Episode 800
Trust, Not Technology: Alice Sesay Pope on Leading AI Transformation That Customers—and Employees—Actually Believe In (#800)
This episode is sponsored by Epsilon.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today’s episode is in Audio only.
In this episode, our host Nyeleti is joined by Alice Sesay Pope, a Fortune 100 executive, former Global Vice President at Amazon, and author of The Trust Algorithm, to explore why the hardest part of AI adoption isn't the technology at all—it's the trust required to use it well.
Drawing on more than two decades of leadership across Amazon, Visa, Microsoft, Capital One and USAA, Alice makes the case that transformation succeeds or fails on people, governance and judgment long before it succeeds or fails on technology. The conversation moves from how leaders diagnose which problems genuinely call for AI, to what builds a customer's confidence to engage rather than hesitate, to what effective governance and accountability actually look like once AI moves from framework to lived, high-stakes experience.
A central theme is that this wave of transformation is different from those that came before it - not because it changes how work gets done, but because it changes who, or what, is doing the thinking. Nyeleti and Alice discuss what that shift means for how people behave inside organisations, and for loyalty and CX professionals in particular, who are often influencing AI transformation rather than leading it.
This episode offers a grounded, leadership-first perspective for anyone building customer loyalty in an environment where trust, not technology, is the real currency of transformation.
Show notes:
3) Good to Great - Jim Collins (Book Recommendation)
