AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
A podcast that explores the good, the bad, and the creepy of artificial intelligence. Weekly longform conversations with key players in the space, ranging from CEOs to artists to philosophers. Exploring the role of AI in film, health care, business, law, therapy, politics, and everything from religion to war.
Featured by Inc. Magazine as one of "4 Ways to Get AI Savvy in 2024," as "Host Jeff Wilser [gives] you a more holistic understanding of AI--such as the moral implications of using it--and his conversations might even spark novel ideas for how you can best use AI in your business."
AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
Leveraging AI to Go from Doer to Leader, w/ Miri Rodriguez, former Storyteller at Microsoft and CEO of Empressa.AI
Could AI help you lead—not just do—especially if you’re thinking about building something entrepreneurial?
In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Miri Rodriguez, formerly a “storyteller” at Microsoft, now the CEO of Empressa.AI, about what it means to go from Doer to Leader in an AI era—and how an AI-first operating style can give a small team outsized leverage.
Miri shares how storytelling functioned as a practical tool inside Microsoft (not fluffy marketing), why she decided to leave Corporate America, what she's focused on at Empressa.AI, and what she’s learned building an AI-first company—especially around agent-like workflows, research automation, and the discipline of separating real value from AI hype.
What we cover
- Why “storytelling” matters in business and how it works at Microsoft
- The origin-story lens: how companies reinvent themselves (and why transformation stories matter)
- Miri’s path from Microsoft into entrepreneurship—and the “gaps” she saw as an early adopter of Copilot-era tools
- Why she believes AI can either widen or narrow workplace gaps—and why adoption, not just access, is the real issue ([00:06:40]–[00:09:30])
- What “skilling up” actually means now: moving from execution to strategy + orchestration as AI takes on more of the doing ([00:11:15]–[00:14:30])
- Where agentic workflows are showing up first—and the looming mismatch between automation and employee upskilling ([00:14:30]–[00:16:45])
- A concrete, real-world example of an “agent-style” workflow for communications + marketing (and why research becomes a superpower) ([00:17:00]–[00:23:10])
- The simplest anti-hype test: if you can’t explain the value without saying “AI,” you may be building a trend, not a solution
- Advice for would-be entrepreneurs: why mission and clarity matter more than “AI-first” branding
- How Miri uses AI personally and creatively—especially translation, voice, and writing experiments
Key takeaway
AI isn’t just a productivity boost—it’s a forcing function for how we lead: setting direction, designing workflows, making judgment calls, and supervising a growing layer of digital labor.
Please enjoy our conversation with Miri Rodriguez.
Empressa.AI