Karim Abouelnaga: Reimagining Education with AI

This episode explores the future of work through the lens of public education and equity. Karim Abouelnaga, CEO of Practice, explains why potential is universal but opportunity is not and how Title I schools can raise proficiency through thoughtful design, transparent tools and the practical use of AI. He unpacks “possibility versus probability,” the importance of modeling new technology and the tradeoffs of phone and AI adoption. 

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introducing the Future of Work 

02:15 - Kareem’s Journey from NYC Public Schools 

04:00 - Supporting 1 Million Low-Income Children 

06:00 - Impact of COVID-19 on Education 

08:00 - AI's Role in Closing Achievement Gaps 

10:00 - Global Access to Quality Education 

12:00 - Rethinking Education Pathways 

14:00 - Micro-Schools and Personalized Learning 

16:00 - Future-Proofing Careers with Skills 

18:00 - AI-Human Collaboration and Ethics
 
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Transcript

Christy L. Honeycutt 

Pepelwerk is proud to present Strategic Shift, a podcast dedicated to exploring the future of work. Thank you for joining us as we hear stories of bold decisions and workforce innovations. I'm your host, Christy Honeycutt. Today, we're speaking with Karim Abouelnaga.  

He is the CEO of Practice. He firmly believes that potential is universal, opportunity is not. Karim has been featured in Forbes, TEDx, Newsweek, USA Today, and many, many more. Join us as we discuss the need for redesigning public education, achievement gaps, and how to solve those. The possibility versus probability — that's a big one — and building your future of work pipeline. You don't want to miss this episode. Let's jump in. 

Christy L Honeycutt (00:01.491) 

Karim, welcome to the show. We are so glad to have you. How are you? 

Karim (00:06.148) 

Thank you, Christy. I'm excited to be here. I'm doing well. How are you? 

Christy L Honeycutt (00:09.974) 

I'm good. So, I know that I did not do you justice in introducing you, and we know that your last name is very hard to pronounce, but I would love for you to tell the audience your name and what you do. We know you're the CEO of Practice, but what exactly does that mean? 

Karim (00:26.096) 

Sure, so my name is Karim Abouelnaga. I run Practice. I started it—actually, this last week was 15 years. So, I'm going into year 16. I don't want to age myself, but I started when I was a lot younger, starting at 18. My whole premise around it starts with our purpose of ensuring that no child circumstance limits their potential. I had a less crisp version of that when we were starting out. 

It was all about making sure that all of society knew that just because of where you were born or your race or your wealth, you still had equal potential to compete intellectually in our society. And so, we've distilled it and made it a lot more beautiful now. But we work with low-income schools. So, Title I schools all around the country, but our largest presence is in New York City where we help schools improve proficiency rates in math and ELA and improve graduation rates at the high school side. 

Christy L Honeycutt (01:24.046) 

That's beautiful, and you have a heart that just shines through in everything you do. I've had the opportunity to know you for a couple of years and follow you, and you are what you get 100%.  

Karim (01:36.378) 

Thank you, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thank you, Kristy. 

Christy 

Yeah, you lead with your heart, and you're very humble because you're also, I mean, you've been featured in so many different publications. I mean, you're a TEDx speaker. I think you've been featured on Forbes. Anything else that we should make note of? 

Karim (01:52.572) 

It's all online, I'm an open book. 

Christy L Honeycutt (01:57.102) 

He's definitely not braggadocious, guys, but he is very, very well received by the community. So, tell us a little story. I know the foundation and kind of your storyline, but I think it would be great for the audience to hear how Practice came to be. It's a very personal story of yours. 

Karim (02:15.951) 

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I am the students that I serve. So, I was raised by a single mother on government aid, went through the public school system in New York City, and didn't think anything of the inequality as a child, right? When your teacher is absent, you're running through the hallways. When they don't have a teacher to teach a certain class, you're excited that you're in study hall. Like, that's one less class that you have to take. I wasn't sitting there thinking about how I was being robbed of my education or how my peers were being robbed of their education. 

It wasn't until I got to my freshman year of college, and selfishly, I was applying for a scholarship that asked students to come up with a solution for the achievement gap that involved corporate intervention. And I knew nothing about the achievement gap. I knew nothing about how corporations work, but I wanted that scholarship, so I'd have less tuition to pay. That's still a problem today.  

And because of that, I unpacked it. I started to learn what all of this inequality kind of looked like, when it had started, how long it had persisted, and instead of being excited to win the scholarship, I just got really angry that we've known about these problems for all of these years, all of these decades, and we haven't done enough to move the needle. And at 18, you know you think you can change the world, and so there I was. I didn't know what I didn't know, all the idealism. And I mobilized a group of friends around a cause that I really cared about and started running programming in my high school to help kids growing up just like me to have additional opportunities. And at the time we were just doing summer, fast forward now 15 years later, where we have this ambitious goal to support a million low-income children by 2030. And we deal with programs during the school day, during the school year, virtually after school hours, and a grade book software that we provide the schools to create more transparency for children and their families at home. 

Christy L Honeycutt (04:06.825) 

I love that. So, that's such a lofty goal, but I think you're going to do it. I think you're going to look back at your 18-year-old self and say, I did change the world. I'm going to manifest that for you.  

Karim (04:15.247) 

From your ears to, yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. 

Christy 

So yeah, from my lips to God's ears, I’m manifesting all of the good energy for you, 100%. So, how many students are you serving today? 

Karim (04:31.838) 

We're at about 185,000 to date, 60,000 last school year. So last two school years, we've been hovering around that amount. So I'm excited because our grade book has just been getting off the ground. This school year, we have about a dozen schools using it. Last year we had four, and I just see the traction and the momentum on that side continuing to accelerate. There's a whole push on using more software in schools, not less. And I think the pandemic, even though it created a little bit of like regret for a little bit, folks are starting to see the value of using technology in schools at a larger scale. that adoption has been exciting. And, you know, I do think we're moving in the direction of even more students as a result of that this year. But yeah, around 60,000 last school year, we have some work to do if we're going to get to a million by 2030. But I'm confident in the team that we have. 

Christy L Honeycutt (05:23.101) 

I love it. Well, and I know that you care a lot, obviously, about the students and getting them to be productive members of society, feeling purposeful and fulfilled. And I hate to say this, but thank God for COVID because it opened a lot of eyes in our community on, yeah, you can still go to work, and we still need to function, and we still need to learn. But I think our students had to overcome a lot. My son actually graduated with his MBA during COVID, and I didn't get to see him or hug him. It was on Zoom. 

And his beautiful curly hair was shaved off because he tried to cut his hair, and it didn't work out so well for him. But I'm just, as we've navigated, I'm curious, how do you see the generations, the younger generation kind of moving with technology, and how are they adapting to the future of work? 

Karim (06:10.157) 

I mean, it's interesting this year because there's been a lot of momentum on banning phones in schools. So I think there are pros and cons to all of it. If you become a tech native without training on how to use these devices or what they look like, then you just get sucked into them. I think that's a con. Obviously, the pro here is that they're a lot more comfortable and confident when it comes to technology. The phone is not like a new device, right? It's just a part of their way of life now. And so I think that is good. And if you can get a lot more done with something in your hand than before, where you physically had to go to all these different places to get that information, I think from one standpoint, that's an accelerant, and that's good. Now you can debate the other side of it socially, like the relationships you're building are different. All of those things are evolving. And I think it's on us now to kind of rethink the spaces that we had before. 

I'm reading research papers published now by professors who are saying students that used to interact in group chats to get support with classes are no longer doing that because they're talking to AI, and so there's no need for that. And while that's great, it's breaking down the informal mentorship that used to exist on college campuses where yes, we were talking so that way I could better understand a problem, but then we were building a relationship outside of the classroom that would then help me later on when it came time to interview for jobs, where to get my first job or to figure out how to date or where to live, how to sign my lease, all of these things that you may not have learned in school that came through peer to peer that you're now getting through AI. 

Christy L Honeycutt (07:49.358) 

Yeah, there's a human component that I think EI and EQ are going to have a rise, or they need to have a rise anyway, to keep up with this tech and to keep us connected. And yeah, that's a really good point for sure. So I know you're super passionate about equity and AI. Do you want to speak a little bit more about that? 

Karim (08:08.778) 

I mean, I have just been a proponent that everyone should have that opportunity on a level playing field. I am really passionate about AI because I think it's another one of those accelerants. And you and I were talking right before this about the inequality that continues to exist in education and how so many kids who are low-income have lagged for so long. And I think as a society, we're so used to seeing things happen linearly and that we go from like point A to B to C, but technology has allowed us to go exponentially. An example I'll give is like around banking, right? We built this entire banking system in the United States, and in so many developing countries, there was no banking infrastructure. And then all of a sudden we had cellular service and phones, and like we went from no banking to now everyone has banking on their phone, right? And so we didn't have to build the financial institutions and the infrastructure that we built in that same way. And so I'm hoping you know that we get the same sort of paradigm shift in education where historically we've had children in inner cities and low-income neighborhoods who are at the 30-40 % proficiency rates in both math and reading, and in some cases even lower. Could we find a way to use AI to not have to go from 30 to 40, 40 to 50, 50 to 60, and just go from that where we are now to 80, 90 % proficiency rates and make that exponential leap? So I'm holding onto that. I think AI has the power to do that. And if it's not the current version of it, it's like one or two iterations away. Hopefully that happens in the next decade instead of what I used to say before, which is praying this happens in my lifetime. 

Christy L Honeycutt (09:49.646) 

Be careful what you wish for. We're going to have a meet George Jetson, the robots in our homes very soon, I think. So, it'll be interesting. 

Karim (10:00.617) 

I don't know if that's the answer, but I'm hoping it's here. I mean, and Christie, you know, like I think about this stuff, and the soapbox I've been standing on now is the notion that possibility doesn't equal probability. And it is a big like driver for us in the work that we're doing. I think the internet made it possible for anyone, anywhere in the world to get a quality education. But the probability that that was going to happen was still pretty small. 

Karim (10:29.267) 

Right. You needed a device, you needed access to the internet. You needed someone who knew how to navigate that stuff to help you get online and do that. And now with AI, again, the possibility that anyone anywhere in the world can get online and now create, and they can build a business. Right. And there's talk about one day or one person band, like building a billion-dollar company. Right. That possibility is there, but what's the probability that it's going to happen in the neighborhoods and in the communities that need it most, the ones who are the most underserved and the furthest behind? That, for me, that's what's keeping me up now. That's what I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about equity and access. It's how do we make sure that our communities don't get left behind again? 

Christy L Honeycutt (11:11.381) 

I love that. You know, there's, so there's two paths, right, with education. You're either college-bound or you're not. And I think we're starting to see that division more and more. We're really behind on pipelining for future work. And I know that you're super passionate about that. I'm curious what your take is on the pipeline for future work, but also the lens and your point of view between college-bound graduates and people that aren't going to go, how they can upskill themselves. 

Karim (11:41.374) 

Well, first I have to say like I'm excited by the disruption because historically the trend has been get more and more education, right? So for a while it was the high school education was the standard, right? And then everyone had that. And so that no longer differentiated you. And then it became the college education, the associate's degree. Like that was your next leg up. And then that no longer differentiated you. So we went for the bachelor's degree and along the way, we made it more and more expensive to enter the workforce. Right. And now for the first time, we're actually like rewiring that and we're saying, you know what, like that form of education is great. but it's not essential and it's not necessary. There's other ways to get into the workforce. And so when you think about equity and access, like you want that because this helps level that playing field. right now I'm like, I'm out there and I'm like telling people like you need to model in our schools. You need to be like, I'm talking to our school leaders and I'm talking to our staff. I need you all using artificial intelligence. I need you guys using these algorithms. They're evolving day to day. So it's not even like we should sit here and have a course, right? Everything you would have learned a year ago today is obsolete. There was all of this talk before about how to prompt and now they're figuring out how to design it. So you don't have to prompt it in a certain way. So the AI gets better. 

Christy L Honeycutt (12:48.845) 

Mm-hmm. 

Karim (13:02.152) 

Right. There was all this talk about which model to use and the right model for the right moment. And now they've iterated again and it'll automatically pick the model for you based on what you're inputting into it. So I think we're like still at the very like early stages of it and you learn by doing and implementing. And so the more we can get folks using it, especially in our communities, the more our kids see the applicable use of it, the more they're going to get from it, the less likely they are to get left behind. But I think the biggest thing we can do right now is model and actually start using the technology. 

Christy L Honeycutt (13:33.899) 

So between the two paths, going to college or getting a job and upskilling yourself, do you have guidance for the students that are going through school right now? Depending on, you've got Bobby over here doesn't want to go to college, but he might be really good with his hands. And then you got Susie wants to go to college. What guidance can we give them? Because I don't think there's a wrong answer. I think as long as you're curious and you want to learn and grow and you feel fulfilled in what you're doing, then you're serving a purpose. But I'm just curious what your point of view is on that. 

Karim (14:07.923) 

Well, I'm going to assume you're talking about them today and not like second grade Bobby, who is going to enter the workforce like 10 or 15 years from now.  

Christy L Honeycutt (14:11.284) 

Yes. Yes. But I want to come back to second grade Bobby. 

Karim 

Because yeah, because my guidance would be different depending on where they're at right now. I also will say like the quality of our K-12 education has also improved, which like you don't want to discount that historically. 

Christy L Honeycutt (14:32.886) 

Right. 

Karim (14:33.863) 

Like high school was taken as like a stepping stone and the intention was that you needed to go to college to get advanced skills, to do advanced math, to get your advanced sciences. More and more high schools, I'm seeing this not just in New York City, but across the country, are offering college level courses and they're giving more students the opportunity to take them and in some cases even requiring them because they know they may not have the confidence to do it, even though we know that they will rise to those expectations when given the opportunity. 

I'm in your camp, right? Like follow your heart, do the work that drives you and gives you meaning. As long as you're contributing positively to society, like there's no right answer. And you see this time and time again, people go through their entire lives and they look back and they're like, I wish I did the thing that I loved. I would have enjoyed that so much more. And I think we forget, and this was really big for me, my senior year of college, things don't end with that one decision when you come out of school. 

I had a full-time offer at BlackRock my senior year of college and the mentors I was talking to would have made you think that if I turned that down, the world was going to end. And I eventually like mustered up the courage to turn it down and move forward. And then the months after I had dozens of job offers again, and I had the ability to enter the workforce in a different capacity if I no longer was going to be running my business. And I just had this realization or epiphany that as long as you're smart and you're hard working, there will always be a job and an opportunity for you. And you have the luxury and the ability to be able to change your mind. And so, yes, you're saying Bobby is more adept at working with his hands and he's going to enjoy that, like go and try that out. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay. Like you can pivot, like you can go back to college. Like you don't have to just go to college at 21 or at 20. And so I just, I like, I pull that stuff back and I say, like go when you're ready. 

Karim (16:29.134) 

Move in the direction that is calling you right now and is contributing to your life in the way that it needs to, don't go down the path because someone else is telling you to do it because the last thing you want to do is be sitting with regret and debt at the same time, right? Like it's okay to have debt if you made that choice and you know what the, like, you know what you're going to do with it after it's not okay to be sitting with that because it was someone else's dream for your life. And now you're sitting with all of the regret, the regret on top of it. 

Christy L Honeycutt (16:57.076) 

And I don't know what the, I mean, you might know this off the top of your head, but I don't know what the data is around the majority of people that actually go to school for X and graduate and do X. I mean, isn't it like a large portion actually do something completely outside of their practice? 

Karim (17:15.215) 

Yeah, I don't know what the percentage is either, so I can't quote it, but yeah, a lot of people don't.  

Christy L Honeycutt (17:19.616) 

I'll have to Google it later. 

Karim 

I mean, I studied hotel management in undergrad, right? And I run an education company. And when I was at Goldman, I think they actually made it a point to not just like hire people from finance. When I was interning there, my colleagues were studying history. They were studying economics. They were English majors. So those folks weren't studying finance and going to work in finance. And now what we're seeing a lot more of is you studied one thing, but you still need to go and get a credential or a certification in another area. And so that winds up being the, like the leveler in some ways. 

Christy L Honeycutt (17:54.295) 

So if we revert back to Bobby and Susie in second grade, what does that look like? How do we build that pipeline? 

Karim (18:01.399) 

Yeah, I mean, like lean in to like school. Yes. but like school is not the end all be all. Like you will be able to get instruction. I actually think if Bobby second grade, and this happens students disengage, right? If Bobby second grade is adept at math and like loves math, like accelerate their math performance. 

I don't think the traditional school system is going to be able to handle different learning speeds and different learning paces with the support that exists right now. There's no reason why you need a eighth or ninth grade reading level now to be able to function in the workplace with AI, because now you can actually talk to it. It translates. think the latest AirPod app or the AirPods that came out now in real time, you can have a conversation in two different languages. What does that mean in the future with like reading, literacy and comprehension? And so I just think like, yes, technology, school, like the traditional structure may not be the best bet. I mean, I might even talk to Bobby's parents and say like, hey, what kind of discovery are you doing? How are you keeping them motivated and stimulated in the areas that they're showing? 

Karim (19:21.83) 

Like a desire in and if Bobby like wants to do some kind of like mechanics or something like that don't be afraid that they can't get their basics covered over time like there will be alternative ways to get the core instruction the core curriculum that before you were only able to access at school. 

Christy L Honeycutt (19:39.372) 

So there's not just one path forward. There's a multitude of paths forward. 

Karim (19:44.686) 

I think, and I think this is giving us more paths forward because, and I think this also will have to break soon. You used to have to finish elementary school to go to middle school. You used to finish middle school in order to go to high school. You couldn't go to college if you didn't finish high school unless you took the GED, which was a requirement for it. I don't see the purpose of that formal structure anymore. If you are ready for college or at least college level work, why do you have to go to high school? 

Karim (20:12.419) 

So I think all of that is going to be like interesting. I mean, we're seeing it in the South a little bit too with parental choice, where families are pulling their children out of school because they're trying to curate and customize or tailor more of the education. We're starting to see the rise of these micro schools, which are small schools, like five to 50 children led by a couple of teachers without all of the administrative backlog and a little bit more parental involvement. And we're restructuring what they're learning and how they're operating. 

So I think it'll be interesting to kind of watch that and see more of it take hold to see what the, again, there's pros and cons to everything. What's the good and what the challenges are that are coming from it. 

Christy L Honeycutt (20:52.191) 

That's fascinating. So, and I know it has been a while since we've talked about this, but I know practice has a claim to fame and like really elevating your students that you work with and helping them get scholarships. It was some astronomical number that you had given me on one student that had got all of these scholarships. I can't remember what it was. Do you remember? 

Karim (21:12.581) 

I think it was like $280,000 in scholarships. 

Christy L Honeycutt (21:16.117) 

Yes, yes. It was well over 200,000 for sure. Because I remember when you shared that with me, my mind was just blown that that was accomplished. 

Karim (21:26.243) 

Yeah, I mean, and hopefully we bring down the cost of college so we don't need to be talking about those things and thinking about them in the same way. And naturally, that will happen with technology. I just don't know how fast because there are these like age-old establishments that need to be disrupted. And when you're that large, it's a lot harder to innovate and change. You also have these endowments, right, which allow universities to change at a slower pace. 

It's very different when you're running out of money and you need to move quickly than when you have the luxury of having this huge cushion and can make decisions at a slower pace. So, the real evolution has not hit higher education yet. And I think it'll be a while before we see what that looks like all the way down the road. So yeah, it's great. I think right now it's still the game, right? If you get into college, your prospects don't matter, but it's diminishing by the year. 

Christy L Honeycutt (22:24.543) 

Well, and I know there are pros and cons depending on which path you take. So, I will very transparently mention on this podcast that my son is a first-generation college student in my family. And there wasn't always an opportunity for, you know, whether, you know, I come from the low middle class, money wasn't there, scholarships weren't really there. I personally started my family early and, but it's interesting to see children as they come up navigate on what they think is available to them, what they perceive is available to them, what their family perceives is available to them versus what's actually out there in organizations and technologies, frankly, that can help upskill them or help them understand what their strengths are to move forward. So I'm curious, Karim, as we look at the future of work, what do you think, if you had to look at a crystal ball, what do you think the next 10, 20 years looks like for these guys? 

Karim (23:23.318) 

That are going to college or not going to college?  

Christy L Honeycutt (23:25.339) 

Both. Let's flip the coin on both. Yeah. 

Karim 

Yeah, why not, right? I think going to college for the next 10 to 20 years, I think you're going to have a rough exit, and I don't have to be like predicting the future to kind of say that it's happening now already. Folks are trying to figure out, like, what do I do with entry-level hires? I think what you're going to start to see is if you don't bring in an entry-level talent pool, who's going to become your middle management and your leadership later on. And I think companies are missing the boat on that. So, there's going to be another way to do it, or they're going to have to figure it out. I don't know if it's the apprenticeship model or something else. The other thing that's encouraging, obviously, is that students have access to these resources now while they're in college. And so give them a couple of years, maybe not the students coming out immediately, but the next group, five to 10 years from now, they will come out AI literate. And if they are AI literate, you won't miss a—there won't be a beep in the, in the trajectory of them. I do think there are two camps.  

There are folks out there who look at AI as being an opportunity to reduce costs and make things more efficient. I think there's another camp now that's out there that's truly figured out how to harness the power of AI and the strategic potential it can offer. And they're recognizing that, Hey, actually, if I have more people who are harnessing this exponential power, like we will have a leg up, right? Like, I want more people functioning exponentially in my company or in my organization instead of not in my company. And so I do think that narrative is still evolving. I do think there's the other piece here, and I'll just share as an employer, historically, the workforce has depended on the employer to educate them on what it is like, what they need to learn, and get trained on.  

And we had conversations around this internally as AI was starting, like people were asking us to provide AI education, and I, as the employer, like I'm still learning AI and I'm getting educated on like, how am I going to teach you on something that I don't even know yet? and we had open conversations around that. I think kudos to the team and the environment that we've built internally to be able to have that and say, listen, these things are evolving, and the onus is on all of us to learn. Right. Because we have to lead this for our schools and for our communities. 

But there is no playbook for this, and anything that you learn today is going to be obsolete tomorrow, right? And maybe not exactly, but within months, people started to see that, and they took responsibility around it, and they engaged. And now, like anyone in our company, at least on our core team, is using it, and they're using it consistently. And it's just a part of their workflow and a part of their life. And I think as we move forward a few more years or even a decade, you will start to see people working with agents. 

Karim (26:12.643) 

As crazy as that sounds, not all of their coworkers will be like real people. And so I think we will see a future like that, where you're interacting more and more with AI chat and whatnot, and not a physical person. And I could see a realm in a situation where you don't actually know the difference, because unless you have video and even with video now, you might not actually know whether it's a real person or not if you're not meeting in person. 

Christy L Honeycutt (26:38.571) 

I mean, I don't know about you, but when I get stuck in travel for 24 hours straight due to a communication error, I'm okay talking to a chatbot instead of holding on the line for two hours for a human, personally. And it does, I mean, for the most part, they answer everything the best way. And you know, I found it an interesting stat that someone shared with me a little bit ago about behavior changes. Google used to be where we would go for everything. You Googled everything. 

And now it's Chatbot GPT. Chatbot GPT is, I think, every year taking hundreds of thousands of searches from Google, that’s now landing on Chatbot GPT. I heard that, and I thought, really? And our 23-year-old daughter, she's got, we were out playing and she goes, let me just chatbot GPT it real quick. And I'm like, my gosh, it's a thing. Like that's what they use. They don't use Google. 

Karim (27:30.401) 

I do think there is a wave of consciousness that's also coming up because people know the energy consumption around this is so much greater, and the environmental impact is definitely not positive. It's not net positive here, and it's something like difficult to grapple with. I've had internal folks kind of say, “Hey, could we use PeepSeek instead of ChatGPT because it's less energy consumption and better for the environment?” And what do we do as an employer on the other side, who knows?  

There's actually an exponential difference here in terms of quality and output. those are the conversations you have to be willing and ready to have. I hope that also evolves and changes, but that's, I think, the one big hurdle right now that I see that prevents that mass market adoption and search engines. people haven't started to pay for it yet at the scale of what it costs. And at some point, the switch will flip, and someone will have to pay for it. 

Karim (28:27.187) 

It may change who has access and what we're able to run, and whether or not we're still using it as our primary search engine. 

Christy L Honeycutt (28:33.439) 

Yeah, that's a really good point. So as you help all of this, our future work, because that's what you're doing, you're pouring into the community and you're building the future workers, is there, if they came to you and said, Karim, what are the top three things that you think that are the most important guidelines or principles for me as I'm looking at what I want to do and where I want to go? What would you give people for guidance on the top three things that they should focus on? 

Karim (28:59.457) 

I will say, like, there are skills that will never disappear and will never go away. I think the ability to be reflective and self-reflect so you can grow as an individual. I put that scale really high on there, and I think wrapped in there is the curiosity, but I'd say like that's probably number one. I think two is still the ability to work with others and be liked, right? So you're likable, you care about other people, you're not just out there caring about yourself, and you're serving something bigger than yourself. I'd say that those two are really big. And then a third one, I would say, is like, get a skill, right? Like, figure out what it is that you're going to be an expert in, whether it's an industry, right? Like for me, I want to know education. I want to understand education, or its functional area, right? Like, I want to be really good at finance, or I want to be really good on the technology side. So if you can wrap your head around those three areas, I think you'll be in a really strong position regardless of what you study, what you do next, and what you pursue. 

Christy L Honeycutt (30:02.308) 

I think that's amazing guidance from one of the best in the industry. So guys, if you heard that, write it down. It was really good. Well, I am so proud of you. I mean, we've known each other now for a couple of years, and just watching you grow, and the things that you guys are doing, and the content you put out, you have Learning Loop. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Karim (30:23.283) 

Yeah, actually, I started that maybe a couple of years ago as a way to continue working on my own learning. And I have benefited from having so many coaches in my life and mentors. And one of the biggest takeaways or realizations I've had over time is that so much of what we need isn't the answer, but the right question. And we all need to flex and continue to work on, like asking better questions, because ultimately that's where the discovery and that's where the journey is in life. And so I started this as a way to accelerate my own learning. And then a couple of years ago, I actually started making it public where each week I put out a question for everyone to reflect on, and I reflect on. So it helps my learning, and it allows me to share and help others along the way. 

Christy L Honeycutt (31:09.256) 

I love that. And for those of you listening, if you haven't figured it out, this is a lifelong learner. I've watched you go get your SHRM designation. You're like, I'll just go get it. I don't know very many CEOs who would put themselves through the SHRM certification program, but you did, and you passed with flying colors, I'm sure. 

Karim (31:31.73) 

Yeah, I mean, the people side of our business is really important. And so that's something I needed to learn and stay on top of. I think getting that credential definitely made a difference. And you know, maybe I should have gotten it earlier on my side because you're, you know, every business at the end of the day, like requires you to work with people and across multiple jurisdictions. And I think the more you understand, the more you know, the more informed you can be, the better your decision-making process will be. So, yeah, I'm grateful for the knowledge and everything else, and the wisdom was out there, and I just made the time because I cared about it. So it's possible. 

Christy L Honeycutt (32:04.808) 

Yeah. Well, you are building a bright future for us and in your own home as well. I know you're bringing up a little one, and she's the cutest thing ever. What do you hope and aspire that she'll be? 

Karim (32:14.911) 

Whatever she wants, right? I mean, that's what any father would say; it's like whatever she wants. 

Christy L Honeycutt (32:20.414) 

That's the right answer, Dad. Whatever she wants. I love that so, so much. That's such a great answer. Well, Karim, as we bring this to a close, is there anything that you'd like to leave with the audience that I might have overlooked that you'd like to share? 

Karim (32:39.242) 

I think we hit the nail on the head with it. I mean, if you're not keeping up with the evolution on the AI side right now, you're not just leaving yourself behind, but you're leaving your family, your community, and the others around you behind. And maybe I didn't say this explicitly, but people learn by watching first, right? So we learn from our role models. And so when people ask me, “What is it that you can do?” I always say, “I can model, right?” Like, no one does what you tell them to do. So I could tell you all I want during this talk to go and get on AI, but if you're not doing it yourself, it's not as helpful. People watch your moves; they see how you operate. And I think for me, the most important thing we can do first is model, even as leaders, how are we using it? What are we learning? How are we operating within that context? And then yes, talk about it so that we can inspire others along the way to do the same. 

Christy L Honeycutt (33:29.259) 

Well, you are the learning CEO, if I've ever met one, with the biggest heart. So, thank you so much for your time and for bringing your wisdom to this group. And if you're watching, go like, subscribe, follow Learning Loop and Karim. You're going to continue to get good guidance. Thanks, guys. 

Karim (33:46.335) 

Thank you, Kristy. I appreciate you. 

Christy (33:49) 

Always.