An AI specialization changed Daphne’s career

Putting her AI learnings to work

Building an AI consulting business was not Daphne’s original plan when she began her MBA. She was living in rural British Columbia, working for a logistics company. Daphne’s career began to change after she moved from logistics into local government.

Six weeks into her new role, several senior leaders and administrative employees left. Much of the municipality’s institutional knowledge was lost, scattered across paper files. Daphne and one other colleague were left to make sense of projects, budgets and workflows.

AI became a way to organize the information in front of her. Lessons from her MBA courses in systems thinking and strategic information systems planning helped her map unfinished work and introduce digital processes. Within about three months, the municipality was operating far more smoothly. Working through those challenges became the foundation for Daphne’s consulting work with other municipalities.

Completing hours of work in minutes

Consider the administrative cycle surrounding council meetings. A corporate officer or municipal clerk may spend four to eight hours preparing minutes and tracking council decisions, then another eight to 16 hours preparing for the next meeting.

Daphne has configured AI-supported workflows that extract numbers and other required information, identify the responsible departments, send notifications and compile follow-up reports. The process can happen in minutes.

Saving those hours allows local government employees to spend more time responding to residents, advancing community priorities and delivering public services.

Making AI experimentation responsible

Governance, training and practical implementation now form the core of Daphne’s work with municipalities. Her sessions explore council reports, meeting minutes, bylaw and records management, GIS and workflow automation.

Privacy, security, bias and inaccurate outputs remain real concerns. Instead of allowing those risks to end the conversation, Daphne encourages municipalities to create clear boundaries for safe experimentation. Employees can then ask questions and test the technology’s capabilities within those safeguards.

Human judgment remains non-negotiable. Someone researching a policy or bylaw must open the sources, assess the evidence and verify the final result. An AI tool may produce a useful first or second draft, but it cannot accept responsibility for the decision.

“AI is amazing for the first or second draft. But whose name is on there? It’s not going to be Copilot.”

Municipal responsibility informs the governance frameworks Daphne develops. Higher-risk uses need greater oversight, while lower-risk applications can follow simpler processes. Her goal is to make AI innovation safe and accountable — and even a little fun.

The flexible MBA that moved with her career

The same period that launched Daphne’s AI career also brought considerable change to her life. During the two-and-a-half-year MBA, she changed roles, moved between cities and began travelling frequently for work. UFred’s online structure allowed her studies to move with her.

Recorded classes helped Daphne keep up from hotel rooms and airplanes, while the flexibility to manage her course schedule made the program possible as her responsibilities shifted. Paying by the course instead of covering tuition all at once also helped her budget for the MBA.

UFred offered structure without requiring Daphne to pause her life. She could continue studying while applying what she learned to each new professional challenge.

“Almost every course had something I could immediately apply at work,” Daphne says. “That practical application was probably the biggest surprise and one of the things I appreciated most.”

What university can teach that AI cannot

Before beginning her MBA, Daphne questioned the value of higher education. Information was readily available through AI, videos and online resources. Why invest in a degree when technology could provide her with the answers?

The study experience at the University of Fredericton changes her perspective. Debates with classmates required Daphne to explain her position, consider other viewpoints and sometimes change her thinking. Professors pushed her to defend her reasoning rather than simply arrive at an answer. Growth became less about accumulating answers and more about asking better questions.

Classmates brought perspectives from different industries, career stages and generations. Daphne was especially surprised by what she learned from younger students who communicated, collaborated and thought about work differently than she did. Listening to their ideas challenged some of her assumptions and helped her become a better leader in a multigenerational workplace.

Flexibility made the MBA possible. The people she learned alongside gave the experience much of its value. She came to see critical thinking, healthy disagreement, collaboration and accountability as central to her growth.

“AI can provide an answer. University teaches you what to do with that answer.”

Growth grounded in humility and continual learning

Daphne’s career changed dramatically during the degree, but confidence is not the outcome she names first. Despite having led businesses and held senior roles before the MBA, she says the experience made her more humble. Learning alongside others revealed how much more there is to learn.

“I’m just a geek. I absolutely love this stuff. I just want to learn more.”

Daphne’s desire to keep learning will soon take her even deeper into the field of artificial intelligence. She recently received a scholarship to pursue doctoral studies in generative AI and agentic AI at Golden Gate University. She begins the program this fall.

As AI continues to evolve, Daphne intends to evolve with it. Her MBA showed her why education still matters in an era of instant answers. People need critical thinking, sound judgment and a sense of accountability to decide how technology should be used. Her work keeps returning to one important question: Who is the human?

“AI is your intern, it’s your assistant, it’s your helper. It’s not the human,” she says.