This podcast episode features a compelling dialogue between host Andreanne Amany and guest Iliana Oris Valiente, a distinguished managing director at Accenture and a thought leader in emerging technologies.

The discussion centers on the significant role women play in technology and the imperative to advance their presence in this field, emphasizing that leadership transcends comfort zones and thrives in the exploration of the unknown. Iliana takes us through her journey across various sectors, notably finance and blockchain, highlighting the importance of embracing change and following one’s passions to achieve professional success.

As they delve into the implications of emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and global mobility, they confront the ethical responsibilities of integrating humanity and individual needs within technological advancements.

Ultimately, the episode serves as an inspiring call to action for all listeners to cultivate their unique paths, harness their strengths, and lead with a profound understanding of what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world.

Takeaways:

• The podcast highlights the significant role women play in technology and aims to inspire future generations to embrace leadership in this field.
• Ileana Oris Valiente emphasizes the importance of following one's interests and passions, which can lead to unexpected career pivots and opportunities.
• The discussion revolved around the necessity of placing humanity at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring ethical considerations guide innovation.
• Listeners are encouraged to explore their own learning styles, which can enhance personal and professional growth in an increasingly complex world.
• The conversation underscored the evolving landscape of work, marked by globalization and the rise of digital nomadism, which presents both challenges and opportunities.
• Ileana's insights on the importance of introspection and understanding one's own needs resonate deeply, suggesting a framework for personal development that aligns with one's authentic self.

Find them online:

Andreanne Amany: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreanne-dibo/

Iliana Oris Valiente: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilianaorisvaliente/

Find us on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/witlovepodcast/

Welcome to witlove, a podcast founded by women, produced by women, about women in technology.

There is a huge place for women in tech and this podcast is going to get well into the work as a leading contributor to help change the trajectory and see the rise of women in technology.

Sit back and enjoy as our young female hosts share energy with experienced professional women in technology.

Hello, hello, Hello.

Welcome back to another episode of With Love where we spotlight women in technology.

We are breaking barriers and creating powerful ripples of change.

My name is Andrea Namani, your host for this episode and today we are joined by an amazing guest.

She is a trailblazer who proves that leadership is not about staying comfortable.

It is about stepping boldly into the unknown.

From finance to blockchain, from corporate holes to cutting edge tech, she has redefined what it means to lead at the intersection of business, humanity and innovation.

A managing director at Accenture, a thought leader in emerging tech, and a mentor shaping the next generation of innovators can please welcome Ileana Oris Valiente.

Ileana, welcome to today's episode.

Hello, good morning and thank you so much for having me.

You're welcome.

It's a pleasure.

So, Ileana, before we dive into the theme of this episode, let's have a little fun, shall we?

We shall all.

So if we opened up your Spotify right now, what is the one song you've had on replay repetitively?

Oh, gosh.

I've actually been listening to an Alicia Keys song.

Which one?

That I'm learning how to sing the if I ain't got you song.

And it's very hard.

I don't know why I chose such a hard song.

No worries.

I need to check it out and I will also be learning the lyrics.

So next time we reinvite you here, perhaps you can sing it for us.

Maybe.

I mean, the other one I'm learning is Etta Jones.

And at last.

And that's also very hard.

I don't know why I do this to myself.

Why do you keep picking hard songs, Ileana?

But this is good.

This is really, really good.

So I will listen to both of them.

Now, the second thing I would like to know here is you are someone who thinks a lot about the future of work.

So can you please tell us if there is one gadget or app you cannot live without right now?

Right now I really could not live without some of my note takers and in particular my voice notes app.

And the reason my voice notes app is such a key staple is because I know my learning style and I know that I'm an auditory processor.

It's easier for me to work through concepts if I'm talking about them.

And I can talk far faster than I can possibly sit down and write.

And so oftentimes I will have brainstorming and musing sessions with myself where I'm essentially talking to myself and rolling around at various concepts.

And then it's helpful to just have the recorded log of it that I can come back to and reference.

But sometimes I don't even go back and reference it, but just the fact that I have it makes me feel as though I've captured those contents.

And then it helps me to do my future writing.

It helps me to do my strategic brainstorming for work and the rest of it.

Wow, this is really good.

So one thing I'm getting away from this is it's important to know your learning style because sometimes we just go about life in general, but it's about.

It's a.

It's important to pause, learn about your best, so be more strategic in the way you approach your day to day.

Wow.

So note taker app and voice note app.

I love it.

I'll check those out and perhaps start using them myself.

And when you are not leading at the edge of innovation, what is one simple joy or guilty pleasure that keeps you grounded?

So I am actually an introvert, which I think surprises most people because I spend my days surrounded by.

By people at conferences and travel and the rest.

And so my guilty pleasure is going away to a cabin in the woods by myself three, four, five days at a time.

No cell phone reception, no WI fi, and just the ability to exist and sit and maybe go for a walk in a forest and do my writing, light a candle, just quietly existing.

And if I'm not in the forest, in the woods.

And it's a Machalante, like going for a walk.

So sitting down and slowly savoring it.

Wow, this is good.

And how often do you do that to recharge?

Is it like once a month?

You know, try for a couple of times a year.

A couple of times a year.

Okay.

Because you also have a busy schedule.

So yes, once a month would not work.

Beautiful.

So let's get right into it then.

So you started in finance and accounting before moving into blockchain, and now you are leading innovation at Accenture.

What gave you the courage to pivot so boldly in your career?

And what has that taught you about embracing change?

I wish I could say that it was just pure bravery.

It wasn't.

To me, it felt inevitable.

All of the things that I've made, all of the pivots that I've made in my professional career, yeah, they felt very, very inevitable.

What I mean by that is when I was starting my career in finance and accounting, I loved it, I was learning a lot.

But I realized that I didn't want to look backwards.

And both of the practices and the experiences that I'd had were about doing backwards looking analysis.

I wanted to be inventing the future.

And so I followed my interests.

I fell down the various rabbit holes, the topics that tugged at my attention.

My guiding principle is if I'm up at 2:00 clock in the morning thinking about a topic that I cannot get out of my mind and I'm reading about it compulsively, chances are that there's something there that needs to be explored.

And so I just followed those rabbit holes until I became so deeply steeped in certain ecosystems, whether it was the blockchain ecosystem or now the world of global mobility and immigration and global citizens and digital nomads and the rest of.

So you follow those rabbit holes and that's what's led me to my career right now, where I am in innovation.

And it is literally my day job to track trends and the tech trends, the societal trends, where is the world going?

So I have built a career for myself that is based on my strengths, my interests, and the fact that I'm endlessly curious.

So on the outside, maybe it looks as though I've always had this grand master plan or I was so brave.

It's not that I was brave, it's that I knew what I wanted and I just did it because I knew that if I didn't do it, I would be disappointed in myself.

And there's nothing worse than being disappointed in yourself.

I don't recommend that.

That is so true.

No, this is very good advice.

And I think again, you're speaking to me, Ileana, because I have those late night, you know, thoughts and all of those things, but sometimes like lady, just go to bed and go to work the next day.

But you actually explore those things.

You looked into it, you looked into the why and, and also you're right.

So there is somebody, somebody that said that the, the saddest thing in word is having everybody in the symmetry would die with their ideas and their dreams.

And I think this is what you just said.

You do not, you would not want to regret not having explored those ideas and desires and dreams of yours.

So this is really good.

But you've also been at the Forefront of blockchain, Digital twins, and now AI.

What excites you most about these technologies?

And what do you see as the biggest opportunities for humanity in this next chapter?

So I think that regardless of all of the technological innovation that's afoot, and there's a lot, what is the most important thing for us to figure out as we consider the future of humanity is what does it even mean to be human in the first place?

And that is not something we spend nearly enough time thinking about.

I spend most of my days surrounded by technologists, the people who are building the techiest of the techies of the techiest.

And sometimes they forget that on the other end of the screen, on the other end of the product, is an individual.

And how people learn, how people process information, how people make decisions in an autonomous way to themselves, all of those are things we don't spend enough time mulling over.

We haven't spent enough time considering how our interactions with technology change our own brains.

Someone that talks to ChatGPT all day, every day literally is rewiring their brain in ways that we haven't fully understood yet.

And I think the ideal is when we can have people taking the time to understand themselves, what makes them tick, and then using technology in a way that augments us as opposed to in a way that replaces us, or in a way that kills all the creativity and the autonomy.

That is true.

That's true.

And I think we need to just pause here because what you've just said is so important.

Using technology to augment us as opposed of using it to replace us.

Because I think when we talk about technology, oftentimes people are thinking that it's the end of humanity or it's the end of, you know, XY profession.

Right?

But in fact, we can actually use that tool to leverage it.

And no, this is beautiful.

Humans are resilient.

We have survived how many years on this planet, in how many different permutations and variations of life as we know it.

I'm sure we'll figure out our way through this technology revolution as well.

That is very true.

We got this within us.

But in all your work, you emphasize people first, and you just did right now.

Right?

What does it mean to be human?

So how do you balance the power of emerging technologies with the responsibility to keep humanity and ethics at the center?

It starts you have to keep the human at the center from the earliest design process of the building of anything.

So for, for instance, one of the companies that I'm excited about, they are putting humans at the center, where they create essentially like a digital clone, if you will, of a person's brain, mind, perspectives, all the soft things that come around them.

Great.

They give that data and put it into the hands of the user.

Then the user can take that pod of private information about themselves and insert that pod in any future LLM tool that they happen to use.

So that that LLM that they're interacting with has the information of the person that's behind the screen and the nuance of what they like, what they don't like, what keeps them excited, et cetera, which then allows the LLM that they're interacting with to give them better and better recommendations and outcomes in a way that the user still controls all of their own data, and they have the ability to revoke access for those LLMs of that part of information that they've shared.

I think that that's a really simple example of putting the human at the center of the design process, where often there's this default in the tech world to not do that, and that's what we need to avoid.

No, I think that's such a powerful perspective, and I believe our listeners will really resonate with this as well.

And I think ponder on it and keep that in mind as we not only cope with technology and also design the technology, but I also like the fact that in the example you gave, you said that the person has the ability to revoke that access.

Because I think that's one of the issues we have with technology at times.

Right.

Like how much access do we give?

So that company you're working with, I like that, that very thing that you just said, 100%.

Because we're shifting into this world where privacy actually matters and people are realizing that there is value in privacy.

So the company is called ours, and what they built are these little pods called airs.

The air of a.

Of a person.

And I think that they're onto something really big.

Agreed.

And I look forward.

I will check them out after this interview.

You've also spoken about how work is becoming global, nomadic and borderless.

So.

So what does this mean for personal identity, belonging, and leadership in the future workplace?

So I strongly believe that borders as we know them are increasingly becoming challenged by the fact that people individually are more mobile than they've ever been in the last, what, six months?

I've lost track of the number of flights that I've been on, and I've lost track of the number of countries that I've been to, whether it's because I'm speaking at a conference or I have friends that are in a certain region or there's a business opportunity that requires having meetings out there.

People are increasingly global and businesses are increasingly global as well, especially those that are more digitally in tech native and aren't dependent on the physical brick and mortar store or the physical office.

And so if we see successful remote work has happened for years and years and years, and the pandemic was the, the flip that made it that much more popular, why would we assume that everyone is going to bounce right back into the way that things were pre pandemic?

I don't think that's a reasonable assumption.

And in fact we're already seeing upwards of 40 million people self identifying as digital nomads and that number is only projected to grow in the future.

So this has implications for companies that have employees that live this lifestyle because they need to make sure that there's still compliance with tax rules and immigration rules and the rest.

But beyond the compliance, offering employees mobility is a new employee perk and someone who wants that mobility.

And let's say they have two comparable job offers and one requires them in the office three to five days a week, and the other says, we trust you, do what you need, work where you need to work.

Which offer do you think that person is going to take?

Second option.

I'm going with the second one for.

The second option for sure.

But then this increasing mobility also has impacts on countries.

The countries that are receiving this talent, even if they're there for only 30 days at a time or 60 days or 90 days at a time, and they're splitting their time between two countries over the course of a year.

And so countries themselves are also trying to figure out what does this mean and how do we adopt, how do we evolve for this until countries are rolling out all sorts of sorts of digital nomad and investor type of visa programs to be able to attract the best and brightest into their borders.

Because countries realize that hey, there's an opportunity for them to capitalize on this global mobility trend and actually increase their talent locally.

But then the third layer is actually the impact on the individual.

The world is designed for you to live in one place, maybe for you to move countries once or twice.

The world is not really designed from an infrastructure standpoint to have you spending time in three countries per year and to have your life distributed like meaningfully distributed.

But you're not just traveling to two countries, but you live across two or three borders.

Everything becomes more complex from immigration and the various residencies and citizenship options to Taxation and the cross border planning to health insurance and ensuring that people have the adequate coverage and they don't find themselves accidentally in between policies and coverage.

So those are just a couple of examples that scratch the surface around the type of infrastructure that needs to evolve in order to support the lifestyle that many people want around being global citizens.

No, I agree, I think but what you just outlined here just show how much more work we have to put into this because I don't think that we have figured it out yet.

Right.

And yeah, no, you're right.

And even you talked about taxation, everything when you were talking about it.

I was thinking, I was like during tax season they ask you how long you've lived in X province for X number of times in other.

You know what I mean?

And even what does it also mean for the individual, which is what you said for the family, for the kids.

Right.

Living in three countries during one year, how does this all work?

So there's a lot, a lot more work to be done and I think as individuals too, we also need to be informed.

So really thank you for this point for sure.

And I mean for you think about schooling, there's a company out that they're called Boundless Life and they have a network of essentially private schools sprinkled around the world where you can plug the kids into the school for three months at a time and then plug them into the next school for three months at a time and so on and so forth.

And every time you walk into the school, their curriculum is designed so that it's modular so the kids don't skip a beat and then the teachers are able to also move.

Whereas in most countries if you're a teacher, you are committed to that city for really your entire career because the moment you move, you lose your tenure.

But then it limits the number of people that are going to go into teaching as an occupation because maybe that's not the lifestyle that they, that they want.

So there are new emerging solutions for this type of a global lifestyle.

And I've been consolidating and building a marketplace that brings together all these different products and services to say here's the one stop shop for people who want to live this life so that they know that they are supported and they don't have to go reinvent the wheel every time.

And where will that information be hosted?

All the information, the marketplace you're building, where can folks find it?

Online.

Online I've been building out as a fun pet project, the Flexible class.

And so it's been growing and it's been really fun.

Beautiful, beautiful.

Thank you for sharing.

And I think I would check it out as well, if possible.

But then again, and I think as you just mentioned, those companies such as Boundless Life, you called it, right.

So they are innovating in terms of finding those kind of solutions.

So an innovation often means walking in unchartered waters.

How do you personally cultivate courage, resilience and adaptability when leading in spaces where there are no playbook?

There is no playbook.

I was actually thinking about this the, the other day where the thought, Ronnie, the thought that was running through my mind was so much of success.

That's, you know, outward success of a person is predicated on their internal state of mind, their mindset.

Their mindset.

Because to be successful means you have to do something different, you have to do something new.

And it's scary and it's not where we as humans naturally want to go and push ourselves because it's a lot easier to not push ourselves.

It's easier to stay in the comfort zone.

Right.

And so learning to overcome your own inner monologue that says you can't or you shouldn't or who are you to go do this?

And when you are getting some success and things are moving along, there's often this tendency of self sabotaging.

No, no.

Like this is moving too quickly, this is too good to be true, and so on and so forth.

And so it's this never ending internal battle, but mind over mind over everything.

That is true.

So your biggest advice here would be.

To change your mindset, learn to control that mind of yours.

That is you are again, Ileana speaking to me, but this is really, really good advice.

So for all our listeners out there, if you are trying to be successful or break into, you know, whatever it might be, just remember your mind is your greatest asset and that's where you need to start.

Yeah.

And I mean, maybe I'll give you a practical example of this.

I was having a conversation with someone on one of my teams who was struggling with focus and at one point she was wondering, oh, do I have ADD or ADHD and the rest.

And like, I don't want to presuppose one way or another, but you've made it this far in your life without that diagnosis.

So chances are it's probably not that.

But we live in an environment that is designed to steal our attention.

We have our phones that are beeping at us.

You have TikTok that's feeding you endless stimulation and that's not real Life.

Not every moment in your life is going to be glitz and glamour and epically fun.

There is actually work, work that needs to happen.

Or you sit yourself down in a room with no distractions and you're not going to get an instant reward from sending five emails or from putting together a strategic plan that no one is going to see.

But then you actually have to go execute against it for the next three months.

And so what I had recommended to her was, hey, maybe we consider doing more of a digital detox with you.

Can you delete your Instagram, delete your TikTok and go to a cold plunge?

Go to a sauna and a cold plunge, because that's your body's natural way of generating all the chemicals in your brain and in your body that make you feel really good.

And you can change your state, you can alter your brain states without a lot of external stimuli, but by forcing yourself to do something that's hard and, you know, sitting in a cold pool of ice cubes, that is not what humans want to do.

It's not easy.

But when you do it and you force yourself and you're there for two minutes and you come out, there's a different version of you that comes out of that cold plunge than the version of you that comes in.

And so I know there's a lot of talk in the biohacking communities and the tech bros where they're like, yeah, cold plunge.

But I don't think they actually talk enough about the psychological effect of those cold plunges.

It's not just about the physicality, it's about.

I think the most important part is how it makes you feel.

That is very true.

No, I think this is good.

And it's.

I think it's also the importance of pausing.

Right, as you said.

So digital detox.

I think I will do that.

I would take that advice.

Spending time with yourself and reflecting, removing all the outside noise.

So again, anybody listening and we're struggling with this or thinking about this, you heard Ileana, please try it out for yourself.

And I'm pretty sure you will see the reward as well.

But Ileana, you spend also a lot of time mentoring startups, you know, beside your team members, as you just shared, and future leaders like myself, because again, I'm learning a lot by listening to you today.

What qualities do you think will define the most successful leaders in the decade ahead?

I think the leaders that are really successful in the decade ahead will be able to hold a lot of simultaneous truths in mind at the same time.

So Right now we have three big tectonic shifts that are, that are happening.

The first is geopolitics as we know it is completely changing.

The world order as we know it is being rewritten.

And that's a hard realization to wrap your head around because we haven't lived through one of these shifts in our lifetime yet.

But when you zoom out and you look at history, empires are built, empires collapse, new empires are built, those empires collapse, and it continues over and over again.

But it's hard when you're in the middle of one of those transitions.

And right now, we are in the middle of one of those transitions.

So that's one trend.

The second trend is everything AI because it's rewiring everything as we know it.

It's unbundling and rewiring work.

It is where the biggest companies in the world are investing orders of magnitude more than what the US Navy spends in its budget per year.

Companies are building data centers that are the size of central Manhattan.

Countries are looking at AI as the tool of geopolitical stability and geopolitical dominance.

All of the VC money is predominantly flowing into AI as a category.

In the research report that I was involved in putting together for one of the venture capital funds that I advise, over 50% of all VC funding went into AI related spaces in the past year.

So understanding that AI is rewiring everything up and down is the second big pillar.

And the third big pillar is that humans have never been more overwhelmed than they are today.

Very true.

There was a research report that Accenture put out called Life Trends.

And one of the most jarring statistics in it is that a whopping 50% of people are reevaluating every aspect of their life.

50% of people.

Wow, that is massive.

That's a lot.

And you look at reports like Edelman, they publish their trust research every year.

Trust is at an all time low.

People no longer trust media, they no longer trust the non governmental organizations, they don't trust governments.

The highest rated entities for trust were private sector employers.

And across the world, across every region, we're seeing that reduction in trust.

With AI, we can no longer trust our eyes with what we see online half of the time.

Right.

Because it's become so easy to create AI generated content and images.

And trust is at the core foundation of everything in life.

So we have these three big things happening.

The geopolitical shifts, the AI shifts, the human overwhelm shifts, and all of them impact one another.

So the leaders of the future are going to be the leaders who can hold all of this complexity simultaneously and not get overwhelmed and drown in it, but figure out, okay, how do we cut through it and what is it that we want to be building so that we're building a future world that we actually want to live in.

Wow.

I think this is good.

This is very true as well.

As you were talking about, you know, trust, I was like, this isn't.

You are right.

Because it's like, it's not everything that you see online.

That is true.

And when you talk about 50 of the people reinventing their life, this is a lot.

This is a lot.

And I think I will encourage folks to actually review that study from Accenture.

Right.

And actually read about it and getting ourselves informed about all these life trends.

This is definitely food for thought.

And I think this is alarming as well.

It's alarming, but it's.

Change presents opportunities.

And there's never been a better time to completely redesign your life than it is today, because we just have so many possibilities available at our disposal that our predecessors did not.

And so if you take stock of who you are, what makes you tick, what makes you excited, what helps you to thrive, what's the environment in which you thrive, what is it that you like to go do, you can build a business far faster today than you ever could before.

The barriers of entry have never been lower.

You can decide to move somewhere else, you can decide to live across multiple countries because the barriers for that have never been less than they are.

It's an opportunity for us to express our unique individuality and lean in and build for it.

Yeah.

And then to really be grounded in the midst of it as well.

Right.

So as you're redefining yourself, it's not just following the trends, but thinking about what is best for you and being true to that self.

Right.

And I think in the midst of using the AI to build your businesses, etc.

Being true to yourself and being ethical as well.

Right.

I think that's how you can define, you know, define yourself and.

And be different from every.

Differentiate yourself as well from others.

So you're right.

You're right.

It's easier to build now more than ever.

So to everybody, never let a good crisis go to waste.

That is true too, even in the stock market.

So this is true.

Beautiful.

So I think as we're wrapping up, this is our very last question.

Ileana, time flew by so fast with you, but with so much happening on the professional side, how do you personally stay grounded and ensure you are thriving?

Not just achieving.

I Remind myself sometimes, and it's hard, that I am a human being, not a human doing.

Agreed.

And I'm actually working on a book right now that is going to help people do some introspection and figuring out what are some of their core personality preferences and what are the environments in which they thrive.

And so I've created this whole theory called the Potted Plant theory that plays on this idea that humans are kind of like plants.

You walk into a plant shop, you pick up a plant, and they all come with this little triangular insert that tells you how much water they need, how much soil, how much fertilizer, how much sunshine and humidity.

And we don't judge plants for having their needs.

We just accept it as it is and we support it as necessary.

You have your own care and maintenance instructions, I have mine.

The challenge is most people have no idea what's on their own care label.

And so they can't really take care of themselves or put themselves in the right environment and they can't really take care of others or have others take care of them.

And so I put together this whole framework and methodology in this ecosystem with the guidebook to help people do some of that exploration.

Because I do think it's really important that people look inwards and they need to look inwards in order to figure out how to design a life looking at all of the trends that are outside of them.

Beautiful.

This is actually amazing.

I think I would like to read that book.

So when is it coming out, Ileana?

By next fall.

By next fall.

Oh, wow.

And I'm assuming the title of the book will be the Potted Plant or do you have another Potted plant Theory?

The Potted Plant Theory.

I love it.

No, but what you just said is so true.

I think a lot of us do not know.

We do not know what is our care label, as you mentioned, we don't know what fills us, what you know, drains us, what do we need to thrive and where.

So I think this is a book everybody actually needs to purchase.

So please let us know when it's out and we will run to purchase it.

But I'm not sure.

Again, I said this was the last question, but I don't know if there is any final word.

Ileana, you would like to share before we say goodbye to our listeners.

The one thing I will say is that there is no longer a super predetermined path.

There is no societal conveyor belt of expectations.

Figure out who you are, figure out what you want and go design and build a life.

That makes sense for who you are.

That's it.

That is true.

That is true.

So on these words.

Eliana, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your wisdom and vision.

The way you bridge innovation and humanity is both refreshing and inspiring.

And I know our listeners are walking away with the new courage to lead boldly into the future and design a life of their own.

So we are grateful for your time and your voice.

To our listeners, remember that empowered humans empower humans.

So go out there, build boldly, and lead with love.

Until next time.

This is With Love, so there you have it.

We trust that you enjoyed this episode and are looking forward to the next month.

Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so you never miss an episode.

Until then, thank you for listening.

With love.