Host: Jill Finlayson
Guest: Tara Chklovski
Season 4, Episode 1|June 2025

As AI continues to transform our workplace, it's not just about keeping up with the tech. It's about staying grounded, sharp and curious. We need to cultivate skills that allow us to adapt, recover from setbacks and navigate complexity. In this episode, we dive into why emotional and cognitive resilience are must-haves for the future and how thinking like an innovator and above your pay grade can set you apart in an AI-powered world.

To talk about this important topic, we’re delighted to welcome Tara Chklovski, founder and CEO of Technovation.

Host

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Headshot of Jill Finlayson

Jill Finlayson(link is external)

Director of EDGE in Tech at UC

Guest

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Tara Chklovski headshot in a circle format

Tara Chklovski(link is external)

Founder and CEO of Technovation

Tara Chklovski is Founder and CEO of Technovation, which is reshaping opportunities for young people in technology, inspired by her experience growing up in India and working as an aerospace engineer, she developed a widely adopted education model that combines mentorship, hands-on learning, and entrepreneurship to prepare young people to thrive in tech. She has built Technovation into a movement, reaching 400,000 plus people across more than 160 countries. Her research shows that AI education for girls could unlock $200 billion opportunity for the world economy. Through Technovation and the AI Forward Alliance, Tara is preparing 25 million young people to lead AI innovation and tackle global challenges.

Read the transcript from this interview

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Tara Chklovski: What are you going to do with all these people? What if you have all this incredible progress happening on the technology side, which is great, don't need to stop that, but invest in the humans? What if we invested in upskilling 50 million employees in industry and have them mentor 50 million young people to solve the biggest challenges that we face using AI? 

Jill Finlayson: Welcome to the Future of Work podcast with Berkeley Extension and EDGE in Tech at the University of California, focused on expanding diversity and gender equity in tech. EDGE in Tech is part of the Innovation Hub at CITRIS, the Center for IT Research in the Interest of Society in the Banatao Institute. UC Berkeley Extension is the continuing education arm of the University of California at Berkeley. 

This month, we're exploring AI and resiliency. As AI continues to transform our workplace, it's not just about keeping up with the tech, it's about staying grounded, sharp, and curious. We need to cultivate skills that allow us to adapt, recover from setbacks, and navigate complexity. 

In this episode, we dive into why emotional and cognitive resilience are must haves for the future, and how thinking like an innovator and above your pay grade can set you apart in an AI-powered world. To learn more about this, we turn to Tara Chklovski, founder and CEO of Technovation, which is reshaping opportunities for young people in technology. 

Inspired by her experience growing up in India and working as an aerospace engineer, she developed a widely adopted education model that combines mentorship, hands-on learning, and entrepreneurship to prepare young people to thrive in tech. She has built Technovation into a movement, reaching 400,000 plus people across more than 160 countries. 

Her research shows that AI education for girls could unlock $200 billion opportunity for the world economy. Through Technovation and the AI Forward Alliance, Tara is preparing 25 million young people to lead AI innovation and tackle global challenges. Welcome, Tara. 

Tara Chklovski: Thank you, Jill. I'm excited for what we're going to chat about. 

Jill Finlayson: Well, we are in what some call the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It's a period of rapid technological advancement characterized by AI and robotics and all these different technologies. But we've had rapid change before, and I'm wondering what makes this revolution different and why is resilience key. 

Tara Chklovski: I think we've lived through the internet revolution, and this is completely different. I've never been in a place where almost every second day, your toolset is improving. So none of us have lived through a time like that. I can say for myself that I'm probably 60% more productive, but that means I'm also maybe 80% more tired. 

When people are talking about, yes, you're going to make all this money and make all this progress with all these incredible tools, that's absolutely true. And then I think we'll need fewer people to do all this work. The people who survive in this are the ones who are going to be resilient. 

And I think we have to teach ourselves new techniques of managing information overload and being able to actually execute, not just stay in the safe space of research and recommendations, but actually, execute real solutions in the real world at a much faster pace, meaning we're going to be super busy. 

Jill Finlayson: So we're having to be more productive, and we are being more productive, but we're also being stretched in a lot of ways. Is there an example of what does that mean to be resilient in the face of that kind of demand? 

Tara Chklovski: I think being super aware about what's happening, and I think looking ahead. Because uncertainty causes fear, because you don't know how you will adapt or how you will respond to this new threat. And so the best thing I can say and recommend, and that's what I'm trying to do, is spend quite a bit of your time actually looking ahead and planning for it. 
There is tons of information out there, so it's not as if you have to fly blind. So you have to adapt your workday in a way that you've never had to do before. Because earlier, your manager probably told you, here's your job, here are your KPIs, here's what you're responsible for. And now, you can actually do all of that. 

But guess what? What you're doing is probably something your competitors are doing as well. So for your organization to survive, you've got to do something different. 

I think the speed of integration of AI tools has never happened before. People talked about ChatGPT being used by 100 million users in a record time, and why that did that happen? Because of existing infrastructure. You have electricity, you have internet laid out everywhere. 

People have devices. They could access it. And so you are really building on existing infrastructure for very, very rapid use of powerful technologies. And it's just compounding and accelerating. And so that's why this phase is so different from previous phases. 

The other piece is that the tools themselves are rapidly increasing their effectiveness. So almost every second week Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini is releasing a new version that is smarter and better and cheaper. And so what that means for us is that you're able to really do a lot more than you could ever imagine, and that the human brain is not changing at the same pace at which these tools are. 

And so the same person has become so much more productive, but your brain is getting overloaded. And so you have to figure out how can you maintain your energy, while knowing that these tools are going to keep improving. And I think the third piece is that you also feel a sense of purpose. It requires a different mindset to approach. 

And one expert from Databricks, Databricks is in the business of trying to get a lot of people to adopt AI. And she was talking about how there's a massive psychology of resistance to adopting these new tools, because you can tell that your job will be replaced. So I think that it requires you to overcome that fear that my job is going to be taken away and rather, think about, well, how can I use these powerful technologies to help my organization survive and thrive and innovate? 

And I think all of us need to change our mindsets to have this innovator's mindset. Knowing what we know, how can we provide more value to our customers and clients. And if we have that kind of a mindset, I think our jobs are safe, and I think our company will survive. And then I think, ideally, we increase our sense of purpose in this process. 

Jill Finlayson: Speaking of purpose, you came about this research in this topic from starting Technovation. For people who haven't heard of Technovation before, what is it doing, and how does it affect purpose and resiliency in young people. 

Tara Chklovski: So I started Technovation almost 20 years ago. And the initial mission of this nonprofit was to bring the most cutting-edge technologies to the most underrepresented groups in the world, so that they didn't have to wait for a savior They could build the solutions for the problems they had the most intimate knowledge for. 

And that's what we've been on this long journey of exploration. What format of program really helps change that sense of identity into one of an innovator and an entrepreneur and a problem solver. 

And over the years, we implemented and data tested 14 different models, and one model was really effective, which was this accelerator model, where girls find problems in their communities, they work in teams, they're supported by a mentor from industry or a teacher, and they actually launch a tech startup that addresses a problem that they're facing. 

And this entrepreneur's journey is absolutely transformative because it is so grounded in resilience and purpose, and also, that I can learn anything. I can teach myself anything, and to do that with people. So you're doing it with your peers, you're doing it with the mentors. So that human layer of support is critical to building that identity as a change maker. 

Jill Finlayson: How are you helping these young people future proof themselves? 

Tara Chklovski: I think just from that experience, because there's so few people in the world who have gone through that hard experience of launching a startup. And to do that early in your education and your career is one of the most powerful experiences. Because you're like, I launched an app, or I built a company. I went through the competitor research. I created a business plan. I pitched in front of judges and experts from around the world, and I actually created something that helped some people. 
So that experience is so transformative that they're like, now, I can do something harder. And so you just keep strengthening that muscle of innovation and entrepreneurship. And we see this all over that the young women, the kinds of problems they take on get bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's the best proof of the model working. 

Jill Finlayson: So these young people, I would say, are the first AI-native generation. How do you think their generation is going to differ from the previous generations? Are they going to still learn the same skills and critical thinking? Are they going to be able to write a paper from a blank page, or are they going to go have somebody else draft it for them? 

Tara Chklovski: I think that's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. I think what I've been focusing on is, what is important for humans to do and work backwards from there. Because if we were to compare what we learned and compare it to what young people are learning now, we approach the question from a nostalgic place, which may not be the right place. Just because I learned to write the hard way doesn't mean that that's the only way to learn it. 

And just because I learned a lot of road math or wrote content that I'm using doesn't mean that that's the only way and it's really important. So I think that there's too much subjectivity to this question. And also, this element of, oh, they're going to lose these very valuable skills. 

And so that's why I want to frame it in a completely different way, where what is left for us to solve. And guess what, these are the hardest problems left for us to solve like climate crisis, poverty, good health care, good education, rising inequality, wealth inequality. And these kinds of problems require a completely different set of skills than we are teaching in schools. 

So it's very different from cursive writing, but I think the problem-solving mindset and practicing solving real problems in the classroom is something, maybe, that we can start to explore better. Because I've seen young girls as young as eight tackle some incredibly scary, big problems. And I think we'll get a lot of courage from actually listening to young people, watching them learn and explore with these tools. 

Jill Finlayson: I work with a lot of startup founders in the university level, and I feel the same way, that they're not jaded. They're willing to try, they're willing to innovate, and iterate. What do you think this means for universities and how we teach education at that level? 

Tara Chklovski: I think it's really important for professors, I will say, to not be afraid to completely overhaul their courses, because there is such a massive gap between the education system and how the world of work is approaching AI. We work with maybe 1,000 plus companies, and they are going as fast as possible to integrate AI into the workplace, because it's increasing productivity. 

And the education system is just banning, banning, banning, banning, trying to bring back paper testing, trying to Band-Aid their way around it, because everybody is in a state of fear of what do we do and waiting for someone to give them a set of next steps. And I think it just behooves every educator to say, I owe it to my students to actually spend this summer thinking about the data is all out there. It's absolutely a lot there. 

That AI 2027 Report is a powerful report, where it talks about how AI will improve over the next year and a half. Take that, and then say, how can I best prepare my students for this tool set, while keeping in mind what are the key things they learned from my class that I think will be critical? And I would say use AI to help you bridge the gap. 

Jill Finlayson: For us who have been out of college for a while, what would you say we should be thinking about in terms of using AI to think above our pay grade, or to expand our career options? 

Tara Chklovski: That's something I was hearing a while ago when people were like, well, I'm doing what I was told to do. These are my KPIs. And those have just literally just gone out the window. For instance, I heard this from a chief marketing officer of a pretty big company, and she was so excited that they are actually using all these GenAI tools to create six different versions of content that would then go on to six different social media channels. 

And so she was hitting all her KPIs, and her team were hitting all the KPIs way ahead of schedule in much less time. And I was like, what do you think the user's experience is now, when the poor user is being inundated by AI-generated content, not just from you, but from your competitors as well? So you're not thinking about, is my work actually helping my company succeed, like are we providing value to the customer. And she said, that's above my pay grade. And this was a C-suite leader. Because she thought this is a CEO-level decision. 

And that really stuck with me because I was like, that is what we need to be doing, where you can cross into other people's lanes. Because you need to be asking this larger question, what's not working, why is it not working, and keep asking five whys until you get to the real root cause, and then you can actually innovate. And you bring incredible value and perspective based on your years in the organization, but you can fall back on, well, that's above my pay grade. And so I think that's a challenge for us, and I think we gotta step into that. 

Jill Finlayson: That's quite an interesting challenge. Where is productivity helpful, and where is it counterproductive? 

Tara Chklovski: You now have access to incredible subject-matter experts. Previously if I'm having HR issues or if I'm not being a good leader, I would have to find a good executive coach. And finding a good executive coach is not easy. They come expensive. They may not have time. And now, I can just actually ask my problem and get really incredible advice on what to do. 

And you can actually go all the way and say, these are my constraints. How do I implement this? This is my timeline. How do I cut it down, and how do I make this actionable? How do I remind myself to make this behavior change? 

So I think you just got access to an incredible set of subject-matter experts that will help not only increase your productivity, but your effectiveness. But you have to ask the right questions. And prompt engineering puts this in a very too unassuming of a category, whereas it's really a much higher level question, which is, why are we doing this? What are we doing? How can we do this better? And then trying to remind ourselves to do this on a regular basis. 

Jill Finlayson: We've all heard that a lot of jobs are going away, or at least many of them are going to change significantly. So you're working with a lot of young people. They're trying to figure out their careers, where they want to go. What are you seeing in terms of demand growing, and what are you saying they should focus on to equip themselves for these new directions? 

Tara Chklovski: I think it's a bit of a scary situation for young people at the moment, because a lot of people are using automation and AI tools to substitute for entry-level careers, and so it's harder for young people to get started. 

And I think that I've never encountered so many young people coming to me for unpaid internships. And that's interesting in a scary sign. I have two thoughts on this, one, to companies where don't be too shortsighted. It is important to have young people be part of your ecosystem. Otherwise, you'll just slow down. 

You need a fresh set of eyes. You need people like you were saying, who are not jaded. And sometimes I catch myself saying, I'm not doing this because it failed five years ago. That was five years ago. Maybe you can try it again. So you need a young person to question. There's an intangible value that's beyond just skills and expertise and cost. 

The second thing that I say to young people is, don't wait around and use it as a badge of honor to say, oh, I applied to 2,000 places. And it's very demoralizing to do that kind of job hunt right now. And I'll say, spend some time actually thinking about what are your values. What do you want to work on. And then actually try to find a company that you admire, or that you think you would want to work in and actually put in maybe, a couple of months of work trying to figure out what is their product, how could they do better. 

And then actually go build a prototype. You may not have the skills, but you have the tools to actually build a prototype. And if somebody were to come to me and say, hey, I saw your company was running this and they have a problem, and here's a prototype, and I tested it with so many people, I'll hire that person on the spot. 

Because what have you shown? You've shown initiative. You've shown hard work. You've shown ability to work in uncertain situations, and you've shown drive and the ability to learn new skills and tools that you probably didn't know. Those are all the traits of someone very, very successful in the current situation. 

But it requires you to say, OK, I'm going to dedicate three months of my time on something like this. And people hate that when they cut off options, because the more choices you have, you think you're better off. You're richer with more choices, but sometimes too many choices can really be the wrong thing. And so you want to narrow down and say, I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket and spend three months of my life doing that. 

Jill Finlayson: I agree with you about the importance of having that applied learning and also, figuring out reflecting what is it that you actually want to spend your time on. Because you're going to spend a tremendous amount of your time at work. You should be on something that you actually care about. 

It does concern me that people are taking more unpaid interns, because that, obviously, exacerbates inequalities, because only those who can afford to take internships unpaid are successful, and then they get the paid internship after that because of the unpaid. 

I would encourage, as you just said, companies to really invest in internships, because of the value, not just the pipeline and the talent and how you're going to source great employees in the future, but the insights and the novelty and the thoughts that you're going to gain from those interns is so absolutely important. 

So let's talk a little bit about AI fundamentals, because in terms of what people need to be aware of and understand. And then I want to go into use cases, because a lot of times people say I need to learn AI. And I'm like, for what? What are you trying to solve for? Can you talk about just baseline, what do you think people need to learn about AI as a step in the door? 

Tara Chklovski: I think it goes down to your feeling comfortable in this uncertain world. And I think that especially, I will say for women, because social norms have held women back from being the early adopters of technology. 

And I think it's really, really important to address some of these fears head on, and you're usually afraid of the unknown. And I term is, in itself, a scary term because of media. And so I would say for your own sense of empowerment and for you to, on a daily basis, when you see all these articles and news reports about AI and how it's changing the world, you will actually understand all of that much better if you were to go one layer deeper. 

And it is the easiest thing to download either Claude or ChatGPT onto your phone and just do as an initial just to start playing with it and ask it a few things. You can actually think about what are some problems that you want to work on for work, and try to warm it up that way and get started. 

But ideally, you actually want to learn how to code, because you can just ask it, I wanted to make an interactive journal for myself that would give me inspiring, beautiful paintings and inspiring writing quotes and keep me motivated to write every day. And I was able to build this really beautiful app for myself. 

And I was using this interface called windsurf, and I kept asking it, I have no Python experience. How should I get started? And it told me what exactly to do. And then I didn't understand anything. I'd say teach it to me, and it was breaking it all down to me. 

And if anything, I haven't used that journal app. I will say that. But that enormous sense of confidence you get, because society does revere software engineers because we pay them a lot. That's one indicator. And when you break open this box of coding and this mysterious box of technology and you begin to understand the core concepts, if anything, you just feel so much stronger and unafraid. And you're like, I know that. I got that, if anything else, just that feeling of confidence, it's worth it. 

And then you just keep going higher and higher from there. Because you'll be able to follow more technical articles. The more technical articles you follow, you'll be able to look further ahead, and it'll just help your career, but also your personal well-being because AI is enveloping everything that we do. 

Jill Finlayson: So you've already given some helpful use cases, which is just getting strategies for solving problems at work. So that's an entry point, but what are some of the other use cases that you've seen early adopters take on that have really made a difference in their job? 

Tara Chklovski: I mean, if you're thinking about what types of prompts, I think it really comes back to asking, what should we be doing to do our job better for our users. And you are the expert. And so these are probably questions that maybe don't even show up in your day-to-day, even your quarterly meetings, even your board meetings, because you may not have that time set aside as an organization for such deep reflection on strategy. But nobody is stopping you from putting that in and actually figuring that out. 

And so earlier, the company or the CEO would probably outsource this job to a consulting company. And if you, McKinsey or Accenture or whatever, this would cost a lot of money. And then they would come back with a very big brief and a set of deck slides. They embed a whole team into the organization, do all the case studies and interviews, and then they come up with a set of recommendations to improve. You can do that yourself. 

Jill Finlayson: And I would argue you can do it better. 

Tara Chklovski: You could do it better. 

Jill Finlayson: Because you actually understand your customers. Something to think about in your organization, what are some questions that people have to stop what they're doing to go solve that problem, that's an opportunity. 

Tara Chklovski: Absolutely. And I think some of the low-hanging fruit is very exciting to try to figure out, what do you want to automate, and how do you want to improve. But I think the eventual value will actually come from some of the innovations that will help your organization succeed. 

Because how does a company continue to provide value to shareholders, assuming that you'll continue to innovate in a market that's highly competitive. So where is that bank of innovative ideas? I think if employees are coming up with that, I mean, that's powerful. 

Jill Finlayson: Going back to the really big picture here, not every part of the world has access to electricity. Not every part of the world has high-speed internet. How do we look at this AI revolution and make it more equitable so we don't end up exacerbating wealth inequality? 

Tara Chklovski: I think that's an interesting point, and one question is, whose responsibility is it? I think it's the responsibility of each country's government to actually tackle that problem. And having worked in so many different countries, especially with communities that don't have access to electricity devices, internet. 

And this is where I feel that young people actually have a role to play, and we see this with Technovation girls, where many of the apps in many countries they create are around corruption and using technology for increased transparency and accountability. And I think that this is where educators can also play a role, where we are empowering young people to take civic responsibility and to demand a better government, a better structure, and using these powerful tools to uncover corruption and to hold people accountable. 

I think that's where the solution is. And I am very concerned that as these tools become very powerful, companies will let go of people, because a lot will get automated, and that means that wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. Again, education is probably the only path where we teach empathy. We teach people who have a lot of power to think about those who don't look like them, who don't have the same sort of lived experience. 

Jill Finlayson: So if the technology is changing so fast, are humans changing fast enough, are they evolving fast enough, or is there something we need to be doing more proactively? 

Tara Chklovski: I think, of course, the human brain hasn't changed, and it will not change. But I don't know whether the brain physically needs to keep up because it is a very powerful entity. And I think that we are capable of changing and adapting. I mean, humans survive in very harsh circumstances. 

So if anything, we are equipped with the right internal mechanisms to survive and thrive, but I think we have to change the way we think. And to me, it really is embracing the future and the uncertainty and not hiding here. 

Jill Finlayson: So if you were to set a bold target, your big vision, what would it be? 

Tara Chklovski: I am curious because I think I'd mentioned that AI 2027 reported earlier, it presents a very technocentric view, and I want to present a parallel view, because they are, what, 8.2 billion people on this Earth. And the number of robots in the world is much smaller than that. 

And so what are you going to do with all these people? And I think, what if you have all this incredible progress happening on the technology side, which is great, don't need to stop that, but invest in the humans. What if we invested in upskilling 50 million employees in industry and have them mentor 50 million young people to solve the biggest challenges that we face using AI. 

So I think that is totally possible to do. Right now, the cost of upskilling someone to have this innovator's mindset and be completely familiar with AI is $200. That's not much. And again, $200 to completely transform a young person's life. 

And so these are investments that can be made, and we have all the research, all the curriculum, all the infrastructure needed to upskill and update the human infrastructure. 

Jill Finlayson: Do you envision, as part of that, more collaboration between corporate and nonprofit organizations? 

Tara Chklovski: I mean, that's always has been the case. We all always collaborate. So I think the more important thing is to have planet-sized goals. I think industry has always collaborated with nonprofits, and nonprofits survive on funding from individuals and corporations. 

But I think the goals have been too small, because people are afraid. People are afraid of setting big goals because, of course, maybe their tenure as CEO ends and they didn't meet their targets, and I think that's why the goals haven't been big enough. 

Jill Finlayson: So looping back to Technovation and what you've learned from that program in terms of what works and doesn't work in terms of growing and upskilling talent, what would be your template or your guide for people who want to take on a really big goal like this? 

Tara Chklovski: Partner with us. We have been doing this for a while, and we are partnering with UNICEF at the moment to bring this kind of AI-accelerated program to 25 million young people, and that means we need millions of industry mentors, and they are upskilling as well. So this infrastructure is very, very critical. 

But the most important thing I learned was that just putting a course online and now, even adding an AI chatbot on it is not going to do anything. You're not going to get that fundamental innovator's mindset shift, because we learn best from humans. That's why it's important to really have the human-to-human collaboration and learning, and that takes time and effort. 

And that's what we've built over the past 20 years, is this very thick layer of human-supported network of learning and learners. And that's the number one lesson I learned that the fastest way to get to scale is not the one that results in long-term change. So don't look for the quick wins, look for the really resilient foundational programs. 

Jill Finlayson: So this isn't really just technically upskilling or building competencies. It's really the mindset shift, the innovation shift. And why hasn't this happened to date? 

Tara Chklovski: I think because we like short-term solutions, and we love quick numbers. And I think that we just lose our attention. It's taken me 20 years to figure a lot of this out, to build a resilient program and to have long-term impact. People burn out after 10 years. It's a hard job. 

And so that's why, I mean, we started with resilience. I have first-hand experience of what it means to weather a lot of storms. And so many times, CEOs don't have the resilience to stay in the game long enough to actually solve some very complex social problems. 

I'm an aerospace engineer by training. Too often, engineers come in thinking it's a simple problem, but social problems are very different from engineering problems. And so it requires a completely different time scale. 

Jill Finlayson: So what are your closing words of advice for resilience for folks who are both in the workplace and those who are trying to enter the workforce? 

Tara Chklovski: I think don't be afraid to think really big, and spend maybe 20, 30 minutes a day just going back and forth. You can use Grok, you can use Claude. You can use ChatGPT. You can use Gemini. You can use anything. But just going back and forth about thinking maybe even planet size. Don't think small, think planet size, and spend a sufficient amount of time going back and forth with an AI assistant, and you'll be surprised. 

It'll change the way you think. It'll change your perspective, and it'll empower you. 

Jill Finlayson: I love it, leaving people with planet-sized ambition. Thank you so much for joining us, Tara. 

Tara Chklovski: Thank you, Jill. That was a fun conversation. 

Jill Finlayson: And with that, I hope you've enjoyed this latest in a long series of podcasts that we'll be sending your way this month. Please share with friends and colleagues who may be interested in taking this Future of Work journey with us. And make sure to check out to extension.berkeley.edu to find a variety of courses and certificates to help you thrive in this new working landscape. And to see what's coming up next at EDGE in Tech, go ahead and visit edge.berkeley.edu. 

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll be back next month to continue our Future of Work journey. The Future of Work podcast is hosted by Jill Finlayson, produced by Sarah Benzuly, and edited by Matt DiPietro and Brandon Gregory.

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