that we can provide it to them as easily and quickly as possible and how we can scale it. For us, I think what AI does is it helps us. It improves our speed and it helps us get to a deeper level of individualization or customization so that we can deliver that kind of value much more directly and much more quickly.

[00:44:30:02 - 00:44:57:05]
Amith
 I think that's amazing. You know, I'm curious if in your field there's generally the view that there's a shortage of available skilled clinicians to serve the true demand that exists. And what I mean by the true demand is I know a little bit more about kind of in mental health and in other other branches of health care. If you look at the number of people who really need help versus the number that seek it out and can afford it, there's a big gap. And is that also a reasonably true statement for your world?

[00:44:57:05 - 00:44:57:21]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Yes.

[00:44:58:22 - 00:45:18:10]
Amith
 Do you guys look at that and say, well, could AI potentially be a complementary technology for people who can't afford a speech pathologist or people who don't have access to one? Maybe they're in an area where there isn't someone. What's the general mindset around not necessarily a substitute, but this perspective that in some fields there could be a compliment, particularly to broaden access?

[00:45:18:10 - 00:45:53:06]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I don't think we're there yet. There are people who believe that. Yes, I don't think we're there. I think we are still at we can, again, back to the efficiency piece, increase efficiencies and simplify the non-person to person part of what we do as a clinician.

[00:45:54:10 - 00:46:16:18]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So that the person to person part of what we do, we can actually spend more time on. There is so much of our work that isn't that clinical interaction. If we were just spending time on the clinical interaction, we see a lot more. We could see a lot more clients, patients and students.

[00:46:17:18 - 00:47:01:22]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 You just can't document. You can't get the paperwork submitted. So it's that kind of stuff. If we can get AI working for us on that end, then I think it will make our clinicians lives a lot easier. I don't think and I think that's the part of most of us got into the professions because of what we do clinically. All that other stuff isn't what we signed up for. So we don't want to take that part away from the clinicians. That's the part that is the part that it's the human part. That's the part that we think that we still need to be doing.

[00:47:01:22 - 00:47:23:22]
Mallory
 Yeah, I really appreciate that perspective, Vicky. The idea of freeing up humans to do more human things. I think that's really powerful. In prepping for this episode, I sent you a few questions and you shared a line with me that I want to put to you directly. You said you still need a person at the beginning and at the end of AI use and that for now it's a tool. Can you unpack what you meant by that?

[00:47:24:23 - 00:47:46:21]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Yeah, I think part of that is that part of it is still my human first perspective just in general. But I think the other part of it is the need for us to assure that we maintain a level of control.

[00:47:49:10 - 00:48:22:07]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 There's still a level of trust and credibility that we need to maintain. And I'm not willing yet to give that up. I don't think that, personally, I don't think professionally and I don't think as an organization, we're in a position where we can yet turn that over to the technology.

[00:48:23:23 - 00:48:31:08]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Potentially at some point and at some level maybe, but I'm not there yet.

[00:48:31:08 - 00:49:31:05]
Amith
 I think it's important to be cautious about that, particularly in healthcare environments. But I think at the same time, it's one of those things that I look at it from the macro lens and say, how many people out there are in need of that type of health who can't access it? And if the technology was good enough, maybe it's not as good as a human, but if it's available to someone who couldn't otherwise access any support at all, could that be beneficial? And most people, when I phrase it that way, say, yeah, that's an interesting problem to think about it that way. But it's also a concern because what if we give bad support, right? Like in the mental health world, there's some of these apps that are out there people are using for virtual counseling. And that's really scary because you have no idea what the AI is going to say versus what a trained clinician would say. So I think it's one of these things where when we're very pro AI, we also have to be very thoughtful about how these AI systems would affect people's lives. So I think there's a reason for optimism, but I totally agree with you that, you know, certainly in this environment, it's not ready for prime time.

[00:49:32:05 - 00:49:33:23]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Yeah. And my answer would still be no.

[00:49:36:11 - 00:49:48:00]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 But again, that comes from a history of people making that argument in the circles of diversity arguments.

[00:49:49:00 - 00:49:51:09]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And so my answer would still be no.

[00:49:51:09 - 00:49:53:14]
Amith
 Got it. Very interesting.

[00:49:53:14 - 00:49:56:16]
Mallory
 We like a little healthy debate on the sidecar sync podcast.

[00:49:58:08 - 00:50:08:23]
Mallory
 Vicky, are there any AI initiatives that you can share with our audience that are coming up for ASHA? Anything that came out of the Innovation Day, anything within the next year that you're really looking forward to AI related?

[00:50:08:23 - 00:50:25:08]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 I think our one Shark Tank funded initiative that we approved is something I'm looking forward to. And I don't even know that I can describe it well,

[00:50:26:21 - 00:51:03:12]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 but it is an evidence navigator. ASHA has a through our National Center for Evidence based practice, we have a process by which members come to us. And it really is one of the I don't know that it's one of the few things, but it is one of the major things that members look to us and us only for in terms of evidence based practice and the evidence itself.

[00:51:04:14 - 00:52:23:06]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And this navigator would enhance our ability by developing a custom large language model that is trained in our disciplines, terminology concepts and the way that our NSEP is the National Center for Evidence based practice that staff searches the strategies that they use and eventually members would be able to use this same tool to supplement their searches and scale the way that they're looking for evidence so that we could responsibly search for evidence, we could reduce the search time, we could strengthen our leadership there and it would, I think, increase even more the use and application of evidence based practice. And that's something that as much research as our discipline does, it is the basis for all of our practice.

[00:52:24:10 - 00:53:01:16]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And without that evidence, we can't prove the value of our services and we don't know that the outcomes that we provide will actually make a difference. So that evidence really does make a difference. And our members know that they've been well trained in that. So they know to look for that evidence. We've gotten them to that point. What we have to do now is to make sure that we have the evidence and that we can get it to them quickly and easily. And this tool would help them do that.

[00:53:01:16 - 00:54:13:14]
Mallory
 Well, what an excellent idea. Something we always say is associations have top notch content in their fields and their industries and their professions. And so using AI as a tool to reduce friction so that your members or your staff can get access to that content is just incredible way, in my opinion, to utilize artificial intelligence. But we are at the end of this conversation, Vicky. It's been a really good one. I want to point out to our listeners how in some ways how little we actually talked about the technology of AI in this episode and how much we talked about people and culture and innovation and change management. And I also got to commend you for how many times you brought up members. I think it's so easy to get lost in this conversation of AI. What can AI do? Oh, AI agents. But let's zoom out and let's focus on the members, which is the work that associations do. So I got to commend you on that. As we wrap up the episode, do you have any advice for an association leader listening to this episode who maybe hasn't quite gotten started with all this AI mess, if you want to call it that just yet? Any advice from what you've learned from your Innovation Day, from your past few years as CEO for that person?

[00:54:13:14 - 00:54:28:14]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 Think about it as double Dutch. The ropes are turning. You really do just have to figure out how to jump in. You're going to step on ropes. It's okay. You're going to mess up. It's okay.

[00:54:29:20 - 00:54:36:14]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 You just got to jump in. And it's not that you're too late because AI keeps going.

[00:54:38:13 - 00:54:41:05]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 So you're not too late.

[00:54:42:07 - 00:54:53:15]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And that was one of the things, because I was beating myself up thinking I am not quite where I'm supposed to be and you really not. You just have to go.

[00:54:54:17 - 00:54:59:09]
Vicki Deal-Williams
 And that was the direction that I gave our AI enablement team go.

[00:54:59:09 - 00:55:04:22]
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[00:55:15:15 - 00:55:32:14]
Mallory
 Thanks for tuning into the Sidecar Sync podcast. If you want to dive deeper into anything mentioned in this episode, please check out the links in our show notes. And if you're looking for more in-depth AI education for you, your entire team, or your members, head to sidecar.ai.

[00:55:32:14 - 00:55:35:20]
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