From the Arctic to AI… Change, Growth, Scaling, and Impact
Enterprise Adoption and Scaling
Work should be a place where people feel alive, connected, and capable of their best. Over my career, I’ve led design, innovation, and transformation efforts that launched award‑winning products, improved time‑to‑market, and scaled capability across global organizations.
Every growing organization faces a structural problem: the widening gap between stated values and lived experience. Previously, change spread through proximity—leaders modeled decisions, norms absorbed informally, and expectations seemed obvious. As organizations scale, that transmission breaks. Headcount grows. Process unwinds (or binds). Work speeds up. The language of culture stays the same; employees experience something very different. I call this the Culture Scaling Gap.
When change launches without corresponding adoption, organizations fall into predictable failure zones: execution risk, drift, and legacy lock. The work is not only to communicate change; the work is to engineer adoption—to embed it through governance, measurement, incentives, culture, and distributed ownership.
Artificial intelligence is the newest test of this principle. There is a lot of talk, some very fast contracts, and predictable chaos.
Since 2022, she’s immersed herself in AI, exploring generative tools to expand creativity, accelerate process, and reimagine how humans and technology collaborate. She uses Perplexity, Copilot, ChatGPT, and generative imagery tools (Firefly, Midjourney) to prepare workshops, synthesize research, shape narratives, and build learning materials, always with human judgment, ethics, and governance at the center.
Today, her ideal roles feature:
Designing and facilitating workshops and learning experiences that make AI practical, safe, and usable for non‑technical teams.
Building toolkits, playbooks, and communication that turn abstract AI strategies into day‑to‑day workflows.
Partnering with leaders to audit current ways of working, identify where AI genuinely adds value, and define adoption metrics that matter.
Helping organizations close the Culture Scaling Gap as they introduce AI—so new tools reinforce, rather than erode, their values.
Shel also serves on the Advisory Board of the Design Management Institute (dmi.org) and is a known public speaker, taking the stage at SXSW three times, Next Gen CX/Innovate CX, IXDA, JPL/NASA and multiple talks and workshops with DMI Global Leadership and New Voices conferences.
Outside of work Shel participates in sound healing, generative AI art, and daily meditation. She’s been accepted into the elite Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program offered with renowned mindfulness masters Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. She also holds a TESOL certificate from Arizona State University that reflects her love of language and adult learning. And she’s one of few people to complete a sail through The Northwest Passage before cruise ships were able to enter in 2012.
Writing & AI Images
Shel loves Substack and has a home for words about transitions and transformation, the in-between, AI and our relationship with it, the divine feminine, and anything else that helps people cope with this unprecedented era of change at all corners. REMARKABLENEWREALITIES.SUBSTACK.COM
