Within the ever-accelerating race of technological transformation, standing nonetheless is now not a impartial act—it’s a step backward. Few perceive this higher than Katrina Williams, Vice President of Gross sales for Built-in Tech and Coworker Functionality at CDW. In an period the place generative AI is reshaping the very material of labor, Williams gives in her interview with me a compelling blueprint for the way organizations can embed AI not solely into their operations, but additionally into their tradition, mindset, and future.
Early Adoption with Function
Williams doesn’t simply discuss AI—she lives it. From the earliest days of generative AI’s rise, she’s leaned in as each a technophile and a strategic chief, utilizing AI to immediate new concepts, generate different views, and unlock efficiencies. “There’s actual energy,” she explains, “in utilizing AI to scale back friction in standardized work, liberating folks as much as give attention to what the human mind does greatest.” That considering underscores her group’s mantra: get the precise useful resource on the precise work—and that useful resource isn’t all the time human.
Her journey started with easy use circumstances, like creating job aids and drafting first-pass content material. However in the present day, Williams is experimenting with utilizing generative AI as a coach—coaching it on examples of excellence after which utilizing it to supply speedy, standardized suggestions to group members. It’s a part of her broader mission to raise efficiency by considerate tech adoption.
Addressing Worry with Empowerment
As promising as generative AI is, skepticism stays. Williams acknowledges that worker considerations—particularly about job displacement—are actual and evolving. Her strategy? Lean into these worries with empathy and schooling. “AI isn’t about changing jobs,” she says. “It’s about evolving them.”
By serving to coworkers think about a future the place the mundane components of their work are automated, she invitations them to assume greater: What new worth might they ship? What improvements might they lead? However she additionally points a warning: “It’s not that AI will take your job—however in the event you don’t discover ways to use AI, another person will, and you could get left behind.” That candor has change into a rallying cry for CDW’s AI efforts.
Guardrails Over Gatekeeping
CDW’s management knew that to foster protected and sustainable adoption of generative AI, they needed to construct belief. That meant setting up safe, inner AI environments from the bottom up—methods able to querying proprietary databases and intranets whereas safeguarding buyer, coworker, and IP knowledge. This foundational step allowed Williams and her group to push innovation ahead with out compromising safety.
However coverage alone wasn’t sufficient. Fairly than over-regulate, CDW targeted on creating moral AI tips and providing function-specific playbooks. Whether or not it’s AI-generated interview prompts or client-facing paperwork, each use case is reviewed by a lens of privateness, permission, and safety. The aim is to not hinder experimentation, however to information it—making AI accessible, protected, and mission-aligned.
A Tradition of Steady Studying
Training is Williams’ true ardour, and it exhibits in CDW’s strategy to AI capability-building. The corporate’s soon-to-launch “AI Academy” displays a blended studying mannequin: exterior experience, internally curated content material, and hands-on challenges.
One signature initiative is the “25-Day AI Problem,” which pairs every day microlearning with real-world utility. Coworkers are requested to strive a brand new AI device or course of every day, replicate on its worth, and contemplate the way it might enhance their work. “It’s about making AI approachable,” Williams says. “Studying in bite-sized methods which might be sensible, repeatable, and rewarding.”
The problem underscores a key perception: studying should be embedded into the stream of labor, not bolted on. And it must not ever cease. “In case you assume your AI studying is completed,” she warns, “you’re already behind.”
Guiding Shoppers By Complexity
CDW doesn’t simply undertake generative AI internally—it permits its shoppers to do the identical. Williams describes a twin position: half resolution supplier, half strategic accomplice. For shoppers, turning into AI-ready isn’t nearly putting in new instruments—it’s about modernizing infrastructure, reimagining workflows, and addressing structural and psychological obstacles.
CDW’s consulting arm performs an important position on this transformation. By assessing every group’s distinctive setting, the group helps shoppers construct a full lifecycle AI technique—from device-level readiness to long-term governance frameworks. However simply as necessary is the cultural shift. “We don’t simply promote options,” Williams emphasizes. “We share our personal journey. We present them how we’re doing it, what we’re studying, the place we’ve stumbled. It’s about being in it collectively.”
This spirit of reciprocity is essential in an area shifting as shortly as AI. From CISOs to CTOs to gross sales leaders, CDW fosters open dialogue between inner specialists and consumer groups. By breaking down silos and normalizing experimentation, they create belief—and progress.
Staying on the Edge With out Falling Off
For Williams, the most important threat isn’t utilizing AI—it’s failing to maintain up with it. “The tech is altering so quick,” she says, “that simply if you assume you’ve figured it out, it’s already moved on.” Her technique is to embrace that volatility by relentless studying, curiosity, and collaboration.
Which means staying deeply engaged with thought leaders, vendor companions, and trade friends. It means revisiting roadmaps quarterly—not yearly. And above all, it means by no means assuming the work is finished. “If we do that proper,” she says, “it’s by no means executed. The second you assume you realize all of it, you’ve already fallen behind.”
At CDW, generative AI isn’t only a device or a pattern—it’s a mindset. It’s an invite to rethink what’s doable, to exchange worry with alternative, and to construct a tradition the place studying is as fixed as change. In Williams’ world, the long run belongs to not essentially the most technical, however to essentially the most curious.
And in that future, those that cease studying will discover themselves watching from the sidelines—whereas those that hold evolving, lead.
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