How I AI

How a National Security Leader Uses AI to Navigate Reinvention and Build a Purpose-Driven Career

• Brooke Gramer • Season 1 • Episode 36

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In this episode of How I AI, I sit down with Erica Shoemate, a former FBI intelligence leader turned AI policy strategist who sits at the intersection of national security, ethical innovation, and the future of work.

Erica spent more than a decade inside federal intelligence and later led trust and safety, regulatory, and cybercrime initiatives at Twitter and Amazon. Today she runs EN Strategy Group, where she advises mission-driven organizations on AI policy, responsible innovation, and global regulatory trends. She also leads the Career Quantum Leap accelerator, helping women and professionals in transition pivot with clarity using AI as a bridge.

We talk about what it looks like to reinvent yourself in real time, how to stay relevant in a world shaped by automation, and why responsible AI isn’t just a tech issue... it’s a human one. Erica shares the mindset shifts she teaches her clients, the operational security habits everyone should practice, and how AI can fuel confidence, opportunity, and economic freedom.

🔥 Topics We Cover:
• Erica’s journey from national security to tech and policy
• How she uses AI to support reinvention and career pivots
• Mindset work that helps women move from panic to power
• How she advises companies on AI guardrails and ethical innovation
• Why operational security and data privacy matter more than ever
• The role of AI in leveling access, opportunity, and economic mobility

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Generative AI & Workflow
ChatGPT, Claude, Gamma

Productivity & Calendar Automation
Reclaim.ai, Google Calendar

AI Policy & Governance
AI 2030 Institute, global regulatory frameworks (EU DSA, UK Online Safety Act)

Career Resources & Upskilling
Career Quantum Leap Accelerator (Erica’s program)

Connect with Erica:
Instagram: thepolicygoddess
Website: LeadWithinStrategy.ai
LinkedIn: Erica S., MPA

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More About Brooke:

Website: brookex.com

LinkedIn: Brooke Gramer

More About the Podcast:

Instagram: howiai.podcast

Website: howiaipodcast.com

"How I AI" is a concept and podcast series created and produced by Brooke Gramer of EmpowerFlow Strategies LLC. All rights reserved.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

it's so important to also have a plan to be able to pivot so that you can focus on, okay, what do I do now? What is my skillset? How am I still valuable? And showing communities, how to leverage these tools to pivot, to bring their brand to life. How do I leverage AI to build a consulting brand? What you should worry about and always think about is how do I continue to iterate and be relevant and be an asset to whatever the market wants at whatever given time?

Brooke:

Welcome to How I AI the podcast featuring real people, real stories, and real AI in action. I'm Brooke Gramer, your host and guide on this journey into the real world impact of artificial intelligence. For over 15 years, I've worked in creative marketing events and business strategy, wearing all the hats. I know the struggle of trying to scale and manage all things without burning out, but here's the game changer, AI. This isn't just a podcast. How I AI is a community, a space where curious minds like you come together, share ideas, and I'll also bring you exclusive discounts, and insider resources, because AI isn't just a trend, it's a shift, and the sooner we embrace it, the more freedom, creativity, and opportunities will unlock. Have you just started exploring AI and feel a bit overwhelmed? Don't worry, I've got you. Jump on a quick start audit call with me so you can walk away with a clear and personalized plan to move forward with more confidence and ease. Join my community of AI adopters like yourself. Plus, grab my free resources, including the AI Get Started Guide. Or try my How I AI companion GPT. It pulls insights from my guest interviews along with global reports, so you can stay ahead of the curve. Follow the link in the description below to get started. Have you ever had to completely reinvent yourself? Not by choice, but by circumstances. That's exactly where today's guest, Erica Shoemate, found her power. After more than a decade working in national security and technology policy in the US government Erica faced a life-changing season as a caregiver for her daughter, a cardiac survivor. That experience reshaped her perspective, on work, purpose and the kind of future she wanted to help build. Today, she's a policy strategist and AI advisor helping leaders and organizations navigate the real world impact of artificial intelligence. Erica helps professionals in transition turn fear into fuel, building new income streams, businesses and self-belief with AI as their co-pilot, something I'm very passionate about helping others with as well. In this episode, we talk about ethical innovation, AI literacy, and how the next wave of technology can actually expand opportunity, not replace it. Alright, let's dive in. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of How Ai. Erica, thank you so much for being here and welcome.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Thank you so much, Brooke, for having me. I'm super excited to be a part of your community, your network, and for us to have an amazing conversation today. And honestly, I'm really pumped because our, you know, pre- meet was just really phenomenal. So.

Brooke:

Yes, i'm sure we'll get into that today as well. But first, please open the floor. Let listeners and guests know all about yourself and what you do today.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Yeah, thank you so much. So give your listeners a bit of a quick, high level overview of like who I am do and do and I I typically like to start from where I started to where I am

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

and so I, I work at the intersection of national security, ai policy and ethical tech innovation, and I am a former FBI intelligence leader, and I've worked across the US intelligence community. Where I have done some pretty amazing work to help keep our country safe and our citizens safe, not only here in the US but also abroad. And I spent more than a decade doing that type of work from things from counter terrorism, organized crime, and also spending time overseas focused on the national security threat apparatus abroad as well. And then pivoting after more than a decade in space to big tech where I led trust and safety teams focused on safety, cyber crime, election integrity, and regulatory policy across Twitter and Amazon, really some unmatched experience and things you can't even replicate because of the type of things that I worked on in both of those environments. And now I serve as the founder of the EN Strategy Group. And for your listeners, the n strategy group, it's not IN it is EN. And the E is for Erica and is for my amazing miracle daughter Niam. And I really focus on these mission driven like leaders and organization and thinking about the design of product innovation with people first, and really thinking about culturally informed policy frameworks and how that shapes tech with integrity and not just the speed of how we get it out. Right. And my work really centers on building that responsible, proactive guardrails around AI and emerging technologies that truly drive impact from product design to public policy. And I know a lot of people think of like, well, all this innovation, like, oh my gosh. Well, if I had to think about the people and product design, how does that then. Allow me to make a living if I'm an innovator. And I think that that is where we can have the best of both worlds. And as my role as a global AI policy fellow today at the AI 2030 Institute, that's some of the additional work that I do focused on being this product policy architect behind some of the work that we're thinking about where we are in 2025 and where the North Star is by 2030. And I've also served as the ai policy advisor for Chat Black GPT ahead of its MVP launch on Juneteenth of 2024. And also recently, I published an article that was published by Duco experts"Beyond the algorithm, the hidden human cost of ai." Whether I'm working with, you know, big, major companies, fortune five hundreds, fortune tens, I'm really known for translating this chaos into clarity and making sure that people really understand what's most at risk and that people aren't the afterthought and always front and center of innovation and so to your listeners, how do I, ai? I really do it by building the frameworks and future where people come first and always, quite frankly.

Brooke:

Wow, what an impressive background.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Thank you.

Brooke:

It's so vast and you've done quite a few transitions into different spaces. Take me back to when you first started going into technology and artificial intelligence. What was that transition like? What really sparked your curiosity and interest to go in that way? Full force.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Oh my God great question. So what a lot of people, don't get to see a lot of like behind the curtain of being in government, particularly when you're in the national security intelligence apparatus is like all you know behind and there's no real window into that world versus, maybe what you see on TV or the little bit that people may talk about in their former lives. So for me, policy and innovation has always been at the forefront of any work that I've done and from the time I started my career in government, even starting at local government, like I actually started at the City of Memphis, office of Youth Services and Community Affairs, following policy as it relates to youth and organizations. And then moving on to the Shelby County District Attorney General's office, where I was focused on taking a look at data and also youth that were part of truancy and not looking at it in the traditional sense. Really get into the root cause. So, again. Having to understand data. I was not manually writing down the data. I was really looking at systems and being able to automate that information and then how do I translate that data into real storytelling that humanizes the root cause of issues. So I would say that a lot of what that beginning really folded well into my work as an intelligence analyst. In my entire career, everything that I have built and worked on or trained for has really been at the center of innovation. How do you review a potential investigation? How do you review different pieces of data that don't really make sense together? And how do I piece it together to really make full sense of this? Because I need to be able to provide a real assessment and analysis and recommendation for the highest levels of the government and through the training that, you get over time at the beginning and also just throughout your career, it really is built on various types of data. And like, granted, government can be a little bit behind the times. I'm not gonna sit here, act like it's not. There were also really cool things that I got to see. And also work with where I knew that technology and innovation were going to be the things that was gonna drive the future. So I essentially made my way into those spaces where I knew that technology was gonna be, unfortunately, the way of like, the good things about the future and also the way of like the weaponization of the future. And some of the work that I did as it relates to like innovation and exploitation was around counter-terrorism unfortunately, and being able to understand how, you know, not so great organizations were weaponizing technology for their own use and like recruitment or whatever. And that to me was that kind of aha moment for me. And also continuing to see threats change. We always are looking at emerging trends as it relates to what is happening, not only here in the US but what is happening around the globe. So it was important as an analyst, that I was always anticipating, anticipating, anticipating, not waiting for the thing that goes bad, right? And really being at the forefront of that, even from the criminal piece of these things. And so I was able to take all of that, not so great kind of bad actor perspective and really shift that and bring it into the world of tech after more than a decade at working at the FBI and across some other agencies as well.

Brooke:

Wow. What an incredible opportunity to be trained in the way that you have and all of the things and knowledge and expertise that you've been able to accumulate through. Yes, quite unfortunate historical circumstances but it's been able to really work your brain and really put you in that position to be able to put in preventative measures from things like that happening with your clients. Um, Really be able to pinpoint and map out you know, things that people should put in place when it comes to AI policy and guardrails to have in place. So, let's bring it forward to how you're applying this day to day now, if you could share what type of clients you're advising and what you typically come in and support them with and how you're supporting individuals now, granted all of your, your background skill and knowledge.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Absolutely. So some of the work that I, I do on a day to day, sometimes it's just me quite frankly, I'm always working to keep up with policy and regulatory things that are coming out that are changing not only here in the US but the globe, right? Because generally speaking, most organizations, most people who are building things, they aren't necessarily not just like for, US customers it's a global kind of product that, that's the ideal end state is for you to be able to, have this product that is useful around the globe. And so one is in my day-to-day tracking what is happening across the globe or what are we seeing, what are the trends as it relates to what a, a specific country or region is thinking about. As we know here in the US, we're not as far along as it relates to like the regulatory standards. We've been a bit more kind of, won't say fully laissez-faire, but just kind of taking a step back and not putting policies in in place, whereas you have in the EU. Where there are so many things being, put out that, some people think that you know it's too much and is it an overreach and all these different things. You know, you have the digital services act, the DSA, you have the UK online Safety Act. There's also a lot of ai policy that has come out as well. And then you have, for example, in New Zealand, you have a complete ban of like youth not being able to use, social media platform. And so when you think about what I do on a day to day one, tracking policy, two, it can also mean that I am creating like frameworks, like I talked about some of the work that I did before with Chat black GPT and also because of me really being, I would say, a power user of ai, I also bring to the forefront just this all happened very organically as being a career pivot strategist as well as someone who has successfully pivoted over and over and over again. Outta necessity out of like, I wanna change all these just different dynamics. I actually have this career quantum Leap accelerator program that I created that really is focused on helping women and professionals be able to pivot with clarity, purpose and not panic. Because we know that when you are disrupted. Unexpectedly, in life, whether that's personal, professionally, it can cause paralysis. You know, that panic and what I always say to people, but there's power in the pivot. And so if we can quickly like yes, you know, I always say, have your grief and work through that. But it's so important to also then have a plan to be able to pivot so that you can focus on, okay, what do I do now? What is my skillset? How am I still valuable? And also leveraging AI tools and showing communities, how to leverage these tools to pivot, to bring their brand to life. Being able to build out, like not just the tactical things, like get a better resume, get, your LinkedIn page updated, but also thinking about it, how do I leverage AI to build a, a consulting brand? Like, it doesn't mean that you may not go back to your nine to five. It's like, and having my nine to five, because as the world is shifting with technology, also how we make a living is also shifting. And so for someone like me who's neuro spicy, I'm always thinking like literally five, 10 years ahead. I always say, don't worry about. Ai, you know, the fear of like AI taking your job. What you should worry about and always think about is how do I continue to iterate and be relevant and be an asset to whatever the market wants at whatever given time?

Brooke:

Such beautiful words. I agree. It's never been more important to have multiple streams of income and really be leaning into your entire skillset.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Yes.

Brooke:

Because we're multifaceted beings.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

I'm so glad to see more of that, right? Because I'm sure you've had in your career as well where people tell you focus on one thing, focus on one thing. And I'm like, that's never been me. And so I'm really happy to see like the shift, even though I've never listened to that. But it's just nice that that is also. Becoming the norm to be multifaceted and openly multifaceted. Right? Like lean into all those parts of you because those things is what allow you to as Beyonce would say, I am 1 0 1, I am the only one, and we are all 1 0 1. I don't care if the market is saturated with the, the top marketing strategist, expert on AI because of our lived experience. Because of all the things we've done in our own careers, we're always gonna have a different perspective from our next neighbor. I don't even say next competitor because there is always, I, I believe that there is enough people to go around where everyone can eat, right.

Brooke:

Yes.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

And if we have that mentality as well, there's also opportunity to collaborate and not be like the Game of Thrones in this space as So.

Brooke:

Oh my gosh. I love that you said that because I was already thinking in my head how I wanna collaborate with you. Because, yeah, I think it's so important and what I've been leaning into doing for myself and my community because, you know, I'm such a leading example of how to pivot with AI as your co-pilot. It's such an amazing time to be a solopreneur, a first time entrepreneur with all these empowering tools. How I AI is brought to you in partnership with the Collective AI, A space designed to accelerate your learning and AI adoption. I joined the collective and it's completely catapulted my learning, expanded my network, and showed me what's possible with ai. Whether you're just starting out seeking community or want done for you solutions, The Collective gives you the resources to grow your business with AI. And before we get into more of this amazing work that you're doing, ai for empowerment and, and upskilling. You mentioned you're a power user of ai. I would love to bring it to a little bit of a personal level. If you could share what type of tools you're using or systems and workflows, like bring me through your day-to-day and how you're using it as a consultant or even, even on a personal level.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

I say, you know, my my my GPT, one of the things I do use, so open AI is like my BFF. Again, to your listeners mentioned earlier, I'm neuro spicy, so I just learned a year ago. I have ADHD all makes sense about so many things now. But I'm a late diagnoses and it really, having that information really opened up a whole different world for me in a way that I began to really fully understand who I am and why i've always been this kind of like big, like dreamer and visionary and I have all these thoughts I now can leverage AI streamline those thoughts. And I can come back to it later and it will streamline it and help me if I say, you know, pare it down to whatever I was looking for. I use Claude sometimes as well, and I love Claude because of the way it is built. It's pretty much a more contained space and platform of like data and privacy there, that that is what they're number one big on is, is the data and privacy perspective. And then the other tool I absolutely love as someone who is not a big PowerPoint, I won't say user. I'm just not that great at it. I use Gamma a lot as well, and I know it's not the only thing, but because I've been a user now for more than a year and a half, I've seen the progress. It's made and it just continues to get better and better and better. You can get your PowerPoint in like 2.5 seconds and then you can fix it however you want it to be. But those are some highlights of things that I use in the generative AI world, but not the only things. The last thing I'll say from a everyday calendar perspective is not only do I use my Google calendar, but I also love reclaim.ai? as well.

Brooke:

What is reclaim.ai?

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Yeah, reclaim.ai is actually it's part of Dropbox but Reclaim is amazing because it allows you to get your time back with ai. I'm able to then allow it to sync across all my calendars. It tells me when, I have something, or this is overlapping with this, it does a great job of like the integrations across various platforms and if you are a business owner, you might have multiple Google accounts if you use, Google Suite or whatever,

Brooke:

Yes.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

It's all able to be easily integrated doesn't matter how many Google accounts that you have.

Brooke:

Okay, cool. I haven't heard of that one yet, and that's very helpful. I also have so many calendars and different emails as well. I love that you brought up Gamma. And just how you mentioned it wasn't that great in the beginning. I agree. It's so funny because in the beginning I was so anti gamma. This was over a year ago and everybody was singing its praises and I found it so not user friendly in the beginning, but now I use it for almost every single client interaction and presentation where I'm leading calls. And it's so quick. You're right. I love it. It.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

So quick, and like you say, like, no, it's not perfect, that's fine. So I'm glad I stuck with it'cause I was like, you at times very annoyed by it. And you can customize your own things like your business brand, your colors, right? You can, I can just click on it and then it keeps the same colors every single time. It's on brand, the logo, all those things. So

Brooke:

Well, let's transition back into all your work, specifically empowering women through this portal of reinvention using AI as a bridge. Something I'm also very passionate about. And walk me through how you are doing that? Are you doing webinars and trainings? Do you work with people one-on-one? And, and maybe you can share some themes that you've been noticing and people that are transitioning and you are getting to support them with their resumes using AI and, and career upskilling. I'd love to just get into that now.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Love this. You'll probably see me just light up like a whole light bulb, and I'll just quickly say this career Quantum Leap accelerated program was born very organically out of a need on President's Day of this year. I actually created a free workshop, like literally a Saturday evening. I looked around and was like, oh my gosh, what's happening?'cause every few minutes, hearing someone got laid off, someone is like, my world is turned completely upside down and living in the DMV, it's like, oh my goodness, what's happening? And I had a moment of my inner voice of saying what is everyone doing? Who is helping who and like, what's happening? and then God said, well, you can do it'cause you've done it, you've done it. And I was like, I have no time for this. I am a busy mother. I have a child that requires a lot more of me than the average mother, which already requires a lot and nope, the voice would not go away. And so I created a flyer using Gamma. I did not post it on social media. I posted it within my small networks, different networks of women, and I can tell you within less than 24 hours I had to cut off my Zoom registration link just literally my network. I had a hundred slots I was like, oh my God, what has just happened here? And so what was supposed to be a 90 minute session, turned into a three hour session, and so many women were just floored and like grateful and they were so appreciative of me taking time on a holiday. And being with them and allowing them the space. And what I saw was the paralysis, quite frankly. Like the shock, the, the shock and awe of what do I do? We are talking about career public servants. A lot of women, this is transcending generations, right? This is not just, you know, are you a baby boomer? Are you a Gen Xer? Are you a millennial? Are you a genzer? Did not matter. Trying to show them. I was like, one thing you will grow to learn about me is that I am always strategic, always. Number one, strategic, being intentional. And being very calculated in how you position yourself, whatever your next move is so the tactical piece is getting, your resume updated, getting your LinkedIn, but what else? We gotta shift the mindset because some people aren't comfortable with, all they know is government. Right? And that can be very scary. And I had to just remind them, as women having to say you are the talent. Like regardless of what happened, you are the talent and as long as you know value, your worth, or even if you don't know it today, start getting the mirror and you're gonna tell yourself every single day, am enough. And I got a whole other framework on that. But the point being how do I see myself? Because when we can shift our minds, we can shift how we move forward, right? And using all of that kind of a buildup. Then showed them like, okay, if you are, were in this industry, in government or government contractor, these are some of the jobs that you could think about and so from that, I created a free e-career resource guide as well, that I built, shared, and showed them what different job industries that they could be considering and also giving them tools like mental health support financial or wealth management resource support as well, and also practical prompts that they could use even if they were still skeptical of ai. In that workshop series, I also provided operational security techniques as well for those again. That weren't sure what to do, how to do it, and I don't know about this, and making it a educational piece and not shunning someone for not wanting to use it either.

Brooke:

That's beautiful and just with the handful of people that I've been kind of in beta mode supporting. Individuals making major transitions right now with AI as their co-pilot, mindset is the number one, you know, blocker of, really shifting your identity. What will people think? What will they make or under stand of me. You bring up such an important point about just like the financial education and supporting them in that way. I'm gonna look into your resources and, and I can link those out in the show notes as well.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Having that as someone who is a first generation college grad, being also from inner city Memphis. I have A lot of financial trauma if I'm gonna just be 100 and even though I've done well, I'm doing fine. There is a part of me, and you'll hear a lot of celebrities talk about this. When you've grown up, you know, poor, you still sometimes have those triggers or mindsets around like, oh my gosh, I don't want to be broke. So, you know, for your listeners. So someone that thinks like I need to have it all together to be able to make a move, we just have to get started. And I'm sure people hear that all the time. You just gotta put at least a half toe in front to, because you can get someone off the, just a little bit, right? You're getting somewhere and I see it

Brooke:

Yeah.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

so often. And the thing is, I'm sure you see this with some of your clients where you can see their potential. You can see.

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Like their vision, like you can see them in a year from now. If they would just jump and one thing for me. I am going to always bet on myself, period. Woo.

Brooke:

Beautiful. I love this conversation. I think it's such an important topic because the industry is being very disrupted by ai and a lot of people are coming up to these instances and thinking of their own transition or reinventions. So thank you again for sharing a bit about your work consulting and you shared a lot about everything that you're doing, the technological space. I wanna know what's next for you. One of my favorite questions is just to get people to share what are their big ideas. Maybe you're building something with ai, waving a magic wand of what you could build next. What's coming up for you?

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Oh my goodness. What comes up next for me is like being able, that the magic wand would be having the opportunity to actually work with some of the big forefront institutions and corporations who are building these products, and I know they have amazing people on the inside but really getting to the root of how they are not only just training their models, but what data is going into those.. Are you working with? How is your data used? The one thing that I immediately think about is healthcare because so much is shifting so rapidly in healthcare and we know that there is a disproportionate amount of like biases that le leads to real world harm. As we talked about before we started today, I am a big, also maternal and infant health, not only advocate, but I also serve as the ma a maternal health policy co-chair with the March of Dimes um, DMV infant maternal Infant Health Equity Coalition. And that work brings me to doing work at the state and national level. And being able to gather and gain bipartisan support and legislation to really reshape maternal and infant health support because the US is the worst developed nation to have any child, and doesn't matter, race, ethnicity, blah, blah, blah, blah, all those good things. And also it's even worse for black women and babies. As a matter of fact, the state of Mississippi has declared a state of emergency for their infant mortality crisis. And so you wanna think about the waving the magic wand. It would literally be getting in front of these companies who are the keepers of the electronic health records. Also those who are doing the research that it can drive change. Making sure that that research, the data is also including people that are least likely to be in the room. that would be the number one piece of this and two, being able to work with just the other companies as well. Because again, I think I bring a completely different lens and perspective, not just from where I come from, but the things that I have lived and survived navigating the healthcare system, doing it successfully. Again, if you had better systems in place that they actually talked to one another, epic has done a, a much more improved job of this. But if you had more being able to talk to one another that's HIPAA compliant, you would likely, I would venture to say, be able to solve some of the. Horrific outcomes that we are also having in this nation and ensuring that not just the implicit bias, but the bias in the data just comes from not ingesting enough of a certain population in this data. And so that would be some of the, the things I would wanna wave a magic wand around.

Brooke:

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's clear you're very passionate and I love how much that question always really lights people up. And you get to really get under the hood of what is really your North Star. And I would love to wrap up this conversation and ask if you have one key takeaway you want listeners to get from this episode. Maybe it could even be on AI policy, since you have a lot to share about setting up an and creating that. For your own business and professional use, I know that you are such an advocate.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Absolutely. So one one big key takeaway I would say for your listeners would be is if you are using AI already, taking just a little step back to see the tools that you like, are you using them at, at the free subscriber? And if you are using it at the free subscriber, going to look at what the data and privacy actual clauses are. So you are informed at least how your data is being used or not used. And then two, practicing and continuing to practice operational security is so important. And what I mean about operational security is being mindful of like your PII and how you're putting information. Like I am a big believer of using a bunch of brackets and all these like space holders and things as I'm using different generative AI tools and you can make up a person just so that you aren't giving all of your your people away because social engineering is still a thing. And again, with the sophistication of like cyber, the cyber threat and cyber threat actors, whether that is state, non-state actors. It is very prolific, so any day could be your number. And also like, you know, we just had the outage with AWS recently, and again, just being aware, it's not that you need to necessarily change anything, but just being more informed allows you to make better decisions as we are interacting more with this technology.

Brooke:

Such a great key takeaway. I haven't read up. Too much about the AWS incident yet?

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

I didn't do the full deep dive yet, but definitely as we think about things becoming more like centralized, right? Also thinking about how your data is stored, who

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

with

Brooke:

Yep.

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Let's say you decide to start a company and all of your information is then stored in the cloud by one particular system. Then is this an opportunity and be like, okay, let me recheck the way that I have my operational procedures for storing. Data, do I need to have an alternative to, like, my backup is elsewhere. It's not with one specific you know, corporation or, I put this stuff on a hard drive because I'm sure most of us hadn't even thought about going back to like a hard drive, but some of the more, as people would say, dinosaur ways, some of that is still okay to have as a part of your operational security and your protection of your intellectual property as well.

Brooke:

Yes. Such a key takeaway. I'm so glad that we gave that last final nugget. There's so much. Information in here, and I really enjoyed just getting to know you as a person and all the things that you stand for and all the amazing work that you've done throughout your career and continue to live on. How can listeners reach out to you, Erica? How can they connect?

Erica L. Shoemate, MPA:

Absolutely. So you can follow me on Instagram at the policy goddess at T-H-E-P-O-L-I-C-Y, goddess, G-O-D-D-E-S-S. And you can also. Follow me on LinkedIn. Maybe, maybe not. But I'll make sure to share how, how to find me there.'cause it is it's not simple. And then the last thing is you can also visit me on my website at ww dot lead within strategy.ai and that's lead L-E-A-D-W-I-T-H-N-E-N strategy.ai. So yes, that is where you can find me.

Brooke:

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Erica. I really appreciate you. Wow, I hope today's episode opened your mind to what's possible with AI. Do you have a cool use case on how you're using AI and want to share it? DM me. I'd love to hear more and feature you on my next podcast. Until next time, here's to working smarter, not harder. See you on the next episode of How I AI. This episode was made possible in partnership with the Collective AI, a community designed to help entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. One of the biggest game changers in my own AI journey was joining this space. It's where I learned, connected and truly enhanced my understanding of what's possible with AI. And the best part, they offer multiple membership levels to meet you where you are. Whether you want to DIY, your AI learning or work with a personalized AI consultant for your business, The Collective has you covered. Learn more and sign up using my exclusive link in the show notes.

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Brooke Gramer

Host