Black in technology? Why in technology? Why in technology? Why black in
technology? Why in technology? Why in technology? Welcome everyone to the Blacks
and Technology BIT tech Talk podcast show where we talk to black people who are
engineers, innovators, educators, inventors, change makers and entrepreneurs doing amazing things
in the world of technology. The BIT tech Talk podcast is where they show
how they are stopping the divide by sharing their stories, experiences, ideas,
knowledge and perspective on tech within the BIT community. I'm very happy to introduce
you all on this episode of the podcast to our guests on Nicole mccaley of
Skilled, How are you? I'm wonderful and I'm excited to be here.
Thank you. Right, So, I guess I like to start off usually
when I'm doing the podcast with where you're from? So can you tell us
a little bit about yourself? Absolutely? So. Of course I have no
accent, so you would never know this, but originally I'm from Springfield,
Massachusetts, born there, but I left when I was about ten years old,
so don't really have an accent. It kind of lived all over,
I would say. Great. And I actually learned about Skilled Dora on LinkedIn.
I just saw a lot of your videos, and I was so curious
by the name, and can you tell me about where the idea for skilled
Dora came from? Absolutely, we get that question quite a bit. So
first of all, I'll start with the name and then I'll tell you where
it all came from. So Skill Dora we were very intentional with naming our
platform because the word dora means gift, like to give. Some want a
gift, and we wanted to give skills as a gift. And oddly enough,
skill Dora came about from one of the greatest ideas that fell flat on
its face, did not work at all. And I'll tell you very quickly
what that was. Is. When we first started, we thought we were
going to be very typical, like a regular you to Me academy or LinkedIn
Learning, where we would have experts who I would teach how to build courses
online course programs, and then at the end they would sell them on the
skilled door marketplace. Sounds simple enough, right. The only problem with that
is that when we got down to helping the experts build their courses, nobody
wanted to get in front of a camera. No one liked the editing process,
and no one liked the time that it took to sit down and actually
build their course and be the spokesperson. At that point, my husband was
like, we have to figure out, how can we still have an online
course platform and use AI. If we could use AI instructors, we didn't
have to depend on people, and that was the beginning of the birth of
the AI aspect of Skildra, where we have AI instructors. Awesome and we're
either of you involved in tech before you started this business or yes, yes,
and so together with my husband de Mario mclwaine, so de Mario is
the tech co founder and I'm more of the business strategist innovator co founder,
and together we're married, would make a perfect team. He's always been in
tech, so we've had many many tech companies before this. We've been in
the e learning space. He was in UI ux design, He's built websites
for HBCUs and apps and programs, and so we very much have been in
that educational tech space, but nothing like Skildra before where we've added the AI,
the artificial intelligence element. That part is new. I'd love to hear
that you identified like complementary skills for both of you to really add value to
the business and to the company, and just to hear the naming and to
know the meeting behind it with door meaning gifts very cool. The bit Foundation
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learn more, visit Foundation dot blacks and Technology dot net. Join now and
remember membership is free. So can you tell me more about these AI digital
human instructors you have? How do they work? And how did you know
that that was something? Like you said, your husband thought of adding it,
But how did you know of something that could work for Yeah, very
good questions, because I'll tell you we didn't know. We didn't. So
here's what's funny when you think about the way that skill Dora is set up,
so just so that the listeners really understand the full platform. The platform
is basically a continuing education and online academy marketplace for upskilling right and reskilling,
which typically you would get with a human prisoner. Right, a human expert
is teaching you this course. And so while we knew that AI digital human
avatars would solve the problem of allowing us to build content quickly and certified programs
quickly. What we did not know is how the learners in the market would
receive them. So really two different elements that you have to go through in
terms of how we even found out about this. This was about a year
and a half ago before chat GPT, and I remember he had the idea
and thought, geez, I wish we could use AI in some way.
And this is before it was really popular, so it wasn't like as popular
as it is now. And I just so happen to find or come across
an add for what's called generative AI. So that is actually a term that
if you're listening, you want to get familiar with. Generative AI is the
aspect that these AI startup firms will produce coding that allows you to generate anything.
Just like chat gpt allows you to generate a prompt or a question,
Generative AI can make things come to life, right. Digital images have human
likeness, that's really what it is. Essentially, we happen to come across
them by accident, and the next step was can we license this IP?
How do we get this IP in the US. As it turns out,
the company wasn't. They weren't located here in the US, and so we
had to do partnership deals and we were the first one to bring generative AI
from an educational aspect to the US. So we're really proud of that.
And that's how we found out about it. That is awesome, didn't right
up my ali? I'm an IP attorney, and so that gets me really
excited. So, yeah, are you able to say a little bit more
about where you sourced it from? Was it Asia or India or yeah?
It was actually and I'm just remembering where they are. They are in the
Middle Eastern, so like the Egypt area, that whole region, and yeah,
the company is did and so let's talk about that because it got really
interesting and I'll tell you why. When we first started, we then had
to figure out how do we sell this? Right, this is so new?
Are we selling the AI component? And so we made this huge mistake,
which that's how we learned, So that's why I'm talking about it.
When we first got it, we were so excited that we were like,
oh, we have AI courses, AI generated courses, and we were selling
like everything in our tagline was like AI avatar instructed courses, this is who
we are. And come to find out, the world really wasn't ready for
it. They didn't know what does that mean? And why do we care?
Right? Like, so what? And it was so interesting. We
spent all this investment in time and nobody cared about that angle. And so
what we had to figure out is that it wasn't the AI piece that made
us special. It was what skill Dora was able to do with that intellectual
property. So the AI by itself was nice, but it wasn't novel enough
if it doesn't produce an end result. And what we really had to start
selling was our ability to take that AI use our trade secrets to produce a
state of the art online course program in education. So that was the secret
sauce is what we could do with the AI and how we banked in emotional
intelligence into the artificial intelligence to give the learner a human like experience. That
was our claim to fame, and that's what we started to sell is that
we are a continuing education provider who happens to use a I avatars to teach
the courses. Awesome, yes, because that is that distinction you made is
hard for me to express to my clients sometimes. Yeah, yeah, canda
to take a few conversations to walk them through. But when they do finally
see that nuance and like you said, are able to see the value add
on top of the technology and what they're really what their business proposition is to
the market, Yeah, it just takes them to new levels. And the
other thing that was really interesting of what you said is you know it's okay
to fail up right, to try and test and experiment in a way and
be open to what comes out with BIT is always focused on forming new partnerships
and opportunities to assist the community and our members with their continued professional growth and
development. If you'd like to partner with us, send an e mail inquiries
at blacks and Technology dot net. And I am curious to about the course
catalog and how you choose what course is to make available. Is it where
you do the survey or can you walk us through that process? Absolutely,
I'm happy to do that. So once we've so very I'm loving how you
prefaced the questions as well. So once we figured out, oh this is
our products, right, it's not these just the AI it's the end result
of what we're doing. Then we had to actually be a business right,
and we had to say, okay, so what's the business right, what
are people paying for? Why are we here? And this is when we
determined that what we were going to do is offer a lean mean course catalog
of twenty certification programs. So to be clear, each year, Skildora will
position twenty lean mean programs where a very agile company. By the way,
I'm a certified agile coach and global trainers, so we're into not being heavy
and clunky, but lean and what we wanted to do strategically, it made
sense to say, if we have a catalog of twenty, then we need
to be in a position where we can repurpose these twenty across multiple sectors and
segments. So for example, even though there are twenty, we can sort
of resell or re license. Is our model license these twenty across five different
learning categories, right, so they all fit somewhere nicely multiple times across personal
development, professional development, leadership development, career advancement, and entrepreneurship. So
it was not only courses that could fit nicely across five different categories of learning,
but also courses that appeal to multiple professional industries. So when you start
to think about it, that twenty could easily turn into a multibillion dollar category
because you can resell it many times to different industries from project managers right from
agile professionals who need similar courses, har professionals, risk management professionals. So
that plays a huge part in how we determine the year after year what the
specific and acute category of courses will be. Do they fall nicely across multiple
segments? I see? And so there is licensing a part of that when
you say resell or yeah, so licensing. So we essentially have I would
say three models to think through. So ore, and then we can talk
about the pivot. When we first started skill Dora was largely a consumer direct
model, right where basically think of hey, we're an online marketplace. You
need upscaling or reskilling, sign up as a member. Membership is free and
pay as you learn. Right, so as you need a certification and you
are the adult learner, you're to pay for an hour course or for a
four hour course. You're going to pay your money as you go gain your
certification in your credits. Because we're accredited. That means you could also get
continuing educations or in illegal profession clies right which you're used to continue learning.
Yep, So we do qualify for that because we're accredited. Well that's when
we first started. Though when we first started, we were doing a consumer
direct play. We quickly realized that we needed to pivot if we wanted to
scale, because going after one to one to one to one at a time
would be very timely. Instead, we started to move more so towards a
B to B model and then the business to business model. What that looks
like is licensing. So the second model is where we would partner with organizations
of any size and scale, whether it's a workforce development company, whether it's
PMI, whether it's SCHERM. By the way, those are real partners today
PMI and SCHERM. We partner with them and we basically offer them the opportunity
for an annual license, and we say, listen, if you license this
course in bulk for your members or for your people and organization, and you
get an account level license, you're going to save money. You're going to
get a guaranteed point of contact and account representative, and you'll be able to
get reports right, so it makes more sense as an organization to just secure
a license. So that's our most popular model. And then our third model
is a model where we just become a preferred learning provider where a company says
we're not going to pay for a license, but we promise to send all
of our professionals over to you for cls or for continuing education credits. So
those are our main models now though, two hefty business models, and now
the consumer direct plays more of a backseat, but it's still available. Yeah.
I think flexibility is always good right where folks can engage in like different
ways and so you're not necessarily turning folks away, you're just giving them different
options. Absolutely, No, that's that's really cool and good to know that
you know for my area too, that you have some offerings as awesome.
What's up everyone, We hope that you're enjoying this episode of the Blacks and
Technology BIT tech Talk podcast. Do you or someone you know have a dope
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a blacks and Technology dot net, or click on the link and the show
notes and fill out our form. We're looking to hear from you. Tell
me more about the ups and downs. You definitely talked about the opera,
like when you talked about the pivot and knowing when to do something differently,
But can you tell me maybe one thing that you wish you had known before
you launched this business that if you were speaking to someone who's just starting out
or you wanted to give them advice, you to be sure to tell them.
Yeah. There, listen, I have a lot a lot of things,
as you can imagine. The thing to really pick apart here is a
couple of things right which is gonna set up the points that I give.
We are husband and wife team, we are black minority owned, we are
in the tech space, and we happen to also be an AI at tech,
which is still relatively new. So we faced challenges where some people didn't
want to see us here. Some people wouldn't give us our credit right like
we would do podcasts or we would do a big launch event and when we
would get it later, they changed the narrative. They didn't put Skilldor's name
in it. Right. That's the problem, and that's something that I handle
assertively. I would say to go and get that rectified. We also broke
history, and it's important that we say that every time someone hears my voice.
I need everyone to know that a black company made world history when we
became the first to accredit an e learning platform that uses AI avatars that had
not been done, and by doing so, that now opens up the future
of education, so that colleges in the futures and university could foreseeably use digital
humans to teach accredited courses and to offer So we did it first, and
so we ran into some resistance where certain groups didn't want to acknowledge us or
change the narrative. We also ran into and this is just a word of
caution, we ran we had to seek litigation already because we as soon as
we launched last year, we had a group fast and fear curiously pursue us
to work with us under the auspice of helping us raise venture capital, and
we had them sign all of the NDA's, all of the confidentialities, all
of the legal things you should have a partner do, only to find out
that they were looking to encringe on our operation and learn our trade secrets.
And we found out within a few weeks that they were trying to offer the
same thing and use our methodology. Luckily, we were tipped off by our
IP partner who said, hey, they're over here trying to get quotes and
they're trying to show me the same product that you all have developed. So
lots of lessons learned. One thing I would say is a few things pay
attention to when it's time to pivot. For one, right, notice when
something is working well, and notice when something is not working well. And
the only way you can do that is you have to inspect often and you
have to adapt quickly. Right, So continue to inspect is this working and
if it's not working after And what we do is if something that we put
a cute focus on doesn't work after two or three weeks of copious efforts,
we already have a plan B in mind to pivot too. That's just the
world we're in. You can no longer wait six months. You just can't,
right, because your competition. Yeah, and then the second thing I
would say is be cautious when you have something unique and novel and new and
you get a swarm of guests who are uninvited who suddenly come around and want
to infringe and partner closely with you, Just be mindful, and I would
say, honor the game plan at hand before you start adding in new people
who haven't earned the trust, because that was a lesson learned. I think
we were pretty shattered when we found out that the person who was operating under
the auspice of being a team member who it pursued us, was actually trying
to sell our product underneath us. Wow. Wow, Yes, you know,
it's a lot of those learnings there. The reason why you know,
I do do the work that I do in the IP legal space to especially
educate our people on pro bono, you know, I hope workshops and I'll
try to explain to them again the importance of what you were saying with NDAs,
but also being mindful of scaling too quickly, you know, to resist
the urge as you're you know, achieving successes, to really be disciplined and
diligent and and try to, like you said, sus out and vet who
you're doing deals with. Because you never know, and of course you know
you can do your best and still think things can happen, but just to
take that time to build that infrastructure and discipline before you know, you go
and add on to which you already have going on. But the other amazing
thing about what I've heard from what you said is just the feeling of persistence.
That's what I took away from persistence and determination and the point about my
goodness making history. It's it's another another thing about our culture and our people
that I try to remind folks of, and I'm so glad that you share
it. Is to pass down those winds, you know, to share the
winds, to to really relish in it. It's okay to you know,
recognize and pat yourself on the back for all these things that you're doing,
because it is going to inspire someone else, and like you said, it's
creating such a large impact that down the line future generations will benefit from.
And and that's really why I was actually part moved to do the podcast,
was to leave a legacy behind. So you know, other people coming down
the pike who are listening or looking for resources, they do a Google search
or something, and they can hopefully find something that's helpful to them, even
if you're not. You know, that's not what you're looking to achieve.
Just to hear that you achieve that was just I just want to let you
know that that was really, really powerful, and it's it's something that I
think you should spread beyond blacks and technology and hopefully we're able to share.
Well. Yeah, listen, we put that in every tagline, like now
on our LinkedIn tagline, it's on our signature, it's it's everywhere. And
could I say one more thing about it that I think is probably the most
important for us, especially if it's okay, I would say no when you
see an opportunity, like sometimes we move so fast. Sometimes our innovative spirit
is so innate inside of us that we don't take intentional inventory to see that
we've done something great to your point, and I share that firsthand because I
want to tell you when we applied and we went through this six week process
for accreditation and then we got it. I remember that we got the email
that says congratulate Lei's skill Door is now an accredited platform. And I remember
sitting there looking at the letter for a second and it was only because I
questioned and said, wait a minute, are we the first? Are we
the first company in history too? I think we're the first to use AI
avatars and get an accreditation, right, And because I questioned it, and
I asked, and I went back and they said, oh my gosh,
let me check. And then they checked. And by the way, this
is a London based global accrediting body. They went and checked and it took
like a week, and then all of a sudden they came back and said,
don Nicole mcwaine, we're happy to inform you that you are the first.
And let me tell you, we went crazy with the announcement. Okay.
My point is that we almost missed the opportunity, because when opportunity knocks,
sometimes no one is going to tell you. No one is going to
tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, you did something great.
Look into this. And I'm also fully convinced that the to why our ancestors
didn't always get the credit for making the peanut butter or flying the plane first,
it's sometimes they were just aloof and unaware that they were the first ones
to do something great. We've got to be better at recognizing our opportunities definitely
one hundred percent, one hundred percent when I educate, educate people about the
number of black inventors we have, and again why I was inspired to pursue
IP law in particular because of our innovation and because, as you said,
we've been exploited in the past or not given the credit, you know,
for all the modern technologies we enjoyed today. And it's just it's so so
true. So I'm so glad that you said that, because, yeah,
oftentimes and maybe missing people people don't tell us. Yeah, yeah, but
along kind of similar lines, I just wonder, is there someone who inspires
you or was a mentor to you along the way, or you know,
I tell people it's it's my family, you know, they they motivate me
every day and just you know, like I said, ancestors and folks who
are still living who just did amazing things that I look around me and I
just feel so blessed to have those examples. And do you have a product
or service that you would like to share with a bit audience or maybe you'd
like to support the bit community and do your part in helping us with stomping
the divide. Start by sponsoring one of our podcasts. Please email us at
contact us at blacks and Technology dot net. Do you when you think about
it, can you can you identify not by name necessarily, but just you
know, people who you feel have been instrumental in your journey. Oh,
there's been so many instrumental people. I mean with starting with my family,
of course, you know I have I come from a very driven have a
West Indian family, and so oh yeah do you yeah? So then you
know, uh, and being raised by them initially where they just did not
play and everything was a fable and a lesson and a story. And I
was like, oh, here we go. Here's a story about the bee
and the wasp and why they don't make honey and one does. So there's
there were all these lessons that at the time I didn't realize were life lessons,
and so I have to give credit first to them. But then along
the way, I'm constantly inspired by by Oprah. Right, I'm inspired by
are you I'm not doing that when I tell you, like, oh that
she's just talking about Trailblazer in her story. Oh my goodness. Yeah,
same, Yeah, I'm inspired. I'm inspired by Oprah of all people.
I also take inspiration from at the time when I was way back in corporate
America and there was a manager who I thought was ridiculously hard on me,
who expected too much that I couldn't stand back in a day. Now,
I have nothing but admiration for this person for because I get it, I
get everything. I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, he was
trying to help me and I didn't even see it. So there are a
number of people that I glean from. I'm also inspired by my husband Mario,
who's not on this call. He's the CEO of Skill Dora, and
I'll tell you why he and I are night and day. I am very
detail oriented, very processed, the overthinker, and he is just get it
done. Like you're doing too much, just have several seats, get it
done. You know. He's like, he's just one of those let's just
do it and believe in, believe in what you did and keep moving right.
And so based on that and learning how to work with him and his
personality difference, I've become a better person. So beautiful and yeah, just
so important. And yeah. My mom side of the family is from Saint
Kittiniva's, which is the Leeward Island, so look smaller islands. So where's
your family from? Yeah, so Kingston, Jamaica. My grandfather was from
Kingston, Jamaica. And then my grandmother was from Barbados. So yeah,
small world again, Yeah, exactly, very cool. Yeah, and then
I have two last questions for you. You don't mind, So yeah,
I'd like to ask folks, because it sounds like you're a planner. Yes,
so where do you see skilled door growing in the next five years or
so? Yeah? So this is really we have to answer this question a
lot, as you can imagine, for like venture capitalists and all this kind
of stuff. And I would say that right now, skial Door is on
the path forward to partner with as many professional organizations as possible, right who
whose certifications require continuing education. So this would be like the Bar Association,
right, p Am, I all of those professional certifications. We want to
partner with those organizations. Now, where we see ourselves going in five years
and taking us to our exit strategy is then being acquired, well initially partnering
with like these the u to mes of the world, these bigger organizations who
are saying, hey, we don't have an AI education component. Yes,
we have traditional learning, but in order to compete, we're going to need
to partner with the skill Dora. So we want to be the go to
platform and provider for AIE learning in the very next three to five years.
I can only imagine they're already knocking down on your doing. Oh yeah,
yes, and even then you're going to have a lot of options available to
you. Absolutely awesome. Well, I just wish you the most success with
that, and I am so excited to see your growth and I'm going to
be watching because I really do believe that education is key. Now. I'm
a perpetual learner and I try to encourage my girls, you know, who
are four and seven that no matter what age they are, that they should
always continue learning and make that a priority. And I just get so excited
for, like you said, what you're able to do and how you're able
to transform the education industry because it's so needed and just a phenomenal platform.
Just doing my own little search on it, and yeah, thank you,
thank you so much. Yea. And I was just gonna say, and
before we conclude, just in terms of just like a call to action or
just to share with everyone as a gift you know from skill Dora. Because
we are an AI a tech company. We now see that the world is
seeing an AI vision right, everything is artificial intelligence, and we are really
pushing upskilling and reskilling. And we would love for your listeners to take full
advantage of our new Artificial Intelligence Essentials course. It is a certified per program
and we would love her everyone to go there and just check it out and
really help upscale themselves so that you're not affected by AI job loss. And
if I can just give the URL, YEP, it's it's my skill Dora
dot com forward slash AIEC, which stands for Artificial Intelligence Essential Certification. So
my skilled Dora forward slash a I e C so so timely and I'm definitely
going to share that as well with the blacks and technology community and make sure
that folks are aware of this of this course. And then yes, just
wrap it up with something like, where's one place that you'd like to travel
to that you've never been? Oh my gosh. So if you had asked
me this last year, I would have said Hawaii, but I have since
been to the beautiful islands of Hawaii. So now we want to go to
Paris. That definitely want to go to Paris, and I understand that my
husband is busy planning something, so I have my fingers crossed. I don't
know. That sounds wonderful both you know Hawaii and then yes, pay it's
yes. Oh I'm hoping that he comes through for you there and he yes
that she'll be telling me about that trip. You know, we definitely have
to connect after this. We're in somewhere in Charlotte. I'm definitely a big
foodie and have a lot of good recommendations. Oh yes, oh same,
Listen, we do have to cut You're you're speaking my love language now girl
when you said food. Yes, So it's been a pleasure, don And
I'm really genuinely wishing you all the best, and I just want to thank
all of our listeners. This is Natasha Wallen Robinson for Blacks and Technology,
and we wish you a great day and good luck on your journey. Take
care now, thank you. What in technology? Why? Why in technology?
In technology? Lacks in technology, lacks and technology why lacks in technology