Lisa Amini

Meet Lisa Amini, Distinguished Engineer and Director of Data & AI Platforms Research at IBM, where she leads global teams shaping AI and data platforms. Over her 30-year career, she’s led groundbreaking research around the world, from being the first woman to lead one of IBM’s global Research Labs, to leading research that fueled entirely new products like AutoAI and Streams, and most recently, to infusing generative and agentic AI throughout IBM’s Data portfolio. Lisa is quick to remind people: We are only at the beginning of how AI will transform enterprises and the world. Her rule? Stay aware, stay curious, and look beyond the problems you know how to solve, to the next frontier.

Lisa’s leadership philosophy is built on openness and curiosity. Early in her career, someone told her to guard her knowledge to stay ahead. She ignored it. “When you share knowledge, you grow,” she says. “You spark ideas and invite collaboration.” Her favorite leadership hack is deceptively simple: ask open-ended questions like “What do you think?” or “Why?” because real innovation starts with asking questions.

Looking ahead, Lisa imagines a world where AI is not just an assistant. “AI will soon act autonomously in the background, like co-workers, even managing complex enterprise systems, and conducting investigations or experiments, so we can focus on creativity, judgment, and alignment to human values,” she says. For those just starting, her advice is to start small and be persistent: use AI to do a task you can easily validate, like summarize a report, automate a repetitive task, or write a small block of code. Each day spend at least 20 minutes, targeting progressively more valuable tasks. And when it comes to risk-taking, Lisa lives by her own mantra: “Never tell yourself no before someone else does. If you get rejected, gather more evidence and try again.” The best breakthroughs, she says, come from persistence and a little bit of *trouble*.