Why is Lumen Adding AI Enablement to its People Strategy?

Lumen Technologies has announced that Ana White, formerly the company’s Chief People Officer, will have her role expanded to Chief People and AI Enablement Officer.

The move comes as the company looks to further scale its AI capabilities and better align its talent strategy to AI-led transformation. 

This follows a wider leadership transition as the company expands several senior roles to lead its enterprise growth strategy.

Changes include the announcement of Kye Prigg as Chief Commercial Operations Officer and Chris Stansbury taking on the role of President alongside his position as CFO, as well as the retirements of Mike Glenn, Chair of the Board and Hal Stanley Jones, Chair of the Audit Committee. 

On LinkedIn, Ana said: “For me, AI is about turning possibility into practice – empowering our people with the skills, tools and confidence to enhance decision making while keeping humans firmly in the loop. 

“It also means scaling responsibly, with clear accountability and transparency, so our progress is fast and sound.”

Expanded responsibilities amid AI transformation

Ana joined Lumen in 2023 as the company’s Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, where she led a global human resources strategy that spans cultural and business transformation.

Before joining Lumen, she held the role of Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at F5 for over five years – a role that involved partnering with the CEO to oversee people programmes, culture, employee experience and ESG to lead a high-performance culture. 

According to Lumen, she has a proven track record within these roles of driving programmes that both elevate the employee experience and fuel growth.

Her newly created role, says Lumen, will involve developing new ways of working to ensure that employees have the skills and capabilities they need for an AI-enabled workplace – which will involve aligning the company’s culture with its internal AI strategy 

An evolving people strategy

Embedding AI within a people strategy is becoming more important for many organisations as the need for suitably upskilled employees grows.

On LinkedIn, Ana said that the company has learned “first-hand” that “culture determines whether transformation sticks or stalls,” and therefore “it remains at the center of our AI evolution.”

This sentiment can be seen across organisations. Nearly three quarters of business leaders say that AI literacy is essential for day to day work, according to the State of Data and AI Literacy report – but nearly 60% are reporting skills gaps. 

The report stresses the need for structured upskilling within an organisation to manage this, as companies that develop these programmes are twice as likely to report a significant return on their AI investment. 

To best embed this within a company, the report recommends people leaders develop strategies that encourage collaboration between human employees and AI by embedding learning that is practical and relevant to an employees’ workflow. 

Another study from EY shows that poor alignment of people and tech is also costing organisations up to 40% of AI productivity gains. 

Kim Billeter, EY Global and EY Americas People Consulting Leader, said of the findings: “When organisations master both talent and technology, AI helps deliver outsized results, but neglecting the human side can erode those gains.”