The Women’s Summit breakout session was about harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to hone your brand, but one of the first things Bryant professors of Marketing Stefanie Boyer, Ph.D., and Sharmin Attaran, Ph.D. did was ask the audience to do the most human thing possible — make a new friend.

The women in attendance, representing a wide range of paths and stages in their careers, quickly paired up after some initial awkwardness to discuss their personal brands — what they believed in, what they were good at, and what their hopes were for the future.

“This is the hard work,” Boyer noted. In order to share your brand, you need to be comfortable sharing yourself, so it helps to have a partner — as she and Attaran learned when they both joined the Bryant faculty sixteen years ago.  

Fortunately, there’s no better place for that work, said Attaran. “There’s such a strong community of women here at Women’s Summit: women dedicated to connecting with each other,  empowering each other, building each other’s confidence, and making friends with one another.”

On March 13, Bryant University welcomed more than 1,000 attendees to its 28th annual Women’s Summit®. Boyer and Attaran’s panel, “From Decisions to Action: Elevate Your Brand with AI,” was one of nearly 30 panels that helped attendees establish themselves as subject matter experts, hone their emotional intelligence, and other topics.

“This theme for this year’s Women’s Summit is ‘Elevate Your Journey,’ and now is the time to make AI your elevator,” noted Boyer, director of the Bryant Sales Program, and co-founder, chief science officer, and head of education at RNMKRS, an AI-focused company that helps student engage in sales simulations and roleplays. “This session is about helping attendees use AI to leap ahead, to get out of a rut, or build confidence and realize that they have so much more to offer the world than they realize.”

“These are issues that are front and center for everyone, but not everyone is confident about them,” noted Attaran, head of the university’s Digital Marketing program and co-author of The Little Black Book of Social Media and The Little Black Book of Social Selling. There’s also an element of taking pride in who you are, Attaran suggested. Sometimes women have difficulty taking credit for their accomplishments.

“That’s one of the things we hope to do today, give people confidence,” she concluded.

Fine tuning your brand is more than just an exercise in search engine optimization — though there is some of that, to be sure — the professors advised the crowd. It also means having an honest conversation with yourself about your skills, your values, and what you want to do in the world.

It’s never too early to develop your brand, Boyer and Attaran noted, and it’s never too late.

“Your brand is how they know you even before you ever enter the room,” Attaran noted. “If they don’t know your brand, they don’t know you.”

A good brand speaks to both your expertise — the skillset you’ve built out — and your experience — the perspective that you and you alone bring to that knowledge set, the lessons you’ve learned and the challenges you’ve overcome.

“When you can bring those two together, that sweet spot is where the magic happens,” Attaran suggested.

When the initial exchange was complete, and new friendships had been forged, the discussion moved to enlisting a new partner in branding: artificial intelligence. Boyer asked the audience to share, with a display of fingers, their familiarity with AI. “One is ‘What is AI?’ and five is I’ve started my own AI company,” she directed.

When the answers seemingly averaged out to around a three, with outliers on both sides, Boyer, who was recently named one of the Top 50 undergraduate business professors in the country by Poets&Quants, smiled reassuringly. “Well, I have started my own AI company, and I promise you, I’m learning something new every day,” she said.

Attaran and Boyer then proceeded to walk the audience through several prompts using their favorite artificial intelligence aids to analyze narrative they were sharing — both intentionally and inadvertently — through their resumes and the “About Me” sections of their websites.

“Make sure you’re telling the story you want to tell,” Boyer advised.” “If you're not shaping that narrative, then someone else is going to.”

The duo then delved deeper and ran an exercise that assisted with assessing their brand for clarity, differentiation, and engagement. Further fine tuning helped to create hooks and calls to action.

“Don’t let AI make you lazy,” she advised.” It can help you but it’s up to you to make it perfect.”

“The goal is to work with the algorithm, which looks for popular and engaging,” Attaran reminded. “But your objective is to get them to stop scrolling when they come to you.”

Along the way, the pair provided advice on navigating AI best practices, from data security to matching the right program and how to get the most out of the thinking machines — including identifying audiences, individual platforms, specialty areas, and goals for the generative intelligences.

“The more direction that you give it, the better,” Boyer advised. “Because AI really comes to the middle — it tries to give you the average.

“Don’t let AI make you lazy,” she advised.” It can help you but it’s up to you to make it perfect.”

AI should always be seen as additive intelligence, the pair advised; it can help you, but you should be, and need to be, always be in control. The final step, Boyer noted, is to take a last read of your new brand and remove AI giveaways ranging from inappropriate emojis to overuse of the em dash. The best AI-assisted content, she noted, looks like AI wasn’t involved at all.

As the session ended, many of the attendees took photos with their new friend in front of a special ring light provided by the discussion leaders. Sara Cannata, a 2013 Bryant University alum who is now the marketing manager for Centerville Bank, left the panel energized. “I really appreciated how we all were given some tangible advice and strategies that we can use right away,” she noted. 

To view slides and prompts from this session, click here.