Saima Malik, a transformation executive with over 25 years of experience, is a prominent advocate for women in technology, currently leading TD's Enterprise Automation Center of Excellence. Her advocacy emphasizes the creation of communities within organizations to foster peer learning and share best practices, rather than solely relying on leadership to drive change. Saima champions a human-centered and value-driven approach to technology innovation, particularly in the integration of AI and automation, ensuring that people remain at the core of decision-making processes. Through initiatives like TD's Women in Leadership pillar and the Move the Dial TD partnership, she has been instrumental in advancing the representation and impact of women in the tech industry, encouraging them to break barriers and contribute significantly to emerging fields.

Takeaways:

1. Saima Malik emphasizes the importance of a human-centered approach in integrating AI and automation with workforce dynamics.
2. Leaders must cultivate an adaptability mindset to effectively navigate the evolving landscape of technology and AI adoption.
3. Collaboration and community engagement are essential for driving innovation and sharing best practices among colleagues in the tech field.
4. The integration of AI necessitates a careful balance to preserve trust and human connection in business relationships.
5. Founders should critically assess their operational workflows and seek innovative solutions that optimize their processes and resource allocation.

Find them online:

Feyisayo Enuiyin: linkedin.com/in/feyisayoenuiyin

Saima Malik: linkedin.com/in/saimamalik

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.

Well, hello, hello, hello everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of witlove podcast where we spotlight women in technology.

We're breaking barriers and creating powerful ripples of change.

My name is Faisha, but if you're listening, you can call me Faye.

Or better yet, you can always call me Fabulous.

I'm an engineering graduate from McMaster University, passionate about technology, community and leadership.

With me today, I have a woman who embodies all that and even more.

Please help me welcome Saima Malik.

Thank you.

I'm so excited to be here today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

You know, Simon Malik is a transformation executive with over 25 years of experience leading digital and technology innovation at one of North America's largest banks, where she heads TD's Enterprise Automation center of Excellence.

Driving large scale process transformation and orchestrating the future of work through the integration of AI, automation and human talent.

A passionate advocate for women in tech, she previously led TD's Women in Leadership pillar and founded Move the Dial TD partnership to advance women's representation in technology.

And now she supports women founders as they scale and innovate at the forefront of the agentic revolution.

Saima champions a human centered, value driven approach to designing how people and intelligence systems collaborate.

Wow.

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not surprised, but it's at the same time it's always like wow, it's just amazing to see all the cool things that, you know, people like yourself, individuals like yourselves are doing in the space of technology and with the, you know, advancement of artificial intelligence.

But before I even go into that, I like to have warm up questions to ask.

I love it.

Single host.

And this one is gonna, I'm trying to find, think of one that's like not so techy but actually maybe I should give it.

No, no, no, no.

You know, I'm gonna give you one before we check you out.

It's always okay, but I mean, making me nervous but okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

I'm gonna go right now.

Yes.

What is one thing that is like energizing you the most?

The thing that makes you just want to like jump out of bed every morning and it cannot be anything like tech related.

Just like if I'm trying to get to know you, what is the one thing you can tell me that's like every morning I wake up and this just like gets me super excited.

Okay, so now you said it's, it's, it can't be tech related.

I'm going to tell you I am in create mode and you know, after working for so long and you know, so much experience and wisdom with all these sort of technology solutions and just experiences also seeing what are some of the challenges and problems in the world today, the area that gets me up every single day, something is I love to help people.

I specifically love to help women.

And so one of the things I have been doing is helping female founders in the non for profit space really think about how do they scale and grow their community organizations.

And so one of the things that gets me out jumping out of the bed and usually one of my favorite meetings that typically happens is these meetings with these very passionate women who are mission driven of helping women in various different areas around from a social impact standpoint and helping them understand how to unlock the power of technology and how to help them grow and how to do things better, faster, quicker with technology so they can actually do more of their mission purpose work with those women who need their help.

So that's actually something that for me is quite close to my heart and wherever I can find time during the day to do that, that gets me out of bed.

And along with that the other thing is a great, you know, yoga class, a great weight training session.

I, I love, you know, being at the gym.

So I just feel great every time.

I go okay, okay, I love that, I love that it seems helping, you know, people, particularly helping women and also fitness.

Those are the two things that you know, it gets you up in the morning.

I love to see that.

But another thing I would say is I'm not even surprised by that response just because so fun fact for the audience.

I got to me and your Simon speak at Dry Text Dubai and I think, I believe you're one of the first presenters of the, of the session actually you were one of the first presenters and one of the things you talked about was building, I believe the title of the presentation was Building the next generation of Companies.

And in that presentation I remember one of the things that really just caught my attention was one the passion that you had and the amounts of knowledge you had and really just sharing your know, how companies, especially women founded companies get elevate and grow in this agentic intelligence future that we are in right now.

And so I'm actually going to go from there and just jump right into the questions that.

Sure.

That we have for today.

Love it.

But no, before we go into that, actually let the audience know a bit of your.

The work.

A bit of the work that you're doing.

Last year was, I think last year was a wake up call in the world of technology when it came to our enterprise technologies are adopting artificial intelligence.

But with you and the work that you're doing, what are some of the changes that you're seeing from last year, the changes that you foresee for this year?

And yeah, just bring us in.

Bring us in on your.

In your.

I love it.

Yeah, for sure.

I have always been at the intersection of translation for a business or an enterprise and emerging tech.

I've always loved emerging tech and I've always sort of shouted from the rooftops for the business or my stakeholders say there's this cool technology.

You got to see what it is.

Whether it was digital technology.

Think about, you know, I was around when it was a first generation web and new capabilities that came out on those digital channels and what they call digital transformation.

I was shouting from the rooftops.

The difference of what has happened now is back then we were really championing and sharing what all these amazing technologies could do, especially within the digital channels.

So on the web and then as it transitioned into mobile and our business partners were excited about it, but they really tried to fit it into their strategy.

It was like a secondary part of their strategy.

But what you'll see now, it is a core part of a business's strategy.

They have to think about how they're going to leverage this new technology called AI and agentic and automation to really drive and achieve their aspirations and goals.

And that's actually something very different.

We are no longer just champions, we are side by side with our business partners talking about how to actually achieve those business goals.

And that's something very, very different.

I'm still in that translation role.

I'm still talking about the intersection now it's the intersection of agentic and how do you redesign your business, your operations, your operating model, leveraging all these new capabilities like AI agents, like automation.

And so that's actually the, the one of the most interesting spaces I've Been another thing that's changed is the pace.

You know, I have not remembered a time where the pace of change has been so fast to, you know, for example, our strategic leaders needing things like points of view, which is to a strategy and then to executing that timeline has shortened so quickly and the expectations are very, very high in really executing and delivering on real outcomes.

What's exciting about it now is the technology exists to move at that speed.

And what's actually holding us back is our own complexity as humans.

Really understanding, context, grounding, all those things are really important, but in actually the ability to deliver something, that's what's taking the time as humans, connecting the dots, making sure it makes sense, testing things in the right places, putting investments in the right place and actually seeing value.

So I still, luckily I still have a job because my job is all about translation and architecting that gap between technology, robots, agents and humans.

Okay, so speaking of the pace and speaking of the complexities, you know, around this new change, you know, it's interesting for me to actually hear you say that you're seeing things going at like a faster pace, but do you feel like there might still be a bit of fear in terms of how people are adopting, even at an enterprise level, how they're adopting this new technology?

Because I, I want to make the assumption that, you know, some leaders are actually more afraid than they're willing to admit.

And some people are, like you said, like, some people are scared that they might lose their job.

And so I, I would assume that people are more like companies are more afraid to actually adopt it because the radical shift it's going to have, I don't think, I don't think we're ready for that.

I don't think society's ready for that.

I think a lot of companies are ready for that.

And so, yeah, I found that interesting for you to actually say that the pace is, it's going a lot faster than, you know, you would, you would compare it to previous years.

I think what's happening now is there's less of this fear with people who are leading from the front.

They're really learning as quickly as they can.

They're taking those classes around understanding what AI is, what the capabilities are, and they are trying to absorb and learn as quickly as they can.

And actually that is one of the most relevant and important skills that you can have, which is to learn and understand quickly.

Again, one of the things, if I think about, you know, years ago, that information is so accessible now in, on the web through various Channels around learning quickly.

So that's something very, very important.

And that's one of the things I'm seeing with senior business leaders.

Very quickly learning and understanding what these capabilities and the technologies like AI can do.

Where it's taking longer and it makes sense is when you actually put it into implementation, into, you know, you're going past pilots.

That's where you're really saying, how does the technology and the humans work together?

What are the bumps along the road as you put those things and pilots into solution and that testing component?

That takes a very long time because it takes time to get the solution right.

And that is the opportunity for you to kind of bring your team along with you to learn and absorb.

But what we call change management, people learning and understanding these technologies, that is another big part of that translation and actually sharing everybody about how is it going to help them, how is it going to make their job easier?

They actually get to do higher value work, more strategic work.

So I think those are some things to consider.

It is the fear won't go away, but you still, you just need to have more exposure, you need to ask more questions, you need to learn.

And that adaptability mindset is also critical as you move into the future.

So those are two things I'd say that are really, really important.

Learn as quickly as you can, be adaptable as quickly as you can, and continue to ask questions.

That's like really critical because no one has really landed the technology yet.

It's still got this period of time where we're still trying to figure out how it's going to work, where it fits.

And asking questions is so important.

And as humans and as people who are doing the work, we have an incredible amount to offer and bring to the table as part of the solution and closing that gap.

Okay, No, I love hearing you hear that because again, I do think a lot of it has to be learning quickly.

Like you said, no one has nailed it yet.

And so I find that in today's world you have so many leaders that are interested in learning, like learning about AI and how it can be implemented and how it can make them even better leaders.

I don't know if you heard of Emma Greed.

She's the.

Yes, I know exactly who she is.

Yeah.

Yes.

And she was recently talking, I believe, with Harley Fickleston from Shopify.

Please, God forgive me if I mention his name, but I believe they were having a conversation that even in E commerce, for example, and how her as a, as a founder, as a leader within the organization, how she's able to leverage artificial intelligence and just to streamline certain processes, create certain systems to not only help her be a better leader, but at the same time also help her team.

And that leads me to, you know, my other question is what are, what are some of the.

For the leaders who are listening to this and are thinking, okay, I need to be adaptable, I need to learn.

And they're thinking of ways that they can bring, you know, you know, some, they can bring in some tools, they can bring in some practicality.

Until what you're saying, like if I wanted to take what you're saying and to ask from this moment, apply it to my team, what are some of the practical ways or tools or resources that you would suggest for leaders to tap into to help them, to help them do that?

So one of the things as a leader is you not you cannot take the lift of changing things on yourself.

It takes a community.

And so one of the things we've done at my organization is built a community of interest.

And the purpose of that community interest is for collectively our colleagues to learn and share these best practices, to learn and share at everything they're learning on, on a day to day basis.

So one thing we've done is actually built this community to share prompts.

So how are they using prompts to do process engineering?

How are you using, what prompt did you create?

And we've created a library so that we can actually share collectively what we're doing and collectively when you can learn faster, the other, the other piece.

And this helps build that sort of curiosity.

Mindset is we do a lot of showcases and best practices with our colleagues to share where this technology is being deployed, how, what have we learned for it.

And then the people who are doing the showcases, our best practices, are actually our own colleagues.

So, you know, it's colleagues learning from colleagues.

And actually that's helping to drive that change rather than from the top as a leader, because talking from the top as a leader, it doesn't, it won't drive that, it'll drive some inspiration.

But the actual, you know, trying things, learning things from your peers is what is actually going to help persuade people and get people engaged to try these new technologies.

Yeah, I like that.

So it's like the proverb, it takes a, it takes a village.

And so I love the idea of having you call it a community of interest.

So everyone's almost like a forum, for lack of better words.

I joined some of those on like Reddit, where I'm always getting like, try this Prompt out, you know, put this into ChatGPT and see what the outcome is.

And so I love that.

I, I really do love that approach actually, because I think it's, it speaks to one, just the aspect of teamwork.

I think it also speaks to the aspect of what usually takes in a corporate organization for change to happen.

It doesn't start, like you said, it doesn't start from the top.

It really starts from our colleagues.

It starts from, you know, our neighbors, for lack of better words.

Yeah.

Like one other component is that we embed it right into our day to day flow.

So we treat that AI worker, an assistant, whether it's helping us build our presentations, do some market research, while we're doing our team meetings, we're sharing screens and, and literally in real time building with our AI coworker what we need to get done.

So it's really starting to embed it into the flow of work.

Especially on the strategic planning side, when we think about executing processes and automating processes.

I can talk about that a little more later.

That's a little bit different.

But the future, if you say, what does the future look like?

The future looks like things like digital workers, AI assistants, humans, end to end automated workflows, all being orchestrated and supervised by humans and colleagues.

And so it's going to be very different.

You're going to be a team of team leads, a team of, and the team of teams is not just humans.

It's orchestrating all these components together seamlessly.

You know, in all this orchestration, I would feel like there might be some operational chaos.

Right.

Like what are, what are some of those risks that leaders should be looking out for?

Because I think, I feel like with AI, you know, you often find when you speak to people about it, they're the ones that are super pro, like this is amazing.

It's going to change the world, which they are.

Right.

And then you have the people who are like, I'm a bit scared of them, a bit scared of it, whatever the case might be.

I find that there's a middle ground.

You know, I like the middle ground where it's like we're very aware of the greatness of which, you know, AI is and what it can really do to bring change into our, you know, our day to day workflows, like you said.

But there must be some risk around it.

And I call it, this is what I call the operational chaos side of it.

What does that look like from your experience?

And how can leaders mitigate, mitigate that when it comes to How AI is coming in as a coworker and being integrated into, you know, certain workflows.

So you know, in regulatory environments there's a lot of oversight and governance around things when you put these technologies in place.

And so we really rely on that oversight and governance.

You know, one example would be control checks.

And so once something is created or an output is created, there is some oversight provided on top of that to double.

It's like a double check that what it was supposed to produce, which is maybe it's supposed to produce six pieces of data.

It produced the six pieces of data and it's a double check.

The thing about automation and these automated processes, that level of accuracy will probably be the highest it's ever existed.

Because typically the control check was done by a human and now it's doing, being done by a robot or a digital worker or an agent that has very specific instructions what to look for.

And if it doesn't meet that criteria, it's going to kick it out and say, no, I need a human to look at this.

So, so I think there's a balance to take into consideration.

I can't speak to AI models and governance around AI models.

I think one of the things to consider is that there are a multitude of solutions out there.

As in an enterprise, there's a lot of different criteria that needs to be taken in consideration.

When you look at different solutions and ensure that they are enterprise grade, they've got the right level of governance and there's many, many solutions out there for enterprise regulatory environments.

I think it's a little bit different when you think about small and medium sized businesses.

That is where the onus is more on that owner or the small video small business team to manage some of that governance control or to design it.

And so we've talked a little about this.

The intelligent blueprint design it as part of their frameworks and their controls.

But one of the most important things as you move forward in any process, and we talked about this a little bit, is you got to document your process in the first place.

And that's a critical first step.

So in understanding where your risk is, you really need to understand what your process looks like today and where are there places that there is risk and then when you automate it and solve for it, how do you solve for those components and how do you double check or put a control in to make sure that you manage that risk.

So that's some of the ways you can think about it.

Okay, I like that.

I think, I feel like those are practical.

Those are grounding practical ways in which, yeah, I think team leads, organizations can really start to start to think about.

Yeah.

How to definitely.

How to mitigate.

Mitigate the risk of it all.

But one of the things I've actually wanted to, you know, ask you, I didn't get, I didn't get a chance in Dubai, but now I got.

Yes, you got me.

You got all of me.

And, and this is not so much for the, what do you call it, the corporate organizations.

But you mentioned earlier supporting founders at the, at the early stage.

What can they be doing right now?

I think a lot of times when founders go, especially when you just talk to a lot of early stage founders, you know, start out their company, it's like, oh, I have this idea and I want to start, grade it out and maybe they find a bit of product validation in what they're building and it's time for them to start, you know, either thinking of scaling it out, either thinking of maybe new markets they can break into.

So for those founders, what would you actually say to them?

You know, they're still early enough that they can change things from the root, they can change things, you know, all the way from the foundation right now in a way and start doing things for the future.

So what are some practical, you know, ideas that you would give to those founders and how they can start operating through today at an early stage company?

Yeah, I love your question.

And obviously being an engineer, you're like, you've got that builder mindset, right?

So it's a really simple question.

And the question I would ask them would be, is there a different way to do this?

It's that simple.

Is there a different way to do this without hiring somebody to do this work, do you really need that level of human intelligence?

And so what it requires is you as a founder is to really stare down what are you looking to build.

And I'll probably give you one example in particular.

Customer support is actually really great.

You know, all of a sudden they've got a product out there and they need some customer support.

Well, what kind of support do you need?

You know, what kind of questions are you going to be getting?

Could you build an AI agent who's going to look at all your technical specs, look at all your documents and help answer 80% of those questions for you.

And then that 20%, that is highly complex, difficult, maybe it needs, really needs your attention or your product person's attention.

You can get that person to work on it.

It's a much lower cost, it's scalable, it can grow because as the knowledge of the agent grows you can actually iterate it and build on it.

And it's something that if you are going to hire somebody, you want to put them in the right place and that's more about connection.

So if from a customer support standpoint that person that you hire could actually spend time talking to your customers and finding out what the next best product feature is, spend time on those more high value customers.

So that's something that, that's, it's like a very simple, simple question, you know, do you know, is there a different way to do that and then finding out what they're actually hiring for and seeing if they can design for that?

Yeah, as you're even saying it, I'm like thinking to myself like, yeah, like you know, it's every, every task I think take an audit of like your day to day, you know, task workflow and think to yourself as a founder, is there a faster way?

Is there a better way?

Is there a more optimized way of having this done?

So I really, I love the simplicity of that because I again it's very grounding and very, very practical to, to the, to the role of being a founder itself.

One of my last questions I have for you because we're coming up on time is, you know, we just talked right now about you know, 80% of it.

You know, build the AI agent for that can do the job and then have that 20% be, you know, an external person that comes in and actually does the job at a lower time, doesn't take as much time so therefore the cost is cheaper.

X, Y, Z.

But you know, that speaks to saying that not everything can be done by AI.

And I think we know that.

And yeah, I have, I have a big thesis for the future that the, the work that matters most that's going to be more prominent is the work that has to do with more human relation.

Yes, you can just automate away because use a perfect example now about even product discovery, you know, having someone talk to the customers, you know, ask the questions.

Maybe later on you can take all their input and put it into AI and, and let it, you know, Pick out certain points for you and really refine those notes.

But that human relation aspect.

So one of the last questions I have for you today is what is something AI should never replace?

It should never replace human connection.

You already nailed it.

It should never replace human connection.

And what I mean by that is, you know, one of the pieces is that right now I think everybody inherently knows when something is AI.

It doesn't feel authentic, it doesn't feel human.

We know when a post, there's now a lot of content being written out there about posts that are too AI.

You know, when a post is written by using a chat GPT, we're still having a little bit of trouble figuring out some of the AI video stuff.

That's becoming a little tougher.

But I think some of us who are a little more experts can kind of tell the difference.

And so I think that's something you never want to you, you never want to AI because you, you actually lose something in the connection.

So what you lose is trust and so many things.

Relationships are built on trust.

Businesses are built on trust.

Relationships are built on trust.

And so AI is a fantastic enabler, but it can disable the trust and that's the risk that you're constantly taking when you use too much AI.

So I'd really, really think about how and where you leverage AI and where your connection with your customers are if you're a founder.

And where is that friction that is at that balance that you're going to lose trust with your customers.

And it's a very fine balance.

And the other piece is that if the experience and the brand does not lift live to the trust that you built in a, in a, you know, in a very well established business, you'll lose the trust and you'll lose customers.

But if you're a new company and you've elevated that experience and you create a way to have an amazing level of trust with your customers and still leverage AI, you've actually cracked the code.

And I just think that's the space we're in right now.

I think everybody's still trying to figure out how to leverage that AI in a way that's going to build trust and relationships.

But I think right now that is one of the challenges that many businesses are facing where to put their people that is going to actually get them the most value for their business in building those relationships.

That's a fabulous response.

Again, you're so good.

I just want to have you for many, many more hours.

Thank you.

Love it.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Fabulously said.

And so simple to understand and just process.

Oh, that's amazing.

To end it off now in a fun note.

Yes.

What is one thing, just one thing that a business habit, particularly that you just want AI to completely make disappear.

Something you just know AI needs to come in, like do this.

I never want to do this again.

I never want to see this again, be this again.

What is that one thing for you in business?

In business?

Oh, gosh, that's a really great question.

Oh, I probably.

Expenses.

I absolutely hate them.

I hate doing my expenses.

So if I could buy expenses and it just magically gets done from all the Visa, you know, I use that, I would love that.

That's probably one of them.

And I think the last one is, you know, there's a multitude of things to do.

The lists for me are on my phone, on my notebook, in my laptop.

And, you know, I'm still trying to figure out a way to leverage AI to help me get even better organized to be more productive.

So that's one thing I'm still trying to figure out.

It's just the list everywhere.

And there is, there is a way to do it.

I just haven't had a time to check it out and practice it.

But that is something that would, would really make a difference in my life.

There's just so many lists.

I've got, you know, the family list, the light business list, have fun list to create, you know, your business list.

There are all these things.

So I get it.

Like, it's like your notes app on your ph and there's like, for me at least it's like 500 plus and it's.

Some are just like two sentences, some are like 100.

It really is just everywhere.

No, I get it.

And I have faith that there's a startup working, developing, building somewhere out there in the world that can come and resolve.

Resolve all of this for us.

Exactly, exactly.

I love it that that is going to happen for sure.

Amen to that.

Amen to that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Simon.

I mean, this has been such an inspiring and really thought provoking conversation.

I know.

I've definitely taken up.

I don't know if you saw me, I was like taking notes as you were speaking.

I love it.

I just love how, you know, you don't just talk about the, you know, the future of work, but it's how you're actively involved in it in a way that still keeps people at the center of it all.

Like people are still at the center of innovation.

Even, you know, some of the, the, the processes when you mentioned the center of information that you have at TD and everyone coming together and building that like repository of just here's different prompts we can use and just the way the advice that you had for women founders and building and how they should really think about, hey, is there a better way to do this?

I feel like it's just keeping that humanity at the center of it all.

And I think that that's just amazing.

So thank you for sharing that.

Thank you for sharing your journey, your insights and thank you for sharing your heart with us today.

I mean, to everyone listening, I hope you really enjoy this conversation as much as I did and we look forward to to see New York.

Look forward to you.

You're in our next episode.

Please make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.

We love to hear from you.

So please review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.

And as always, bye for now.

I'll see you soon.

Thank you very much everyone.

So there you have it.

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