#28 Saniya Vardak x Girls Who Prompt: The Episode Where an AI Avatar Joined the Show

#32 Marko Rillo x Girls Who Prompt: You Can't Send AI to the Gym for You

Marko Rillo opens every MBA strategy course the same way: he asks four AI models to write a full company strategy, live, in 10 minutes. Then he tells his students the course is over. It never is. In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Marko Rillo — strategist, Head of the MBA Programme at Estonian Business School, LEGO Serious Play facilitator, and co-founder of EdTech app Helge — who, after a doctorate from St. Gallen and a consulting career across 17 countries, went back to university to do a bachelor's in software development. Just to understand what's actually under the hood. This episode is less about AI tools and more about self-regulation — knowing which work you delegate, and which work is the thinking you can't afford to hand over. In this episode we discuss: * The classroom experiment: four AI models, one volunteer, a complete strategy in 10 minutes — and why that's where the real course begins, not ends * "Learning software development is learning thinking" — Marko's gym logic for what you should never delegate to AI * The moving bottleneck: ideas are free now, execution wins — and human attention is next in line (hello, consumerism 3.0) * Organizations turning into "post boxes": bosses sending 20 AI-generated pages, employees replying with AI, productivity quietly dying in between * The real price of the AI party — burning investor money, plan B with local models, and why Karen Hao's Empire of AI is on Marko's reading list * Why LEGO Serious Play is the exact opposite of AI: 100% presence, no multitasking, nowhere to hide PS: You'll also hear the moment Marko almost asked AI to run a race for him — and which AI tool is actually his daily go-to (hint: it's not ChatGPT) 😉 Meet the guest: • Marko Rillo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/markorillo/] — Senior Lecturer & Head of MBA, Estonian Business School [https://www.ebs.ee/en/contacts/marko-rillo] · Co-Founder, Helge [https://helge.app/] Meet the hosts: • Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. • Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and experimenter wondering what happens when AI stops being just a tool and starts acting like a companion. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] — audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com [girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com] 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08]

#31 Kalev Kaarna x Girls Who Prompt: Why Being Late to AI Might Be the Smartest Move

What if the smartest AI strategy right now is simply to wait? In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Kalev Kaarna - scientist, entrepreneur, sales detective, and one of Estonia's most curious minds on the frontier of quantum computing - to talk about why he's deliberately slow on AI, what qubits actually are, and why trust might be the most valuable thing the digital age is quietly burning through. This episode is less about quantum computing and more about how a deeply contrarian, book-quoting optimist navigates a world that moves faster than trust can be rebuilt. In this episode we discuss: * The "second mover advantage" — Kalev's case for why rushing to adopt every AI tool is just procrastination in disguise * Quantum computing from zero: qubits, superposition, and why it won't replace your laptop (but will change everything else) * How AI is eroding societal trust at speed — and why Kalev thinks that's the real crisis nobody's talking about loudly enough * Failing "successfully" — two failed startups, one very specific lesson, and why he still leads with the failure part * Luck vs. fortune: the Tina Selig book he just finished, the ship metaphor that stuck, and why luck doesn't sail solo * What happens when a living library meets Claude — Kalev's very practical, very unhurried AI setup PS: You'll also hear Kalev explain quantum computing so clearly that even Ave understood it. 😉 Meet the guest: * Kalev Kaarna [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalevkaarna/] — Sales Detective & Head of R&D Sales at MetroCert [https://www.metrosert.ee/], Investigator at CDL Estonia Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and experimenter wondering what happens when AI stops being just a tool and starts acting like a companion. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] — audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08]

#30 Ave & Karin: Is the AI Economy Actually Stacked Against You?

The market is up. AI is everywhere. And everyone's either panicking or trying to sell you something. What if the smarter move is just... to step back? No guest this week — just Ave and Karin, back in the online studio, sitting down to compare notes on AI fatigue, investment strategy, the casino economy, China's robot taxis, and why your LinkedIn feed is probably 70% AI-generated noise. This episode is less about AI hype and more about staying sane — and solvent — while the world rewires itself around us. In this episode we discuss: * Why sustainable investing quietly outperformed the hype cycle (clean energy +40% YTD — and almost nobody's talking about it) * The "casino economy" — why Gen Z is betting on sports instead of building wealth, and what Karin would tell her own kids * Will AI actually kill jobs? Karin makes the historical case for calm; Ave is... conflicted * The loneliness problem nobody wants to talk about — and why it might be a bigger threat than unemployment * ChatGPT just launched ads. Ave is not thrilled. Karin would have priced tokens instead. * China has 33,000 autonomous vehicles on the road. Europe has thoughts. And as always — Ave set up Claude Code. Lovable loyalists, consider yourselves warned. 😄 Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/],  marketer and experimenter wondering what happens when AI stops being just a tool and starts acting like a companion. Meet the team:  🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] - audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com [girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com] 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08].

#29 Melanie Nethercott x Girls Who Prompt: Your Mind Is a Muscle - Don't Let AI Do All the Reps

AI is the most powerful learning tool we've ever had. It's also the fastest way to quietly stop thinking. The question is — are we choosing? In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Melanie Nethercott, Director of Education Programs EMEA at STACK Infrastructure, where she leads STACK Academy — an 18-month workforce development programme closing the skills gap in the data center industry across Italy, Norway, and Switzerland. Before that, she spent years building learning programs at Amazon Web Services across Ireland and Europe. Her career has been one long answer to a single question: who gets left out of the future of work — and what do we do about it? This episode is less about which AI tool to use and more about the deeper thing underneath: what happens to our minds, our jobs, and our education systems when the machines learn faster than the institutions designed to teach us. In this episode we discuss: * How learning program design has changed: the feedback loop between market needs and curriculum used to be 1–3 years; now it's months — and shrinking * Why universities are structurally broken for the AI era — and what micro-credentials, tacit knowledge, and "just-in-time learning" can do that degrees can't * The cognitive offloading problem: Mel's honest confession about asking LLMs for the answer instead of thinking — and why she's scared her mind is "getting flabby" * The IQ score research: declining since smartphones, not just AI — and what that means for how we raise and educate the next generation * How empathetic leadership becomes the most important AI skill — because psychological safety is the thing that determines whether your team actually adopts the tools * The narrative critique: who benefits from the "AI will replace you if you don't move fast" story — and why a little cynicism is healthy * The 1% / 20% / rest of us framework for AI adoption: why most of us don't need to be on the bleeding edge, and that's actually fine * Sam Altman's "intelligence as a utility" claim — and why Mel thinks that completely misses what human intelligence actually is * Mel's Claude use cases: a food app built from her Google Maps pins, a networking Rolodex with a roulette wheel, and what she calls an "emotional affair" with Claude 😉 Meet the guest: * Melanie Nethercott [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/melanienethercott] — Director of Education Programs EMEA at STACK Infrastructure [https://www.stackinfra.com/] Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and storyteller interested in AI and passionate about digital marketing, books and learning. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] — audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com [girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com] 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08]

#28 Saniya Vardak x Girls Who Prompt: The Episode Where an AI Avatar Joined the Show

In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Saniya Vardak, Head of Growth at Beyond Presence [https://www.beyondpresence.ai/] — a Munich startup building real-time AI avatars that can see you, hear you, and respond in under 100 milliseconds. With nearly a decade scaling Wise, Wolt, and Deel, Saniya is now the sole marketer inside a company where the product didn't exist 18 months ago, growth is 45% month-on-month, and their avatar Nelly once fooled a room full of people into thinking she was real. Then Nelly crashed the Girls Who Prompt call. Live. This conversation is less about whether AI avatars are impressive and more about the harder question every company is quietly circling: where does the first layer end, and when does the human have to step back in? In this episode we discuss: * What a real-time AI avatar actually is — and what makes Nelly different from a chatbot, a safety video, or a deepfake * Why users learning a language with an AI avatar outperform peer-to-peer learners — and why feeling less judged is the whole reason * The "first layer" question: where AI contact ends and the human must take over (and why Saniya believes that line still matters deeply) * Europe vs. the rest: why GDPR-first, ethics-first avatar design is Beyond Presence's founding philosophy — not just a compliance checkbox * Why building your own avatar is starting to look a lot like the music industry — with royalties, licensing deals, and real contracts for real faces * The campaign where Beyond Presence asked people to spot the real human in the video — and most of them got it wrong * On imposter syndrome: how Saniya has made "I know nothing about this industry" her actual career strategy — across FinTech, food delivery, dating apps, and now AI avatars A reminder for anyone who feels behind the curve: Saniya has started from zero in every single industry she's entered. She delivers anyway. The not-knowing isn't the obstacle. It's the method. Meet the guest: • Saniya Vardak [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanyavardak/] — Head of Growth at Beyond Presence [https://www.beyondpresence.ai/] Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and storyteller interested in AI and passionate about digital marketing, books, movies and learning. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] — audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com [girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com] 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08].