--- title: Five Ideas for Leading with AI from Gloria Steinem’s Living Room description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/five-ideas-for-leading-with-ai-from-gloria-steinem-s-living-room/ author: Jena McGregor article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-04-26T10:30:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-24T23:00:57.613Z article:section: Charter og:title: Five Ideas for Leading with AI from Gloria Steinem’s Living Room og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt969bf300194f3ff6/69ebf4db49bc9898c440d6a9/charter-steinem-nina-wurtzel.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- The information presented here is created by Charter, independently from the TIME editorial staff.  Time charter * [ai](/partner-content/charter/tag/ai/) ## ai # Five Ideas for Leading with AI from Gloria Steinem’s Living Room by [Jena McGregor](https://time.com/author/jena-mcgregor/) Editorial director and VP, content strategy, for Modern Executive Solutions Apr 26, 2026 10:30 AM UTC  Photo by Nina Wurtzel by [Jena McGregor](https://time.com/author/jena-mcgregor/) Editorial director and VP, content strategy, for Modern Executive Solutions Apr 26, 2026 10:30 AM UTC Many conversations about AI in 2026 sort themselves into two camps: breathless optimism or existential dread. The “talking circle” about AI and leadership that gathered in Gloria Steinem's Upper East Side living room last week was neither. The powerful women in the room—executives from major tech firms, startups, AI research, and more—kept returning to ideas that are more useful, and more human. The role of values, culture, and human skills in leading with AI. Why change management matters more than the technology being implemented. And why more women need to be involved in building AI. Co-hosted by Charter co-founder Erin Grau, Bloomberg Beta founding partner [Karin Klein](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karinklein/?skipRedirect=true) (both of whom are inaugural fellows of [Gloria’s Foundation](https://www.gloriasfoundation.org/), a nonprofit aimed at preserving Steinem’s Manhattan apartment), and Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, the conversation was just the [most recent gathering at Steinem’s home](https://www.charterworks.com/can-women-keep-pace-in-ai-without-embracing-hustle-culture/) focused on AI. It operated under Chatham House rules, allowing Charter to share the conversation’s content but not identify its speakers unless they gave their direct permission. Still, what emerged were sharp, transferable ideas for leadership in an age of AI. Here are five ideas that stayed with us. **Map where your people stand on AI—then move them** One executive in the room offered a taxonomy of people when it comes to AI. First, she said, there are senior people who are fully on board in theory with AI adoption but do not have many AI skills: “They’re like, ‘ChatGPT the whole business,’” she said. Then there’s the large middle group who are curious but skeptical because they've seen technology over-promise before and aren't yet seeing perfect results. Finally, she said, there’s the third, “coolest” group who walk into her office because they know their most repetitive tasks could be done by AI—or done better—and want someone to show them how so they can do more creative work. Educating more people to think that way at scale is the real job, she said. “My cocktail line to people now is, ‘My title is chief AI officer, but my subtitle is change management.’” **Make it safe—and social—to learn** [Joelle Pineau](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelle-pineau-371574141/?skipRedirect=true), chief AI officer at the enterprise AI company Cohere, offered three principles she's seen work repeatedly across organizations doing AI transformation. First, pick a concrete project that has a specific outcome, where you know what "great" looks like. Second, reduce the cost of failure, especially early on. People who've been doing their jobs the same way for years won't take risks if the penalty for getting it wrong feels high. Finally, set up peer-based learning, specifically pairing older and younger generations so they can learn from each others’ strengths. "The kind of team learning where it's a team exercise makes a huge difference," she said. **Get people to embrace discomfort** Building a process or governance structure around AI adoption and hoping people follow it doesn't work. What does, said one media executive, is going directly after the work itself. That means mapping what people actually do all day, identifying the moments in their workflows where AI can be useful, and understanding how those workflows intersect across roles. The catch is "that requires basically telling everyone that it's going to be super uncomfortable,” she said. “As long as you're implementing the tools with the right amount of responsibility and ethics involved, there's a way to get people to embrace that discomfort together.” **Embrace vulnerability and carve out non-negotiable time for your own learning** One tech executive said she protects 30 minutes every day for her own AI learning. She makes no exceptions. She gave her team two hours a week for learning, and recently cleared three full days for her whole team to try building their own AI projects themselves. When she doesn't understand something, she asks, "Can you teach me? Can you show me?" Then, she said, be vulnerable, making it clear when you mess up or don’t know what you’re doing. What really matters for leaders, she says, is the narrative. “Storytelling matters so much here.” **Remember what AI is for, not just what it can do** One AI researcher told the story of an executive who kept telling her he didn’t want to know all the things AI could do. “He told me, ‘The only thing that I would like you to do with AI’—this was 2018, before gen AI—‘is to let all my people go home two hours early,’” she said. “He was amazing.” The same researcher also ended the session by reminding everyone to think big. Organizations default to doing what they already do, slightly better and faster. “But unless they dream big, they'll go nowhere,” she said, underscoring that this is particularly important for women leaders. “We cannot be only fixing PowerPoint generation problems. We have to be thinking big.” --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/)  ### Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/) [Open article: Why Leaders Should Ignore Predictions About AI](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-leaders-should-ignore-predictions-about-ai/)  ### Why Leaders Should Ignore Predictions About AI [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-leaders-should-ignore-predictions-about-ai/) [Open article: What Jamie Dimon Thinks About Jobs, an AI Bubble, and How to Measure Schools](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-jamie-dimon-thinks-about-jobs-an-ai-bubble-and-how-to-measure-schools/)  ### What Jamie Dimon Thinks About Jobs, an AI Bubble, and How to Measure Schools [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-jamie-dimon-thinks-about-jobs-an-ai-bubble-and-how-to-measure-schools/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/five-ideas-for-leading-with-ai-from-gloria-steinem-s-living-room/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/five-ideas-for-leading-with-ai-from-gloria-steinem-s-living-room/"},"headline":"Five Ideas for Leading with AI from Gloria Steinem’s Living Room","datePublished":"2026-04-26T10:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-24T23:00:57.613Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/five-ideas-for-leading-with-ai-from-gloria-steinem-s-living-room/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt969bf300194f3ff6/69ebf4db49bc9898c440d6a9/charter-steinem-nina-wurtzel.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jena McGregor","jobTitle":"Editorial director and VP, content strategy, for Modern Executive Solutions","url":"https://time.com/author/jena-mcgregor/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt969bf300194f3ff6/69ebf4db49bc9898c440d6a9/charter-steinem-nina-wurtzel.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-steinem-nina-wurtzel.png","caption":"","creditText":"Photo by Nina Wurtzel","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/five-ideas-for-leading-with-ai-from-gloria-steinem-s-living-room/","name":"Five Ideas for Leading with AI from Gloria Steinem’s Living Room"}}]}] ```