In a world where the pace of change is relentless, thought leaders like Karen are helping others make sense of it all—especially in the realms of edtech, learning, and the rise of generative AI. Karen’s journey into thought leadership began almost unexpectedly when she was invited to design and teach a course for Singapore Management University. That experience ignited a passion for sharing insights through her newsletter, The Morning Grind, where she explores the evolving intersection of education, technology, and talent development. In this conversation, Karen reflects on the opportunities and challenges in edtech, the growing role of Gen AI in learning, and her vision for building future-ready learning cultures. Her practical, human-centered lens is both insightful and inspiring for professionals across industrie
Can you describe your thought leadership journey and the motivation behind starting your newsletter, The Morning Grind?
It started when I was randomly (or at least I felt it was random) approached by SuperCharger Ventures to become an affiliate faculty for one of the modules in Advanced Certificate in Innovative Educational Technologies by Singapore Management University. After creating, designing, honing the content and curriculum and finally delivering it, I actually felt shocked that I was somewhat good enough to do this. I became addicted to writing my own content and just documenting and articulating what I knew about edtech, curriculum design and organizational learning.
What are some of the key opportunities and challenges that the edtech industry is facing today?
You write a lot about Gen AI in your newsletter, The Morning Grind, which is largely about learning and talent development in the workplace. Why do you place such importance on Gen AI in the learning space?
Gen AI is changing all industries, and education / edtech is not exempt from the sweeping changes. I think it’s essential to understand how Gen AI will impact the workplace and having these mindsets and skills will make the difference between whether someone thrives in the workplace or gets left behind. In my newsletter and articles, I try to focus on practical ways to use Gen AI at work and in learning. I definitely don’t call myself an AI expert, but I just find the whole tool fascinating, if at times a little intimidating. But it can definitely impact talent development with AI coaching tools and AI tutors.
What kind of role or space does Gen AI take up in the edtech industry?
I see this as twofold. Firstly, to boost productivity and efficiency, as well as to enhance learning experiences in unique ways such as hyper-personalization, Gen AI will play a huge role in curriculum design and learning experience design. So this is about leveraging Gen AI to design curriculum, pedagogies and learning experiences.
The next part is about Gen AI forming the curriculum. How do we teach Gen AI skills such as prompt engineering at a young age, to upskilling professionals. I believe that edtech can help to scale these skills across all ages and demographics.
Should upskilling and capability building in Gen AI be a focus for organizations
I think Gen AI should be one of the key foci, but definitely not the only focus for organizations. Gen AI upskilling is important so that employees can improve RPA and leverage Gen AI to be more productive and efficient. More than productivity, Gen AI offers new ways of innovation – I’m seeing tech companies completely transform the way they deliver products and services to customers.
That being said, Gen AI should ultimately be used to serve your business objectives and strategy. We shouldn’t use it blindly just because everyone else is using it!
What is your approach to fostering learning mindsets and culture?
Learning and upskilling should have its both formal, structured moments and its informal, freeform moments. Your structured learning includes your leadership development, design thinking initiatives and other programs formally charted out and designed by maybe the business units or talent development teams
These are great, but you should also include unstructured, freeform moments. Encourage conversations, mentoring relationships and open collaborations. You should have messaging channels (maybe Slack or Teams channels) that allow people to connect and communicate easily. So basically building a system that encourages informal learning.
What advice would you give to emerging learning designers and learning professionals in your industry?
Gen AI has really changed a lot of the discourse on learning, in my opinion. How does knowledge retention work now with the use of AI chatbots which can help to generate answers and essays? How can we drive deep learning when you can just ask Chat-GPT to spit out answers? I think we need new, updated learning theories and taxonomies, that are designed to fit this new way of learning, in order to create enhanced experiences that truly translate into actions and applied learning.
you can subscribe to Karen’s newsletter, The Morning Grind, on LinkedIn here:
