And the more we can understand them and have empathy for those users, the better job we'll do as designers at that.

So if we can get deeply inside the head of a user, we can use AI to craft experiences that really create a great engagement and also a personalized approach.

Step into the world of success with your brand amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to

unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses.

I'm your host, Onica Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies,

and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success.

I am thrilled to have one of my USC colleagues on your brand amplified today, Ray Lutski.

Thank you so much for being here.

I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's always fun when we get to have conversations, especially the topic we're going to dive into today. We're both very passionate about education, higher education, and AI and the transformations we can make through these artificial intelligence tools, whether it's gen AI, large language models, you know, other kinds of processes that we have, that we know exist.

So I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself and what prompted your journey into not just being an adjunct professor,

but all of the other work that you do and specifically what you do at Element 451.

Sure. Wow. That's a lot. So I have worked, I've worked in higher education for a little over 20 years and kind of fell into it because of things I did as an undergraduate.

I was very involved with my fraternity. I was very involved

with on-campus student life and began to explore my interest in actually working in that as a

career. I originally thought I wanted to do graphic design. And then after that, I went to grad school

at Syracuse and thought I wanted to do public relations. And it didn't take long working at agencies to realize I didn't want to be in an agency.

And there's a certain kind of person who likes the agency life and there's other folks who really don't do well in the agency life.

And I was down the other side, even though I worked with some great agencies and then found my way back to higher education and moved up through student services, student life, into admissions and spent 12 years working in admissions.

While I was doing all of this, I also had this interest in pursue my PhD.

I come from a family of scholars and know people who've gone on to become psychologists and things like that and professors.

And so it was always very interesting to me.

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