There’s a tsunami coming.

AI’s threat to jobs has been slowly building, and today it’s a giant wave that is about to come crashing down upon the heads of Generation Z.

It’s not that there won’t be any jobs. A recent WEF study projects a net increase of 78 million jobs (170 million created, 92 million displaced) between 2025 and 2030. However, half of employers plan to reorient their business due to AI, two-thirds plan to hire for AI skills, and 40% anticipate workforce reductions where AI can automate tasks. This is expected to "hollow out" entry-level jobs, making it harder for younger people to gain essential on-the-job judgment, context, and confidence.

Automation Trampled Gen Z’s Career Path

Jobs lost to AI will disproportionately affect Gen Z as they enter the workforce, and the jobs created will likely require different skill sets than the jobs they’ve historically been prepared for. We can’t leave them to figure this out on their own. As leaders, our job is to ensure that this next generation, as well as future generations, have what they need to face this seismic shift.

How did we end up here?

AI adoption is intensifying. We’ve seen the greatest impact in the private sector, where boards and shareholders have created an AI arms race, pushing CEOs to prioritize AI integration over other organizational needs to establish industry primacy and maximize profits.

The impact on the public and academic sectors isn’t far behind. Roughly 300,000 public sector jobs were lost in 2025, many by people who assumed they’d retire in the public sector. Traditional career advice is no longer applicable, whether it’s the notion that public sector jobs provide unmatched security, or that an engineering degree would guarantee a six-figure salary and the person would be “set for life”.

Everything Gen Z has known about the world of work — and their future in it — has been upended.

Why My Path Leads to a Human-First Future

I’ve spent years spearheading the development of enterprise AI products and researching the impacts of AI on the future of work. Creating something like H22™ AI seems like a natural step.

But the story of how I got here is much more complex — and richer — than that. It feels like I've been building toward this all along. It’s truly the culmination of my personal and professional journey to date.

Even as a young person, I knew that I wanted to work in tech. My father was involved in the early push to bring computing mainstream, building systems for banks in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And I knew I wanted to help people, inspired by my mother’s decades of board service to nonprofits.

And like many, I haven’t always felt like I’ve fit in. To the point that, as I progressed through my early career, I began to envision myself as a hexagon. Recruiters and hiring managers would respond to me as if I were a square peg they were trying to fit into a round hole. I had disparate experiences and roles, not the linear progression that they expected to see. While they couldn’t see beyond the linear, I realized that I had so many more dimensions than they recognized. There were all these different dimensions that had connections to one another that were not easy to see.

So, early on, I realized that it’s not easy for employers to notice skills outside of those listed on resumes, and when they are able to see unique and transferable skills, it’s hard for them to map those skills to the work that needs to be done.

Later, personal experience made me all too frustratingly familiar with the challenges faced by women founders, particularly where funding was concerned (as recently as 2024, women received less than 2.5% of global venture capital). There was a lot of talk about the problem, but not a lot of action, so with a dear friend and colleague and a few other like-minded women, created an early-stage venture capital firm focused on funding solely female-founded and led companies. It’s in my nature that when I see a problem, I feel driven to build a solution.

What has emerged from all of this experience is a recognition that I’ve always been affected by people not being seen, heard, or valued for who they are and what they bring to the world.

Finding a Cause and a Catalyst

Enter Gen Z.

Their particular existential crisis persistently tugged at me in a way I couldn’t ignore. The corporate and tech worlds acknowledged the problem, but with all of their competing interests, there was little movement in solving it.

When a quarter of a generation that numbers two billion starts their professional life on the sidelines, the scarring effect on their lifetime earning potential creates a drag on the entire global economy for decades. Our young people were becoming casualties of this inertia, and broader issues were at stake as well.

As an idea started to crystallize, a friend pointed me toward the work of Virgin Unite and their 100% Human at Work initiative. Their goal is to reshape the future of work in a way that serves humanity. After several exciting meetings with them, I was invited to join them, along with other like-minded individuals and organizations, on Necker Island for a week of conversation about pressing global challenges.

Can you guess who I was seated next to at dinner on the first night? While I was just getting my bearings, Sir Richard Branson was already asking to hear about my “big idea”. Sharing my idea with this person, who is an incredible catalyst for good in the world, was an amazing opportunity. And it was through this conversation that I realized I didn’t just have an idea — I had a profound personal calling. And that realization provided the incredible momentum that has led to H22™ .