Path Found
Path Found is the podcast for anyone who’s ever asked, “What now?”
This show explores the real, messy, and inspiring journeys people take to find fulfilling work—and themselves. From pivots and side hustles to mentorship and major career changes, Path Found reveals what college never taught and counselors never said.
Path Found
The Translator
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Christina Searing didn't set out to work in AI. She set out to build "portable" business skills, inspired by her father, and let a love of travel steer her into consulting, where every three-to-eighteen months a new project felt like a new job. Over 23 years, she found her calling as a "translator" between what a business is trying to accomplish and the technology that can get it there.
In this AI & Careers conversation, Christina makes a grounded case for what AI does and doesn't change. It's a genuine game-changer as a productivity tool and accelerator, but it's not a finished work product. It hallucinates, it misses human context, and it's only as good as the context it's given. For junior professionals, that's a trap: work can look polished and accelerated while lacking richness and judgment.
Her advice to anyone entering business: don't build your identity around mastering one tool, because the tools keep changing. Build the durable skills instead. Critical thinking, communication, business judgment, curiosity, adaptability, and the human ability to connect dots across disparate threads are the skills that will matter. Get diverse experiences. Network relentlessly, because the most effective path to an early job is still a human one. And take more risks early; borrow someone else's confidence when you don't have your own, and say yes to the stretch you don't feel ready for.
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Early on in your career is the time to accept that you don't need to know all the answers, but you should jump on any opportunity where someone else sees a glimmer of confidence and that you have the ability to do something. You should take their confidence if you don't have it and just go try different things. You don't have to have your career mapped out, but don't miss opportunities to say, yes, I'll take that experience. Because you never know how your future experience is gonna build on that little nugget you learned because you said yes to that thing you didn't think you were ready for.
SPEAKER_00Hi everyone, and welcome to Pathfound, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Argandonia, and every week I talk with someone whose story proves there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. When Christina Searing was graduating from college, she didn't have a grand plan. She just knew she wanted business skills that were portable, something she picked up from watching her dad run his own business. That instinct led her into consulting, but what she didn't expect was to spend the next 23 years becoming something she calls the translator, the person who sits between what a business is trying to accomplish and the technology that can actually get it there. Today that technology is AI, and Christina has a clear, grounded take on it. AI is a powerful accelerator, but it is never the final word. And the skills that matter most are the ones that have always made us human. In this conversation, part of our AI and career series, she talks about what actually lasts in a career when the tools keep changing. And she also makes the case for taking more risks early, borrowing confidence before you feel ready, and remembering that business in the end still gets done human to human. This is Pathfound. Well, Christina, I'm so happy to have you here today and to have this discussion as part of our AI series, especially, because I think you're really involved in it. It's very much part of your your work experience. And so, you know, just to start us out, do you like to go back? I like to hear about, you know, kind of how people ended up where they did. So if you could just give us some background, like, you know, did you know kind of the track you were going to take and what was high school like for you?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Well, thank you for having me. It's it's a pleasure to to talk with you about this subject. It it's sort of near and dear to my heart in terms of what I do every day. But also I connect it to where I started because when I think about 25 years ago when I was just getting out of college and thinking what I wanted to do, all I knew was I think I want to go into business because my dad's only always owned a business. And I felt like having business skills would be portable, right? I'd at least know how to run a business no matter what experience I went into. But to go back even further, in high school, I was a good student. I'm a perfectionist in many ways. So getting good grades came easy to me. I always understood what the teacher wanted and would strive to do what the teacher wanted and get that A. So high school was easy. And I went in on to college and I studied economics and I had a passion for learning a language. And so I did a minor in Spanish, which was not easy for me. That was probably the hardest thing that I tried to do, but gave me a little resilience in that, oh, I'm not very good at this, but I'm gonna keep trying. And then I decided to go into business and I joined a consulting firm. And why that felt appealing to me is I've always liked to travel. So I thought, well, they're gonna put me on different projects and different locations, and so I'll get to see different parts of the country and maybe the world, and I'll get to learn a lot, right? Because it's a project-based environment and every project will look a little different and will require me to sort of learn different and unique skills project to project. And a project could range from three months to 18 months or somewhere in between. And so it was I felt like I was changing jobs a lot, and that to me was really appealing as a place to start. So how long did you do that? So I I stayed on the client service side for about five years, and then that got a little taxing because I was on the road every week, meaning on an airplane twice a week, flying somewhere to wherever the client was. I mainly worked in healthcare. And so what I did after that was I decided to go back to business school. I wanted to deepen my skills and other areas of business. And so business school felt like the right next step for me. And I went to business school. And after that, I actually rejoined a consulting firm, but a different firm, a much bigger firm where I thought I could get a depth of experiences in different industries. And I've been working in sort of the intersection of consulting and and business for the last 23 years.
SPEAKER_00Can you explain just a little bit like what does that mean? Consulting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So consulting is a very, it's a very wide term, but really what it means is that the companies I've worked with can have a narrow scope. So anything from we serve one industry and we seek to solve one specific problem. So cost efficiency, right? And we have narrow solutions and we're sort of hired in that direct space. And then I've also worked for larger firms where larger firms play across every industry and can provide advisory support to execute execution support across advise, implement, and operate. So that might look like come in and do a corporate strategy to come in and implement, implement a technology solution that we're going to use enterprise-wide, maybe globally as well. Or I want you to operate some part of my business for me. And so the business might outsource a portion of their operations to a consulting company to operate for them. So it's a pretty broad, it's a pretty broad term and consulting, therefore, gives a lot of people who have an ability to come into a consulting firm because maybe they're a supply chain expert or they're an expert in, you know, cloud operations, right? And and consulting firms need a lot of those skills because they want to help our companies or help the companies they serve with all of those skills.
SPEAKER_00So, what kind of skills have you built and do you like working in?
SPEAKER_01So I've learned pretty early on that the sweet spot for me was being able to be, I call myself a translator. So really getting good at understanding what are the outcomes that company XYZ is trying to achieve. And how do I use a combination of technology and organizational alignment to drive to that outcome? Right. Because I view technology as a tool, but you lead with what is what are we really trying to accomplish here? And how can I bring together and stitch together the right things to help make that possible?
SPEAKER_00I like the idea, it's a translator that you describe yourself as that. Yeah. Right. Trying to connect those things. And so what have you had kind of the same types of roles? Have you can you give us an example of kind of something you've done?
SPEAKER_01Early on in my career, I was working a lot in healthcare. So a lot of hospitals or medical device companies and was really helping them with their, we call it their revenue life cycle. So all the way from how do you once you get revenue with a with a client, like a patient walks into the hospital, what happens as you as a patient accumulates different services and charges, all the way to how does a hospital collect that payment? And that's a pretty complex revenue life cycle because there's right, there's third-party payers involved, there's Medicare. So you're dealing with government regulation. And so the hospitals always need a lot of help. And how do you shrink that time down, right? From, you know, a patient leaves the hospital to collecting that payment so you can run a hospital, right, in a profitable way. So those were some of my first early experiences, which, you know, taught me about a pretty fundamental process that that all companies have to have, right? To to book revenue and in that way. To I've had experiences where many of my roles later on were helping to develop growth offerings. So what is the next thing that we think is going to help make the company money? And how do we organize it in a way that we can go market this to our clients, right? And sort of help solve the right problems for our clients, but it will generate revenue for our company. So I've spent a lot of time in that, in that space. And most of that was around technology-oriented offerings, if you will.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And my latest one was around AI. So it's sort of that's why that's where I started to play in the space of what is AI going to mean to business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I and I think, you know, right now we're hearing a lot about AI, especially in business, because you know, dealing with numbers and analysis and those kinds of things. So what are you seeing right now? How is AI changing things?
SPEAKER_01AI is a complete game changer for business, I believe, in the form of a lot of ways. I think the first most prominent way is as a productivity tool. So AI can certainly, if you think about it as an individual user, it is extremely good at removing mundane work, making knowledge more accessible than it was before and helping people get from a blank page, I don't know where to start, to a starting point. It can be a great brainstormer in terms of accelerating how you get work done. But I really do view it as an accelerator and not a final work product because it requires a lot of human judgment and review. And we know this, right? AI can hallucinate. It misses a lot of human context because it's only as good as the context it has available to it. And so it can produce answers that appear polished, but really don't have the richness of context and thought. And so I think that's where we're at. And that's my point of view. And so if you're really junior and you're just starting out, using AI, you can get caught in that, right? Where it appears like you are really accelerating your work, but you have to be very careful depending on the type of work that you're you're using AI for.
SPEAKER_00So you talked about like removing the mundane work, and a lot of people now have said that, right? That kind of the everyday stuff. But do you see it as a real challenge for people trying to break in in entry-level positions? Because a lot of times entry-level positions are made up of a lot of that type of work.
SPEAKER_01They are. I do think this is a it's changing maybe the way you have to think about right how you go into a career such as business. Because you're right, when you're when you're early on, you are doing a lot of a lot of the things that took a lot of junior resources, a lot of time in the past, AI can do pretty effectively now. But when I think about someone's career and, you know, a lifespan of a career and the lifeblood of our company, our junior talent in a in a company the size that I work in is extremely important. And so that pipeline of talent will still be critical because we know this, right? That AI is really only an accelerator. And so I think our for people that are in college, just really thinking about how you can set yourself apart by having those unique experiences and knowing what you're going after makes you a more compelling candidate, you know, coming in. And I also think the softer skills become exceptionally more important. So, you know, communication skills, adaptability, human judgment, critical thinking, that ability to connect dots is a really important skill that I think becomes increasingly more important than it was in the past.
SPEAKER_00How do you think about it as far as your job and your path?
SPEAKER_01So I really think at the stage that I'm in and what I'm doing now is I think about it in terms of how it changes where I can contribute the most value is I lead teams, right? And I'm I have goals around how can we use AI to accelerate our impact. You know, I think about AI as a tool and sometimes even I'll call it a digital resource in terms of what can AI do alongside the human talent I have to allow us to be more productive and to get to better outcomes. And so for me, that means I need to remain exceptionally fluent in the technology. I need to have experimented it with enough personally so that I know how to direct others and that I know the implications of the technology, right? Where, what are its limits and boundaries, because there are some risks with AI, but I don't need to be the technical person any longer who knows how to build the models. I just need to understand it well enough to drive clarity to my workforce and my team as to how it changes our priorities and focus.
SPEAKER_00So it's been surprising, you know, when I decided I was gonna do these interviews on AI, and you know, I've picked people from different fields. And I really thought that people were gonna come back and say they're worried or, you know, just kind of the the downsides. And that hasn't been the case. I mean, everybody has said this, it's a tool and you know, it can really increase productivity and things like that. I do think that workforce will change.
SPEAKER_01I think workforce expectations will change, right? But I think AI allows us to do things that we couldn't do before. So, for what that means for me is that means we will be able to solve problems that we couldn't solve before. And therefore, humans can put their energy into things that we're good at, which is solving the previously unsolvable. And so to me, that creates opportunity, right? But we do have to learn to use it effectively and with the right guardrails in order to achieve that vision. And so to me, that creates new and unique jobs. But what AI is not good at is human context, connecting dots across disparate threads. We have to bring that humans have to bring that sort of innate connection and we're really, really good at that. So to me, it just some jobs will have different expectations because we're gonna have the expectation of maybe you're gonna work with AI. And this is part of your job now, right? In the past, maybe it wasn't. And then other jobs, it's gonna create new, new roles that I think weren't there before.
SPEAKER_00So, do you think, you know, right now is anything, are we missing anything? Are we overhyping AI?
SPEAKER_01I think the opportunity is huge, but the risks of AI without guardrails are being underestimated, I believe. I think you're hearing a lot about it in the news. It's starting to come up quite a bit, but there are some real potential consequences of AI without guardrails. And I think the pace of adoption may move faster than our ability to establish effective governance and accountability with the right human oversight. And I think we're at, we're starting to see we're at a pivotal moment where the technology is capable of a lot.
SPEAKER_00Do you think teachers should be encouraging students to use AI? I think it's a good tool.
SPEAKER_01And I certainly think teachers need to expose students on how to become fluent in it. But I am also of the mindset, call me a kid, you know, it grew up in the 90s, but I think that humans retain knowledge by writing things down, right? By reading the book, by reading the content and coming up with your own unique thought. And I fear that AI gives this, gives our students a way to miss that, right? Or accelerate that critical thinking process that is so important to learning how to have judgment and critical thinking skills. So I think it's a tool, but I I think our teachers have a big challenge ahead of them about how to weave that into the curriculum.
SPEAKER_00It's like, you know, I I compare it to somebody once told me an art, you know, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. And I I think that's true here. You have to learn how to do the basics of writing and reading for yourself, not having somebody summarize it for you before you can then use it for that tool.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00But that's hard. It's hard to because it's so readily available. It's right, it's it's so there.
SPEAKER_01It's hard, but how will you know that the AI is wrong if you haven't learned those things? Exactly.
SPEAKER_00And I would imagine that in your field, in in business across the board, no matter kind of what area, that it becomes really apparent quickly if someone's just relying on AI to do that. It's very obvious. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And we can't accept that, right? So that that doesn't work. So we do need our students to come to learn the critical thinking skills. And so that's the challenge, I think, is that both are important, but you have to know how to use this really powerful tool.
SPEAKER_00And it'll be interesting to see as you know, the kind of this this new AI generation comes through, graduates, and then is applying for jobs. Will that come through? And will that be a problem? That, hey, we don't have enough students who can do this on their own and they're only relying on AI. Even though at the same time I interviewed somebody else who said they absolutely need to be using AI because that'll be one of the first things they do when they come and work for me.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's true too. So they have to know how to use the how to prompt AI and to use it to accelerate work. And so, yes, when I'm think about it in a teaching environment, they absolutely need to be fluent in how do I use it as a tool, but you have to, they also have to know its boundaries and that it's only as good as the data, right? That has been fed into it. And so that makes it sort of narrow in its focus and the human has to bring the context.
SPEAKER_00So, what would you tell somebody that wants that's majoring in business that would like, you know, wants to go into consulting or anything in the business field? What would you, what advice would you give them?
SPEAKER_01It's a great question. And I wish I could go back. This isn't probably one to the most one of the most fascinating times, I think, to be entering the field because of what's going to be possible. But I think first and foremost, I wouldn't build your identity around mastering one technology. I think become fluent in it, understand and stay ahead of, or at least read about the technology landscape, what is possible with these tools and become fluent by personally experimenting with them. So you know how to use them. But tools will continue to change, and we're seeing that already. The landscape's changing so quickly. But the capabilities that won't change and that will last are critical thinking, communication skills, business judgment, curiosity, and that ability to learn and be adaptable and pivot quickly. Those are really innate human skills that will still be critically important in the future, and especially in business. Business gets done human to human, right? I don't see a world where AI is going to sell to a human in the future. Humans are still gonna do that. And so those skills that allow humans to be effective communicators to sell a business deal or partner with another business, those things will still be needed and are super durable skills. So I would, I would recommend to focus there, right? And to really go get diverse experiences. And depending on what you want to do, whether you want to go deep in a certain field or broad in a certain field, having different experiences that allow you to learn how to sort of connect and use AI to solve a problem, right? It will be really helpful in the future. Hopefully that's helpful.
SPEAKER_00What about what kind of advice would you give? Just even people who don't want to get into business, do you think it's similar advice? Still use these tools, but continue to grow the other human capabilities?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think if you're I think if you're a medical professional, right, there's tons of opportunity to use technology to accelerate the mundane and to allow our medical professionals time to focus on curing disease, but applying that, right, that technology effectively to enable us to sort of unlock those problems. So I think in the medical field, there's certainly opportunity to do that. But you know, at the end of the day, just using that as an example, in the medical field, communication skills are incre incredibly important, right? I mean, you've got to communicate with patients. It's a very human-to-human field in in many regards. And I think the same is true for manufacturing. Manufacturing technology can go a long way to do things that we've never been able to do in the past, right? Whether that's identify defects, identify, you know, areas where we could proactively do maintenance, you know, use robots in the many in right in the manufacturing context. There's a lot of ways to use it, but humans still have to direct a lot of the work. And so, yes, I think my advice would stay the same.
SPEAKER_00How does someone even just graduated? What advice would you give them on getting a job, making those connections?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a great question. I think getting out of your comfort zone and networking and getting to know a lot of people, whether that's through informational interviews or hey, I'd love to come, you know, shadow you on your job, right? And really learn what you do. I think just getting out there and meeting people and and learning a little bit more about, you know, do they have jobs available? I I still believe that the most effective way to get a job, especially when you're early in your career, is through a human network. And so while you can apply to jobs through job postings, I mean, a lot of we just know this, right? You're it's like finding a needle in a haystack, right? Because a lot of companies see that many resumes. But if you meet someone and you make an impression that you're a go-getter, right? And you're willing to learn and you have good communication skills, and that goes a long way. Those are the kinds of people that an employer wants to hire, especially early in a career.
SPEAKER_00So you minored in Spanish, paired that with economics, which I think is fantastic. Did you find that useful later on?
SPEAKER_01The Spanish, not particularly, but it was fun. I think it it was probably good for my for my brain. And I'm still trying to learn Spanish to this day, but the economics certainly was helpful. I use it every day in my job, that background.
SPEAKER_00So I asked because I think, you know, we that we have these in these college campuses that just have so many majors and minors and opportunities, and we tend to stay in one part of the campus, and that's where we take our classes. And other than GE, that's all we're exposed to. So, what minor do you think would be helpful for someone who is majoring in business or econ and wants to go into that field? What minor do you think would be important?
SPEAKER_01I listen to a lot of technology CEOs, and that's certainly the field I play in. And I hear a lot of talk about the importance of the liberal arts, right? And that a lot of technology companies are really looking for liberal arts majors. They're not looking for coders necessarily. They are. They're looking for engineers and that kind of thing, but they want people who know philosophy, right? They want people who understand human context and history. And so I think that's a pretty interesting connection, but it enables you to learn in a completely different field, but it gets at that point I was talking about about how can you learn how to connect dots that other people don't see? That's a skill that's gonna be so important to be that translator of I understand the technology, but I really understand the business outcome. And I can see what solution and how we might bring these things together. And I think that's the reflection when I hear of, you know, technology CEOs talking about why a philosophy degree they were looking for people who have, you know, a different way of thinking could be really helpful.
SPEAKER_00I I always go back to anthropology. It's all about people.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. That's another good one. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00Did you have any mentors along the way?
SPEAKER_01I did. Yes. Mentorship is a big part of what I've learned. It's just part of part of how you learn to navigate a big company, is that you can't navigate it without a lot of allies in your corner. And so I've had a lot of female mentors. I've had a lot of, you know, more seasoned male mentors that I've learned a ton about leadership and how do you gain followership? And that's been really, really helpful because that's probably where I'm at today. One of the hardest skills is learning to be a really effective leader of, you know, a diverse workforce.
SPEAKER_00What do you think makes a good leader?
SPEAKER_01I think having a vision that you feel passionate about, driving clarity to the team and making sure the environment is a healthy place where everybody on the team can contribute. That's great. There's others, but those are those are important to me. When you're early in your career, building friendships and mentor relationships with your peers at the same level becomes super important. Building mentors at the level above you and at the senior levels is also super important. Your peers, because those are the people that while you may not all stay at the same company, you will have opportunities down the road, whether it's 10 years from now, 20 years from now. And I've seen that, right? If you stay in business, it's a pretty small, it's still a pretty small place. And those peers that you built relationships with will be people that can help you in the future, maybe have job opportunities for you in the future, be on your team someday. And so I can't underestimate that, just the power of human connection and learning from each other and building that, you know, that group of followers and allies right throughout your career, whether they're at your company or not.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's I I think that's great advice. So looking back, you know, or looking now where you're at, what would you go back and tell your 21-year-old self? What advice would you give yourself or tell or just tell yourself?
SPEAKER_01To take more risks early on, being very vulnerable. I felt like I couldn't take on a new risk unless I felt I could very confidently deliver it. And I think that helped me back to some regard, right? And I think early on in your career is the time to accept that you don't need to know all the answers, but you should jump on any opportunity where someone else sees a glimmer of confidence and that you have the ability to do something. You should take their confidence if you don't have it and just go try different things. Because what that's taught me is I've learned to do that and take on stretch roles or things that I didn't really feel like I had the expertise to go do is that I learned a lot from little failures along the way, right? Not knowing all the answers teaches you how to be resilient and to figure it out and learn new skills, right? And and sort of stretch into areas that were uncomfortable before. And so I think that's my biggest advice is that you don't have to have your career mapped out, but don't miss opportunities to say, yes, I'll take that experience. Because you never know how you your future experience is gonna build on that little nugget you learned because you said yes to that that thing you didn't think you were ready for.
SPEAKER_00Christina, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing that perspective. I I think it's it's helpful, especially because we're hearing so much about AI. And I think understandably, young people are worried. So I think this was this was great to hear. So thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for listening to Pathfound. If anything we talked about today connected with you or gave you a new perspective, we'd love it if you subscribed, left a review, or shared the episode with someone you care about. You can also find us on Instagram at Pathfound Podcast. To explore more stories, resources, and ways to get involved, visit Keystoneetwork.org. This podcast is just one part of the journey. A Keystone Network, we're helping young people and anyone figuring it out as they go build meaningful futures one step at a time. A huge thank you to my podcast editor, David Strutt. You can find him on LinkedIn for helping bring these stories to life, and to Elizabeth Minor at Silvermine Creative for the beautiful artwork and web design. And if you're on your own path, navigating the unknown, making a pivot, or simply figuring it out as you go, just know you're not alone. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Argandonia, and I'll see you next time on Path Found.