Esther Ajao, News Writer, TechTarget

At the age of eight, Esther Ajao did something braver than most of us will do in our entire lives. Having spent her early years in her native Nigeria, raised by an extended family of grandparents and uncles, Esther moved across the ocean to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother, who had moved to America when Esther was just six months old. Removed from her home and a big family that helped shield her self-proclaimed introverted personality, Esther became the classic latchkey kid – reading, watching the TV news and learning while her mom worked. She was so taken by writing that she'd add on to the Babysitters Club novels she read with new stories of her own. But it was all that TV news that really intrigued her. She started a career in TV journalism at Today and various local and national jobs. And then in 2021, she shifted gears and moved to New Hampshire to join TechTarget to cover AI. If only she knew then how big a move that would turn out to be. 

Esther joined us on the pod to discuss her latchkey afternoons in Brooklyn, how the AI beat changed overnight with Open AI's Chat GPT in November 2022, and the evolution of her podcast targeting AI for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers Practice. And I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Esther. Here's our chat with Esther. Enjoy.

Transcript

 | Dave Reddy: | At the age of eight, Esther Ajao did something braver than most of us will do in our entire lives. Having spent her early years in her native Nigeria, raised by an extended family of grandparents and uncles, Esther moved across the ocean to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother who had moved to America when Esther was just six months old, removed from her home and a big family that helped shield her self-proclaimed introverted personality. Esther became the classic latchkey kid reading, watching the TV news and learning while her mom worked. She was so taken by writing that she'd add on to the Babysitters Club novel. She read with news stories of her own, but it was all that TV news that really intrigued her. She started a career in TV journalism at today and various local and national jobs. And then in 2021, she shifted gears and moved to New Hampshire to join TechTarget to cover ai if only she knew how big a move that turned out to be. 

| Dave Reddy: | Esther joined us on the pod to discuss her latchkey afternoons in Brooklyn, how the AI beat changed overnight with Open AI's chat GPT in November 2022 and the evolution of her podcast targeting AI for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. With I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers Practice. And I'm your host. Through research and good old fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B tech's, top 200 media and influencers, including Esther. Here's our chat with Esther. Enjoy. Esther, thanks so much for joining us for this edition of Pressing Matters. Really excited to have you on. I think we met about a year ago. We've been talking about your wonderful podcast, which is now into, I think it's third year or second year? 

| Esther Ajao: | A year now. 

| Dave Reddy: | Yeah. All about targeting AI and of course you are from Tech Target, so that's a fantastic marker. But let's start with your background. So, you were born in Nigeria and then came over here at age eight. Tell me about that. 

| Esther Ajao: | Yeah, so I was born in Nigeria, la Nigeria, and I lived with my, basically it was one big happy family. I lived my grandmother, my grandfather later passed and so was my grandmother, my aunts, my uncles, who basically raised me up all the way till I was eight. And then at eight years old, they said, you're coming to live with your mother. And that's what I did. And it's been, have been here ever since. And 

| Dave Reddy: | She was already here and she was in Brooklyn, correct? 

| Esther Ajao: | Yes. My mom left me when I was just six months old, which was very young. Young. I mean, she visited of course, but I saw my grandma as a mommy for a while. And then obviously when I got here that all shifted and changed. 

| Dave Reddy: | I got to ask as a guy who was born and raised in the United States and didn't move until he was 17 when he went to college, what is it like to move across an ocean to a different culture, to this big giant city? You were in Brooklyn and live with a woman who in some ways you didn't really know that well, that must have been quite a thing at eight years old. 

| Esther Ajao: | It was definitely, it was just me and her and my mom would like to say she felt a little bit, I guess guilty because obviously I was going, I've always been introverted, right? But it's easier to be introverted when you have grandmother, aunts, cousins, all living around you. It's a little bit harder and a little bit lonelier when it's just you and your mother. And so that was a big shift. It was also a big shift culturally going to school in Brooklyn. We lived in East New York and that was very big. It was lots of bullying. My mom was a very tough woman. I am very much into my shell. And so that was a very big shift in my elementary years. The school was different. Everything was different. Accent. 

| Dave Reddy: | I thought Brooklyn was hip and wouldn't bully. 

| Esther Ajao: | It was, but it was definitely a very, not the best school and experience, especially that first year entering a new school environment in a, just coming to a different country. 

| Dave Reddy: | It's hard enough being an 8-year-old in school in America. I'm trying to fathom the notion of being an 8-year-old immigrant in America. 

| Esther Ajao: | I learned very fast that I'm in a very different country. I had a teacher, my mom gossip mad. I had a teacher said, well, this is not the way we do things here. And my mom's like, what do you mean? What do you mean you mean? But it all shaped the person that I am and shaped the person that I am, I guess, raising my girl. 

| Dave Reddy: | And congratulations on 

| Esther Ajao: | Thank you, 

| Dave Reddy: | Girl. Number three was born this summer, so we actually had to put this episode off for a few months, but to make it happen, unless you said mom was tough and you did need to tell me that since she came over here when you were six months old by herself. And what did she do in Brooklyn when she came here? 

| Esther Ajao: | Yeah, my mom, she did quite a few different things. I think she was in a L and a situation for a little bit, but since I've been here, actually going on over 20 years now, 21 years or 22 years, she's been working for the MTA station agent, new York's transit system. So that's what she's been doing as a station agent. So I grew up with her doing that basically for a job. 

| Dave Reddy: | Really. So you would hang out with her at the station? 

| Esther Ajao: | I cannot. Oh no. They have very strict, the MTA is super strict and
so have you ever heard of what's, is it called the latch Key Kids, basically? 

| Dave Reddy: | Oh yeah, absolutely. So you were a 

| Esther Ajao: | Kid? Yeah, yeah. So my mom 

| Dave Reddy: | In New York City, 

| Esther Ajao: | Yeah, I asked her now, I'm like, how did you do it? How did you, because I hated the babysitter. And one day I'm like, Nope, I'm not going to the babysitter. I refused to go to the babysitter and she's like, okay, so 

| Dave Reddy: | We fired the babysitter, and you became a latchkey kid. What did this latchkey kid do when she was latched? What did you do when you're alone like that? And I had some of that experience, but not a lot of it. But when you're alone like that, you got to figure out what to do. So what were your things? 

| Esther Ajao: | My thing was TV and reading. I developed a very deep love of reading in that time. I would just write continuations of the stories that I read. Really? Yeah, I would just make up continuations of the story that I read. She would sometimes take me to the library and just drop me off for hours there. So I was very much into the book. I was very not very street smart. She liked to tell me, but very book smart is what she said. Okay. 

| Dave Reddy: | Well, I'm sure that has served you the book smart aspect. Was there a particular author or set of authors that you were into as a kid or now? 

| Esther Ajao: | No, it was just the Junie B books. I like the Babysitter Club books and stuff like that. I kind of wish I got more into classic because when I went to college I was like, oh, I wish I had read different books that other kids read, but I was more into fiction and things that are not really education. 

| Dave Reddy: | So, you like the babysitter club, but not the babysitter. Kids are the babysitter. I think it's fantastic that you would sit down and go, ah, there's more to this story, and you would just write it yourself, fan fiction. It's fantastic. I did. So I guess that explains, you went to Trinity College in London, pardon me, Trinity College in Hartford, and you studied English and it said you were into film and creative writing. Was that the original plan to actually go out and do your own books or films? Maybe it still is the plan, but was that the idea? 

| Esther Ajao: | Yeah, I knew I wanted to be a journalist since I was little, so I was like, I like to write. So this is obviously the natural path because I thought authors don't make money, so naturally journalist wants that make the money, right, not true. So I decided journalism, but my college counselor was like, well, maybe you want to do liberal arts college. And so I visited Trinity. I'm like, they don't have generalism, but I can do English. It makes it more open. And then I like to buy off more than I can chew. And so I decided I was going to do film as well just because I wanted the technical aspect of it. And so I did both at the same time, but I always knew I wanted to do journalism. And so when I got to college I was like, okay, they don't have journalism. I'm going to join their newspaper. And then I started writing to all of these people in Queens at the time, I think we moved to Queens to newspaper places to say, oh, I need an internship. I need an internship. I knew that that was what I wanted to do, but I just didn't want it to just be, oh, I only did English and that. 

| Dave Reddy: | Okay. So do you have a favorite student film that you might've produced or did that not happen? 

| Esther Ajao: | Oh no. I felt like I was horrible at film, but I did a documentary exploring sexual assault on campus. 

| Dave Reddy: | Wow. 

| Esther Ajao: | And so that was my ending project and ending film. I can't find it. I always look for it. But yeah, I spent a year plus speaking to a lot of the girls, the women, the men, about the sexual assault on campus and how it was handled and how they felt. 

| Dave Reddy: | Yeah, I'm going to guess. It wasn't handled well. 

| Esther Ajao: | It was not handled very well. 

| Dave Reddy: | Let's hope that changes very soon. Again, I say as the father of three kids, all girls, you said the journalism bug bit early and that by the way is a heck of a thing to do as your film is to do this journalistic documentary about an incredibly serious topic at that age. Bravo. For you, the journalism bug bit early. What was it? What did you see? What did you hear that made you say, yeah, I got to do this? 

| Esther Ajao: | I think it's the idea. There was one time in school and they were like, oh, there's three sides to the story. There's your side, there's my side and the troop. And so I always thought, and maybe am I still going through that? I always thought investigative journalism that was like, I want to be the one to bring the troop. What is his name? Nicholas. There was an investigator generalist that I had his books and I was like, oh, I want to be this person that goes out and just investigate the truth. And so that was what really caught me. We used to just have the news on at my house all the time. And so it was just like that. Let me be the one to find the truth. Let me be the one to go and travel and go to all these dangerous places and figure out what is the truth of what is there 

| Dave Reddy: | Good for you. And you're still young in your career, so that may yet happen. You started in tv, in fact, you did some internships and producing and TV, including the Today Show. My wife was an intern on Meet the Press and I got to play intern one day with her and that was interesting. So I can only imagine how interesting the Today Show was, especially given what we know now. Again, I spent a few months in TV as an intern at a local news stations sports unit. So I know the answer to this question, but I'm curious how you saw it. What is life like in tv journalism, online or printer? 

| Esther Ajao: | It depends on what type of TV you're talking about, right? When it comes to today's show, national tv, it's a little bit different from local tv. And so national tv, I actually did the Fox News that was kind of like I did local internship and then I did Fox News for internship as data, and I was fun fact, I was there on the night that 2016 election. So that was experience. Big 

| Dave Reddy: | Surprise. Yeah, everybody including the winner was surprised by that one. 

| Esther Ajao: | When I say everybody was surprised, you could feel it in room, I remember. And so that was interesting. It felt like you were one person in a piece of the puzzle. When you're on a national tv, you're doing this one thing almost all the time, whereas in the local tv it felt like you're doing not always everything, but you're kind of more involved and boy of it. I kind of just felt like, what is it? What am I doing? What's the purpose in this? What am I doing this for? And so while it's good and I would say it is good money and tv, it still felt a little bit empty. And then when we get to local tv, local TV is really important and I think that's where a lot of the national TV stems for. But I think it's, if it bleeds elites, that's what they say. And that I can say that that was really tough. That was really tough. 

| Dave Reddy: | So, you go from, and journalism in general has leaned a little bit sensational, but I wouldn't call Tech Target sensational at all. So you go from the TV world to TechTarget, how did that job come about? It was 2021. So the pandemic is starting to wane, I think, or we're in the middle of it. I dunno what part of the year you got the gig, but how did that come about? 

| Esther Ajao: | Yeah, so I was kind of trying to go from being a New Hampshire to not being in New Hampshire. 

| Dave Reddy: | Oh, guess that 

| Esther Ajao: | Didn't happen. And I just had my first daughter literally early. That's a year. And so I was looking for a new job and so I applied to be an AI writer and I'm like, I dunno. And even about ai, but writing I do know. And so our editorial director, Bridget, she emailed me or pinged me on LinkedIn and said, oh, I really like your journalism background. And so I spoke to them and I was like, I don't really know much about ai, but SHA is awesome. He's as long as you're willing to learn, we got you. And so that's literally how it came about and I almost didn't accept it because of other stuff, but it really felt like all the right pieces fell into the right place. 

| Dave Reddy: | You're speaking of Sean Sutter, your co-host, and I believe he's your editor on the writing 

| Esther Ajao: | Side, Paul, 

| Dave Reddy: | Your co-host on targeting ai. So to your point, you don't know a lot about ai. I'm not sure any of us really do. I think some people pretend they do, but you come into something that's completely different than what you were doing before. And then about a year in you start the podcast. How did that evolve? How did you get to learn ai? It sounds like you do a lot of reading, you do a lot of research. Did you just immerse yourself in it or was it more like it's coming at me and I'm writing about it and then boom, you got it? 

| Esther Ajao: | It was more of the second one where it started slow, right? We hadn't gotten to the popularization of chat GBT, and so we were still like, oh, is there AI winter? And so one of my first story here, it was talking to analysts, what is the AI winter? What exactly is going on with ai? And then I covered an event, I think it was IBM or something, and I spoke to an analyst about Watson and I was like, what is this? This is a whole new language. What are we talking about here? And then come 2022, you had Chat GPT. 

| Dave Reddy: | November 22, everything changed. 

| Esther Ajao: | Everything changed. And all my inbox was GPT, GPT, GPT. And it was like crazy, but that's when it was literally boom, boom, boom, boom, really immerse yourself with it. But in the beginning it was like, okay, let's talk to this company about what they're doing, ai, what is their machine learning strategy and this and that. And then that all shifted in the past two years. And then we started the podcast last year, 2023, and that came about with me and Sean being like, well, it'll be fun to talk about and talk to all these different 

| Dave Reddy: | People. It is fun to do a podcast. I do have the Say 

| Esther Ajao: | Yes, it's fun, it's a lot of work, but it's fun about what they're doing in AI and what they think about AI and try to get different guests to just speak. And so it has been really fun, especially as we got different vendors and different analysts and users. It's definitely interesting. It's kind of vast. And for me, like I said, I like to buy off more than I can chew. And so I have to keep my focus on what am I really looking for, looking at here. 

| Dave Reddy: | Yeah, you probably had to get, you went from an AI winter to having to get picky about what you were going to write about really fast, right? Because I mean there's a lot of legitimate AI stories out there and then I know firsthand that there are some folks going, AI, we can talk about that. So how much of that do you still find and has it sort of a two part question. So there was sort the November 22, if that and the six to eight months after it were the Apex. Are you feeling that it's getting back, well, not a winter, but getting back to some sense of normalcy, 

| Esther Ajao: | The picking and the choosing, especially because a lot of people were going, it was like I said, it was GPT, GPT, GPT, so it was like what exactly it was, I think we had that, is it whitewashing? Is that what they call it? Or  you had a lot of companies just using AI. And the question is what are you using AI for? And even I would ask analysts, I'll be like, well, do we really need AI to solve this problem or are you just putting the word ai or even recently AI agents or agent workflow, what exactly is an HX fit workflow and why do you need agents? What is your agents, what is your definition of AI agents? So you have a lot of marketing behind AI vendors and AI companies saying, oh, this is what we're doing. And then at the end of day dig deeper and you're like, that's not really ai. Oh, that's not really, you just put in an AI bit. You're not AI company, you're just using ai. It gets all muddled in between. And so there is still that kind of choosy and choosing what to cover and what not to cover. 

| Esther Ajao: | I think the shift has happened. I think all of last year there was this literal focus on ai. What is Google doing? What is Microsoft doing? What's open AI doing? What's in tropic doing? And it was back to back to back to back. I think that up until maybe September I felt that, and then recently I felt that there has been a shift. It's not quiet, but it's like we are kind of shifting and we're shaping the landscape. We're going from GPT to the usage of this. A lot of the analysts that I'll speak to there have been saying, especially when analysts going from ideation to implementation because it's not alone to just have the technology, it's what are we using the technology for? And I think with AI agents, even though it is still marketing word or a marketing tactic, there is that, oh, we are finally finding a use case for this or we are finally finding what is the next thing instead of, oh, we have models, this model come out, this model come out, this model come out. And I think in the past few months, 18 months or so, whether it be Google, Microsoft, open ai, it was just like we have this model, we have the next model, we have the next model, and it's like, can you slow down? What is the point of having all of these models 

| Dave Reddy: | An arms race if you will? Yeah, 

| Esther Ajao: | Basically, it was an arms race every single week. We were talking about what's Microsoft going to do? What's the opening? 

| Dave Reddy: | How do you feel that the podcast has evolved from, I don't do anywhere near as many episodes as you guys, but even we have had somewhat of an evolution, so what have you learned? What are you doing more of? What are you doing less of in these more than a year of doing the podcast? 

| Esther Ajao: | I think in the beginning we were trying to find outfitting and so it was more, our first guest was Michael Banner, who's great. Literally basically analytical voice. And then we've shifted more into having, and we had last day I would say we had the topics of ai, responsible ai, just trying to figure out who's using ai. I think we even have autonomous vehicle episode that we did and now we are more into focusing. We found that audience is interested in what vendors are doing, and so we are trying to mainly focus on what the vendors are doing, but I don't like it when we, I'm giving myself away here. I don't like it when we have episodes and the vendors are just very much like, this is what we do, this is what we do, is what we do. Because I would rather them really speak to the bigger issue and the bigger topic. And so we still have topics with users. I think we had Walmart on, I believe we're going to have Getty images if we have not already had it, then we have a beauty tech vendor that's going to be on soon. Those are the, it's more I know that what our audience is, the vendors, but I think it kind of makes it fall flat if we're only listening to the vendor because how really is the technology being used? 

| Dave Reddy: | This is a conversation we have with clients all the time. You can't really get away with a podcast that's going to be puffy and all about your messages because no one's going to listen to it. So I hear you 

| Esther Ajao: | For sure. 

| Dave Reddy: | They're actually better served, rare PR comment. They're actually better served doing something that's more about the industry or whatnot. That's what you're looking for, that's what you're talking 

| Esther Ajao: | About. Yeah, basically that's what I'm looking for. But we are still ambitious. Obviously we would like to have an open AI on to discuss some of the open AI stuff that has been going on, but we had the M 12 person from Microsoft Friendship fund, capital Fund come on, and he was pretty great. I think that knowing how do investors really know who they're investing in, that's also pretty good. But he also spoke a little bit as to what was happening with OpenAI last year with their November situation and Sam Altman and all of that. So it's just like I think having that broad breadth of different guests works for us, but I think that in the beginning we were definitely shooting at everywhere and seeing what sticks, but now I think we kind of have that what we really want and what we're really hoping for. 

| Dave Reddy: | So, let's talk about AI itself. You've immersed yourself in this world at a time when it is, it reminds me as an older guy of when we first started dealing with the internet and the nineties were just crazy and everything was.com, this.com, that, so AI's got a little bit of that going on. Is it good, is it bad? Is it both just the technology itself? I mean when you are covering this every day, do you sometimes go home and go, good lord, what are we doing? Or do you go home and say, wow, that is really cool, we are changing the world or both? 

| Esther Ajao: | I think the question's a little bit hard for me to answer because I am immersed in AI and how it helps businesses and enterprises, and so it's a little bit different from AI for consumers. I see the good in ai, but I also see the way that it can be misused and I also see how it's very much overhyped. I'm not someone who's into artificial intelligence. I kind of shackle every time we ask questions about artificial gender intelligence because I think that we give so much credit to the technology. There's a saying, my mom likes to say it, the English version of it is what doesn't have MAL is not smart. I think if it cannot speak, which I know now we have, but it's still, it cannot speak because I'm the one as humans, we are the ones that creating the technology. But I definitely think it's an evolution of the internet. 

| Esther Ajao: | It's the next big thing. I see it as a tool, just like the internet as a tool. I think that we get way too much credit to this technology. We get way too much credit to technology as a whole, and I think that just like any technology, they speak our rails and there needs to be, you need to guard it because only we as humans can guard what we as humans have created. And I think that from the public, what I see is there's a lot of distrust in a lot of misinformation about AI itself of it being able to do things that it cannot do. But it is definitely a powerful technology and it's definitely something that you cannot ignore. Nobody can ignore it. I think it has infiltrated every part of the world, 

| Dave Reddy: | Including journalism. How are you at Tech Target using AI or are you using it very little? 

| Esther Ajao: | I'm using it very little. I'm going to be honest personally, me personally, I use it very little. I think beyond AI overviews that Google is forcing all of us to use, I don't really use it. I will use chat GPT for my personal use and then I just edit it. But beyond that, I don't feed the beast so to speak. I'm not going to put my voice in the AI for it to try to train on my voice. TikTok does use 11 labs and stuff like that, and we use the image feature. We've done Dolly and other image generating for that, but I feel like it's a tool, so how I use it as a tool when I need it. 

| Dave Reddy: | Yeah, we've had a variety of different opinions on this show from it writes my stories to, I don't use it at all. So you're probably, 

| Esther Ajao: | Oh, I do not use AI to write. I absolutely cannot use it to write my story at all. 

| Dave Reddy: | I try not to judge on that, but I have my own rules with my team here from the PR perspective, so we'll just go with that. Given all this, you're still relatively early in your career and so for you this question's very different than when I ask somebody who's my age. How optimistic are you for the future of tech and for the future of journalism? Both seem to be in weird and interesting places. We have lots of loud people in tech and journalism is candidly from my perspective, struggling to find its footing again in this new world where there's not a lot of money coming in. So do you remain optimistic? 

| Esther Ajao: | I think that for journalism I have to because I'm like, what else would I do? What else can I do? Technology. I'm very optimistic. I think that this just the way the world, this is the way the world is going to go. It's going to be the internet. It's already the internet. It's infiltrated every single thing, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Instagram, whether it's social media, it's just ai, it's everywhere. Unless you're the type of person that's like, I'm not going to use the internet. And there are people like that who are like, I'm not going to use social media, and so there's no stopping it. But journalism, I think that we are seeing ways that people are trying to protect their craft and journalism is one of them. If you look at things like the lawsuits that have come out, that's one way that we're trying to protect journalism. 

| Esther Ajao: | I think that journalism has to change. It has to change whether in all aspect of it, whether that is print or even tv, especially TV just has to change. It's just the people are now their own journalist and that's scary, but that's just the way of the world, and I don't know what that change will look like, but it's not going to remain the same. I don't think that it will completely dissolve, but I think that perhaps it will look different. And I am thinking about this as I'm speaking to you. I don't know how different would that look because there's a lack of trust in ai, but there's even a greater lack of trust in, and nobody trusts journalism and trust the people, and there's good reason for that, just the way things have just been regurgitated and spit it out. So the trust has to be gained back, but I don't know how that trust is going to be gained back, and I think part of it might be just letting the people be their own journalist, but there was still a need for that independent voice, for that objective voice to be able to do what it needs to do. 

| Esther Ajao: | And that's why I think things like independence are good. 

| Dave Reddy: | You bring a very unique perspective and hopefully it won't be unique going forward to the world of journalism and technology. You are an African immigrant and you're a woman, and I am curious, it says the white man, what's that been like? I mean, nobody, I don't have that perspective, so I'm curious if that is still an issue in newsrooms, if that's still an issue when you sit down to talk to tech reporters or if it's getting better. 

| Esther Ajao: | Yeah. I would say that when it comes to journalism, one of the reasons I was very skeptical about coming to New Hampshire when I was presented with the job of coming to local TV news is the fact that I was like, I will be the only black person, and I for the most part was the only black person, and I don't know, I just did not have a very good experience with that, and I don't know if it's because of the fact that I was very young and green or if it's skin or whatever. I don't know. I will say when it comes to ai, the voices are very few, but it is just very few. One of the things I like to ask when we have people of color on the guest in our podcast is how can we kind of broaden that voice? How can we invite more people to the technology? 

| Esther Ajao: | Because I can tell you that right now, I think that the people in the room might not be the people of color, but the people using technology is probably the people of color because we are very quick to use the technology. I would say that on conferences and stuff, yes, it's mainly white men that are around, and the only way it can change is just inviting more, right? That's the only way to have, I don't know how else to say it, but it's providing more opportunities. One of the guests that we interviewed recently or previously said that it's like you have need people of color for the technology itself, training data for everything, and so if you're not able to have them in the room, how are you going to have the data? And so I'm not sure, no, 

| Dave Reddy: | I've heard that for several years and we've seen it, the notion of inherent bias that's built into AI because only a certain segment of the population is building the ai, which I find fascinating. I'm not sure anyone's doing that on purpose, but obviously we need to think about, maybe they are, but we obviously need to think about how we make sure everybody's involved in that, or we saw this recently with imaging where fantastic when it comes to imaging white folks, but it's not so good when it comes to imaging folks, which just seems, 

| Esther Ajao: | I would say, like I said, on the other end, when we had, what was the Lanza app? I interviewed a woman and she gave an interesting perspective because a lot of the question at that time was it was creating avatars, but it wasn't, was kind of changing the skin color of others. And she said, well, it kind of brought that appeal that hasn't been seen before. The image that it created of African-American women, African-American men is like superheroes or it was like, this is something that hasn't, we haven't had that representation before. Yes, the skin color might be different for some, but it still gave, it was representation that had been missing, and so that's why you see people of color using it. That's why you need things like ai, but to have people of color in the room to help make the technology better, I think that's where work needs to be done. 

| Dave Reddy: | After that very serious topic, we're going to shift to the final question, which is always a little bit lighthearted, but maybe not so in your case, since you've been around New York, New Hampshire or Nigeria, 

| Esther Ajao: | Surprisingly, surprisingly, I like the quietness of New Hampshire. I love New York, don't get me wrong, but there's peace in New Hampshire. So New Hampshire for now. 

| Dave Reddy: | I'm sure there are days you don't see anyone else in your family. 

| Esther Ajao: | Do not. 

| Dave Reddy: | Maybe the occasional black bear, 

| Esther Ajao: | No beers, thank God. 

| Dave Reddy: | Okay, good. They're up in Maine playing hockey. Esther, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Continued. Good luck at TechTarget, continued. Good luck with targeting AI, and thanks so much for your perspective. It was really, 

| Esther Ajao: | Thank you for inviting me, really appreciate it. 

| Dave Reddy: | Our pleasure. I'd like to thank you all for listening today, and once again, a big thank you to our guest, Esther io of TechTarget. Join us next month when we interview yet another member of the B2B Tech Top 200. In the meantime, if you've got feedback on today's podcast or if you'd like to learn more about Big Valley Marketing and how we identify the B2B tech top 200, be sure to drop me an email at dreddy@bigvalley.co. That's DRE double DY at Big Valley, all one word.co. No m. You can also email the whole team at pressingmatters@bigvalley.co. Once again, thanks for listening, and as always, think big.