In January 2021, my life was about to change forever. I opened up the DNA test that I had done for Christmas, as many people do, and I started seeing all these names I didn't recognize. They were all Italian names from New Jersey, where I grew up. But it said that I was 50, 52% Italian, what my last name was Polaski growing up. I'm not Italian. I knew that I was part Irish. My mother used to say that even though she didn't know her biological father, she knew that he came from a very wealthy Irish Catholic family. And that's it.

And I would ask my mother questions like, mom, why am I the only one with brown eyes? And she said, those Yugoslavians, honey, you got a recessive gene. That's why you got dark. You're dark. Why am I the only one that gets tan? All of my Polish cousins were so jealous of my mustache. Because starting in seventh grade, how do we not know that this face is Italian? I go to Italy. Everyone speaks to me in Italian. But it made me start thinking about the DNA. I went through my entire life thinking that I was Polish.

I thought that way. That's what we had for holidays. That's what we ate, Polish food. I was from a Polish family. But really, my DNA, the core of who I was, is Italian. And for a moment, think about this as your business and mine. The DNA in everyone's business here is made up of your experience, your education, your employees, your clients, anyone you've ever worked with. That is the DNA of you and your organization and your company.

And never more than now. Do we really need to think about this reinvention, Digging deep into the DNA of who we are, the pillar of who we are in this world of AI, things are changing so rapidly. I honestly spend 6 to 10 hours a week learning new AI so I can be your tour guide and show you how it works. But even so, you miss a day, it's like missing a year. And it's been said that our trajectory now that used to take 100 years of civilization takes 10 years. I think it's even shorter than that. Your clients, the people that you work with, are all going to go through a massive transformation. And as professional communicators, people are going to be looking to us to hold their hand through this season.

We're going to hear reskilling, retooling, downsizing, economizing, all of those words. And anyone who says, oh, you won't lose your job if you know AI, that's not true. There's going to be a lot of people who lose their jobs if they don't reinvent themselves. Because every job ad and every performance package and everyone's job list is all going to have AI literacy clearly on there. That is going to happen. There's no stopping it now. Now, my AI story is a little personal. I know many people think of me as a lady with a plumbing company.