Pitt Business’s Industry Advisory Council, a network of senior HR executives from more than twenty leading corporations — convened this summer at the Duquesne Club in downtown Pittsburgh to talk AI and leadership.
There is no textbook for this moment. The senior HR and talent executives on this council are writing the manual on leading through AI in real time — inside their own organizations, with real employees and real risk.
At this meeting, two of those leaders — Lesley Evancho, chief human resources officer, EQT and Eileen Rodgers Meade, VP, talent strategy and engagement, Highmark Health — shared where they are in that work. This is no existing theory. This is practice.
Evancho’s comment cut to the heart of it: AI can’t take a lens of value the way a human can.
“AI can’t yet look at that through the lens of your context — your values, your people, your business conditions,” she said. Her focus now isn’t just building tools — it’s building the muscle in leaders to ask the tough questions AI can’t ask for them, and to keep emphasizing the why behind every answer AI hands back.
Meade brought the view from inside Highmark Health, a 44,000-person health system, “AI hasn’t just changed how leaders develop people — it’s changed what “success” looks like,” she said. “Getting things across the finish line used to be the leadership currency. Now it’s power skills — storytelling, critical thinking, the human conversation AI still can’t replicate.”
None of the executives in the room had a shared answer. They’re learning at the speed of AI itself — the first generation of HR leaders navigating a change this momentous, with no precedent to lean on.
Which is why the Dean of the Business School, Gene Anderson, feels Pitt is in the perfect position to help organizations make the leap from technology to the context in which that technology is applied.
“You can go to Coursera and learn about a particular model or how to build an agent, but that won’t necessarily translate easily into how you and your chief operations person is going to redo their supply chain to be more efficient using agents to minimize risk in that supply chain, and so on,” says Anderson.
He told the council that the business curriculum is not just teaching how to use AI; but rather the importance of governance.
“Both our students and faculty have the kind of good, scaffolded policies on how and when to use AI. So, for example, we want to make sure that students are developing the critical thinking skills they’re going to need to be able to ask the right questions about AI output,” said Anderson.
The Pitt Business Industry Advisory Council brings together senior HR and talent executives from more than twenty leading organizations — BNY, Highmark Health, and EQT are among 22 other leading corporations, including UPMC, Dick’s Sporting Goods, U.S. Steel, and PPG — to exchange ideas, pressure-test challenges like this one, and help shape how Pitt Business prepares future talent. It’s a working group figuring out the hardest parts of leadership right now, together. To learn more about our Industry Advisory Council, contact Christopher Barlow at CBARLOW@pitt.edu