Since 2017, artificial intelligence has been a constant in my work at Booster of Innovation. Yet there are moments when this work gains deeper meaning. 

The role of AI in the lives of excluded or less-privileged groups sits very high on my priority list: creating a risk–opportunity map for AI for developing countries at a UN Forum; my MBA capstone on how AI can help eliminate poverty—across the world, including Europe; and using AI to level the playing field for women in the labour market, which I had the pleasure to present in my keynote at the Perspektywy Women in Tech conference. 

In that same spirit, I sat down for the Forbes Women Polska podcast with the brilliant Katarzyna Gaweł to examine AI through the lens of women’s growth—both professional and personal. It wasn’t another chit-chat about trendy algorithms. It was a conversation about strategic change, competitive advantage, and the most precious resource for women carrying multiple loads: time.

AI as an extra pair of hands for a woman leader

Amid the juggle—boardroom, business, home—women often operate at the edge of what’s humanly possible. That’s why the first, core message I bring to any discussion about AI is strategic:

🌟 AI isn’t yet another tool to master. It’s a technology that finally helps us reclaim time—lots of it.

Open access AI chats like Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Copilot are, quite literally, an extra pair of hands that organise, optimise, inspire, and resolve countless everyday tasks. But there’s more: AI can be transformative for women who want to increase their earnings and accelerate the closing of the pay gap.

How? 

By engaging a chat as your virtual career adviser, salary negotiator, and a sparring partner for turning your interests into well-paid work.

Interestingly, a widely criticised trait of generative AI—hallucinations—can be a hidden strength. If AI will always produce an answer, let’s feed it unconventional questions and see what comes back. For example, according to AI, a mother of three is an excellent candidate for roles such as Event Manager, Project Coordinator, or Business Manager for a busy executive or team. 

Of course, hard skills matter, but AI rightly elevates transferable skills: taming chaos, effective mediation, and flawless logistics. With three children, you practice those every single day.

We can then go further—up a level—by focusing on strategy, innovation, and building advantage. Ask AI to act as your adviser on future-ready skills, map career pathways, or suggest leadership development via work with charities and NGOs. The only absolute limit is our Imagination for how to apply this new technology.

Imagination beats the perfect prompt.

On the Forbes Women podcast, I stressed the power of Imagination and curiosity—the kind that leads us to ask AI questions which, in the “real world”, might sound absurd. The zero-shot prompt format, where we give no example of the expected answer and leave the AI complete freedom, opens fascinating possibilities. Used well, it yields strikingly original responses. Try these on your favourite chat and test the quality of its suggestions:

• “I’m a neonatal nurse. List 10 different roles where I could use my skills and build a career outside healthcare.”
• “I love art and thrive on change. Generate 10 future-proof jobs where I could flourish.”
• “My hobby is floral design. How could I run paid community classes in my neighbourhood and build a base of regular clients?”

Zero-shot prompting is a great way to spark Imagination and delegate the creative heavy lifting—so you get non-obvious, even abstract, suggestions. Not every idea will be plug-and-play, but you’ll receive a solid dose of inspiration—a springboard for your own creativity. Give it a go and see what it unlocks for you.

It’s also worth remembering that curiosity about meaningful use cases matters more than “perfect prompting”. As I told Kasia, if we want a breakthrough, we must first… dream and ask.

🌟 Imagination and courage now matter more than prompt-craft.

They are what enable us to ask AI the strategicquestion that leads to an unexpected solution—not just another standard answer.

AI inspires more than women.

Although the Forbes Women interview centred on inspiration for women, the approaches we discussed are helpful to everyone. Business has clocked this quickly: for ING Bank Śląski and BNP Paribas, I ran a series of workshops on using AI for personal and career development. I trained 300+ people—women and men alike—and it turns out that bright, savvy AI use has no gender; nor do curiosity and the drive to explore what’s next.

One insight from these workshops is that people approach AI differently—how they ask questions and how they shape their growth ideas. That’s why working in small mixed groups and then sharing discoveries in plenary is a masterclass in practical diversity. Instead of preaching quotas, let’s create conditions where mixed teams learn from one another and naturally uncover varied approaches to working with AI. Nothing beats firsthand experience.

I shared my AI “secret”

At the end of our energising conversation, I revealed a simple secret for getting started with AI chats—one that shows just how much AI is changing how we learn and work with technology. Kasia’s reaction was genuine and said it all—in her words: “SHOCK!”

This method is more straightforward, more intuitive and far more effective than you might think. It’s the key to lowering the barrier to entry and kick-starting AI-powered personal growth. If you’d like to discover what surprised our Editor, have a listen to our conversation HERE.

It was a meaningful discussion—not only about technology and its new possibilities, but also about leadership, saving time, and the kind of passion that, as I also shared, can lead to burnout if we don’t manage it strategically.