CEO of Higher Education on the role of AI in developing the healthcare workforce
AI is rapidly changing the way companies and CEOs approach their businesses and the strategies that drive them forward. In the midst of this rapid transformation, Adtalem Global Education CEO Steve Beard said there is a “limit question” that he keeps coming back to.
“The question is: Is AI a complement to what you do or is it a replacement for what you do?” Beard said. “I think the answer to that question informs your strategy for how best to use the technology. We strongly believe it is complementary to what we do.”
The healthcare education provider is “currently experimenting with a whole range of use cases,” he said.
From AI tutors to help students learn, to automating enrollment tasks to make processes like transferring credits and finding financial aid run more smoothly, to piloting tools to help employees increase their productivity, Beard is interested in getting the company on board. At the same time, Beard is thinking about how AI is changing the healthcare landscape and how it can better prepare students for an industry that is also rapidly changing thanks to new tools.
Getting started with AI didn’t come without some challenges. Beard noted that the school’s teachers were initially hesitant to embrace the technology because they feared it would replace the things they did for students. He also shied away from pushing “AI for AI’s sake,” instead ensuring that the company “steps back and asks, ‘What is the business problem we’re trying to solve,’ and then let’s design the AI-powered solution to that problem, rather than throwing AI at everything and seeing what happens.”
“We want to make investments where the return is sustained over time, because an AI solution today will be significantly different to an AI solution in five years,” he said.
Beard has been focused on transformation since being appointed CEO of Adtalem just over four years ago, be it integrating key acquisitions, refocusing the company on healthcare education or finding key synergies to drive results across the company’s five institutions. He also gained a lot of insight along the way, which he now applies to the company’s AI approach.
“Everyone loves change as long as it’s for someone else,” he said. “Any large-scale change initiative is very difficult. In my experience, that journey really starts on an emotional level with your stakeholders and developing a vision for the future state of the company that is truly compelling to your community.”
But to ensure everyone is on board with the journey, Beard says he focused on what he calls a “middle-down approach.”
“We believe that most people look to their immediate manager to have that kind of emotional touchpoint about how they should think about what’s happening across the organization,” he said. “We really focus on the first two or three levels of management and convince them with our compelling vision for the future, but then also equip them with the tools to enable them to communicate that vision and strategy with confidence.”
“You can meet the CEO at a town hall or come to your site, but you’ll immediately turn to your direct manager and say, ‘What do we think about this?'” he said. “Putting them in a position to say, ‘Here’s why we’re all in this,’ I think is really the way to move an organization forward.”
As Adtalem continues its AI transformation journey, Beard said he will continue to focus on how these tools can increase student success, a common thread throughout the company’s moves.
“We are focusing our efforts on AI where we believe we have the highest opportunity for return. Even as investment in AI increases as part of our overall technology spending, these are the places we believe we will generate the most valuable economic return,” he said. “I can defend the increased expenses because of the expected higher return, both for us and for the student.”
Beard said he’s also discovering some AI use cases in his life, whether it’s helping with his son’s math homework or speeding up his own writing or using it as a brainstorming assistant when thinking about counterarguments to ideas.
“I just think it’s an incredible resource,” he said. “I haven’t done a regular search engine search in six or seven months and I don’t know if I’ll even use these tools again.”
