Welcome to the seventh episode in our “Meet the Mentor” series where we get to know Flatiron School mentors in an interview-style conversation. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up, these stories are packed with practical advice, encouragement, and insights to help you navigate your own path in tech. Each article includes a mentor snapshot + links to follow their work, their video interview, and their Q&A transcript with links to any references.
Follow along and discover the people shaping the future of tech, one student at a time!
Meet James Hutson
Driven by curiosity and a commitment to lifelong learning, James Hutson brings decades of experience to the intersection of AI, technology, and education. As a facilitator at Flatiron School and a professor overseeing AI workforce development, he prepares the next generation of learners and professionals in the digital age.
In his Meet the Mentor interview, he shares how a career that began in art history evolved into pioneering work in AI and human-centered technology. From building XR labs to leading institution-wide AI studies, his journey is a testament to adaptability, continuous learning, and embracing unexpected opportunities. Along the way, he highlights the importance of mindset, problem-solving, and curiosity in mastering new tools and staying ahead in today’s rapidly changing tech environment.
Snapshot
Current Job Title: Professor, Department Head of Art History, AI, and Visual Culture and Flatiron School facilitator for Data Science and Advanced AI and Machine Learning
Current Employer: Lindenwood University, Flatiron School
Past Employers: The College Board, Qualia AI Consulting
Experience: 6+ years in Artificial Intelligence
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshutsonphd/
Technical/Professional Skills: AI, Virtual Reality (VR), Gamification
Teaching/Mentoring Experience: He is currently teaching AI at Lindenwood University as a full-time professor and working as a facilitator at Flatiron School.
Words of Wisdom: “Get used to [being uncomfortable]. If you want to grow, you want to change careers, you want to advance, you want to adapt to what’s coming, it will be uncomfortable. And you might pull back from that, but resist that urge.”
Favorite Part of Your Job: “It puts good out in the world, and you do see that periodically. You realize there’s an exponential effect to you mentoring them, them sharing that information and attitude with others, and so on and so forth.”
Meet the Mentor Interview with James Hutson
Q&A Transcript
Introduction: Who are you and what do you do now?
- Can you share a bit about yourself, and what you’re working on these days?
- I’m a mentor at the Flatiron School working with some amazing folks there. My full-time role is as a professor overseeing AI workforce development for the region here. Although I do oversee several other programs, I actually have a background. My first PhD was in art history. My father was an artist. And so I came out here originally in 2010 to set up the art history department. Then, I was made an administrator to create online and graduate programs which I knew nothing about. So, I had to go back and get degrees in business. Right before the pandemic hit, they wanted us to open an XR lab. I went back and got a graduate degree in game design, so we could build out simulations and have student-to-student interactions when we couldn’t actually be together. Then, I was told to go forth and do AI in 2021. We started institution-wide studies and have over 200 of them now. By the time November rolled around, we already had about a dozen studies when ChatGPT was launched in November 2022. And then I realized which way the wind was blowing, so I went back and got a PhD in AI as well. If my trajectory is any indication of the success of many of the students at the Flatiron School, it’s that you never stop learning and you have to pivot with the circumstances and get the skills that you need when you need them.
- What excites you most about what you do there?
- The largest project we’re working on is upskilling industry municipalities, working with economic development councils and the economic development administration to create training programs. We have an AI essentials, and I’m gathering just mountains of data through that as well as where people are actually at and what we need in order to have an AI-ready workforce. A lot of the human elements behind it really prohibit uptake and learning, such as fear, anxiety, and misinformation from the media, etc. All that research is coming together and informing how we actually approach it. What we’re finding, as with the classes we teach here at Flatiron, is that it’s not solely and not even largely about the technical skills. It’s about the perspective, the culture, and really an attitude shift, a habit of mind shift that needs to happen. Then the technical skills can follow, but it’s really about teaching problem-solving, a growth mindset, and being willing to learn new things. It’s also about knowing that learning new things doesn’t threaten your identity, your station, or your job, etc., and that we all have to learn new things.
- Are there any other specific skills that you’re trying to identify and help people grow in?
- As with all the research, we know exactly what skills are valuable now. It’s not in doubt. We know definitively which are declining in desirability by employers and which are increasing, and that’s directly proportional to developments in AI and its capabilities. That’s why the tech skills go hand in hand. If you looked at the latest 2025 World Economic Forum Jobs Report, you’d find that technical skills or at least an understanding of generative AI essentials shot up 60%. Manual dexterity and basic reading and writing dropped 10% or more because they’re basic, and we’re all on the same playing field now. But what actually started increasing, and what employers have been noting since before the pandemic, were all those skills they said college graduates lacked, such as communication, leadership, empathy, speaking across difference or engaging in difficult conversations, resilience, and adaptability. So if we’re talking about the skills that really matter, it’s going to be creative and critical thinking, resilience, and adaptability. Those are the ones that will differentiate those who successfully transition over the next 5 years before we hit 2030 from those who might struggle more. But again, it’s not technical, it’s not intelligence, it’s not background. I have only been doing the technical aspect. I did XR for a while, but the technical parts of coding, etc., with AI only for the past 4 years. So it’s really mindset that people need to be focusing on and thinking about, and self-awareness goes a long way in understanding how to be more adaptable.
- What are the key skills crucial to the workplace right now?
- For any worker, today’s technical skills would be both AI literacy and fluency. Everyone thinks now that in the media, anytime you hear AI, the first thing they’re generally referring to is one brand, one specific model, one specific company, and that’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That’s the Band-Aid, the Kleenex, the Xerox brand name for AI when in fact, it’s just one part of AI. But knowing how those are integrated across all platforms and knowing how to effectively engage with them for greater efficiencies in any of the tasks you’re doing, personal or professional, is kind of base level now. It’s actually difficult not to engage with the tools. We do lots of trainings with educational institutions, and they often don’t realize that Gemini is embedded in every Google document, every spreadsheet, everything that you have. You have Copilot anytime you open a Microsoft email or go into Excel, so it’s embedded in everything. What differentiates those that are successful and those that aren’t is actually knowing what these tools do and then secondly, knowing how to use them to their benefit within a given context. The example I give now is that prompt engineering was a major job that popped up in 2023. It was the hot job. But you’ll notice if you do a quick search now, that job has dropped about 200% over the last two years. Listings for prompt engineers have been subsumed under other areas, such as AI engineers or machine learning engineers. It just became an expected skill. So as I tell K-12 educators, prompt engineering, in a few years, and it already is in many areas, is going to be like Googling something ten years ago. Can you use the Google machine well to find what you need? It’s just a base-level skill, and then you work your way up from there. So whatever models they choose, it’s really about understanding the lay of the land, what the different tools are actually capable of, and where we’re moving. That really tells you where you should put your effort and time spent doing deep dives into different tools or programming languages, looking at how we’ve evolved over a million times, according to the head of NVIDIA, since 2023 in this particular area. The best thing I would say for everyone in this particular audience would be for those interested in learning more about machine learning, data science, dashboards, AI, generative AI, algorithms, etc. The technical skills are, of course, a good backbone to have, but understanding that it’s a problem-solving mindset is the best way to think about it. Continually being curious and looking at what new tools are coming out is key. It is exhausting, I will admit, because so much is happening. We have an entire team here, and we break it up by different companies. I handle OpenAI, another handles Google, another handles Anthropic, so every day we can share what’s happening. But you have to do that to see trends. For example, Comet AI and Perplexity’s browser launched, they immediately started limiting things, and what happened three weeks later? OpenAI came out with Atlas. The forward-thinking conclusion, of course, is that every browser or every company that has a large language model or an interface is going to have a browser associated with it. So now we have to start planning what that means for how we do our daily work, for automating tasks. We’re already practicing how we can integrate that into our workflows and how many steps it can actually take on its own before we have to intervene. Then what’s coming next? That’s the question we focus on. We can push those simple tasks off: go in, respond to this, click this, hit submit, so we can do those easily. Then the question becomes what new tools we should be focusing on, and that’s really where curiosity pays off.
Career Journey: How did you get here?
- Can you walk us through your career journey?
- It’s going to become much more common and expected for many different backgrounds. My history is going to be many people’s history coming up because we did have this understanding since the GI Bill in higher education that you go to school and it’s a 4 and 40, right? You spend four years, you get a degree in one thing, you do that one thing for 40 years and then retire. That is long gone. Ever since, you know, the turn of the millennium, that has been in decline. My generation on average had three major work shifts or changes right in their lifetime. My children are projected to have 10 as an example. So this is just a fact of life that my journey sounds strange now, but is going to sound more and more familiar. So I actually grew up thinking I was going to be an artist because my father was a K-12 art teacher. I grew up on a Native American reservation, the Cherokee Reservation in Oklahoma. For the first six years, that’s all I knew was him teaching art. He got his free art supplies, so there was never a question that I was going to be an artist because no one ever said, how are you going to make a living at that? Of course, my father does this. Then I went to school, got a degree in oil painting, and then finished up and realized I didn’t want to teach other people how to create art. But I knew a great deal about the history, and I was fairly good at explaining complex things in simple ways to people, I figured out early on. I went on for a master’s in art history. After getting the BA at the University of Tulsa in art, I went down to the Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I got a master’s in art history. I did the whole graduate assistantship. I worked in slide libraries, which of course, now anyone watching this would have to be my age or older to remember the old carousels that went ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk. We had to actually physically make the slides and then reorganize them after each class. I did that, then went on for a PhD because that’s the next step if you want a full-time job in the area, at the University of Maryland College Park. I moved out to D.C., finished that degree in 5 years, and taught in the region. Three institutions, drove for 2 years between three states nonstop, and worked as a bartender on nights and weekends to put myself through college. So the service industry, nearly 20 years in that to put myself through school while going to that and then teaching. I’d go between American University in Washington, D.C. to Towson University up in Maryland, teaching at College Park, and then just driving in a big triangle. That’s also where I met my spouse. She was also in a graduate program. Then unfortunately, and this is going to be significant for everyone in the coming years, I graduated with my PhD at the worst time possible in 2008 when the bubble burst. There were 33 positions in my specific field the previous year, which dropped to 3. It was incredibly competitive, so I went everywhere, even to the middle of nowhere, the panhandle of Texas. I just happened to luck out and was hired here near St. Louis. The international airport was right there and it actually had a good metropolitan area, so that was just sheer luck. I started up the program here. There were no majors at the time, so I started recruiting and built that up to a healthy number of 30 or 40. Around 2016, I was made assistant dean of online and graduate programs. My mentor at that time was Dr. Jason Dude Lively. He was the one that actually mentored me in moving up in administration. Everyone needs a mentor to show them that it is possible because you’re going to feel that imposter syndrome of, what do you know about this? How can you be in this position, etc.? This isn’t your background. You don’t know anything about curriculum building or online courses or technology. So I had to go learn. I went for the MBA in business so I could learn the background for management, accounting, and all of the business skills associated. While doing that and building all these programs out and recruiting, I made 25 of them, many of them now award-winning and best of as far as online. But then I was told, “Okay, go forth and do virtual reality.” I’m hearing about virtual reality. This was 2019. At that time, everything was tethered. It was really expensive to do any kind of development. It required a very expensive team, etc. Working through that, I realized that a lot of these are going to be built out in game engines. For Unreal or Unity, they have templates for XR for different types of training. There are hundreds of hours out there, just like there are hundreds of hours of how to code in Python on YouTube or on different sites. But going through them and holding yourself accountable is very difficult. So I started trying to do it on my own and then realized that this is really rough. I need someone to give me benchmarks, to mentor me, to keep me going, so I got the master’s. I went and got a master’s, learned the game engines, set up an XR lab, and conducted human subject research on how this type of learning improves engagement. We have plenty of publications on that. Then we restructured at the institution and my new dean said, “Go forth and do AI.” That was fall of 2021. In like fashion, I always was very prolific. I identified just like we did with XR. I put together the VR champions, one person in each unit who was interested in doing immersive learning in order to do studies, to build libraries, and to build out experiences for them. I just rinse and repeat. I did the same thing with AI. I did the AI ambassadors. I looked at those who were interested in how AI was being used already in their area, everywhere from education to healthcare to business administration, and we did an institution-wide study. That’s my most cited work if you look on Google Scholar, which is very interesting because it’s a very deceiving title since it was way before ChatGPT. Luckily, I had a colleague who was my entrance to coding, who was in the English department of all things. He was a creative writing instructor, Dr. Dan Plate, who I do a lot of research with. He also made his own algorithms in Python, and we were put together by our administration who said, you two should talk. So we started making our own algorithms, seeing how that might impact how people would learn. We learned early on the same lesson that we’re dealing with today, that even if there is improved efficiency or functionality or it makes someone objectively more creative, if they identify as what the AI is doing, they adamantly reject it and refuse to admit that it helps them in any way. If they’re a creative writer or they write poetry, then creativity is for humans, not for machines. But we see the same thing even with those in business. I have been giving presentations and been stopped in the middle of them, and individuals who have been in banking for thirty-five or forty years say, “I have to stop you right there. It absolutely cannot do what I do.” And then we have to say, well, let me show you. So it’s in all areas. It’s really dealing with that human element. But we didn’t know that at first. That was the first study, and it was very perplexing. Then I went to Oxford that summer, presenting on, of all things, metaversities. That was when every university was going to have a digital twin you could walk through during the pandemic. Everyone was going to have this, which is laughable now. But I was presenting on that, and they have a wonderful pub scene in Oxford—there are just pubs everywhere. I happened across a Stanford neuroscientist who, while we were having dinner, leaned over and said, “You know, I used AI to help finish my dissertation.” She seemed so ashamed and hushed about it. That struck me. She was ashamed that she used the technology, even though she gathered all the data herself. Her research was helping autistic children. She gathered all the data, did all the statistical analysis herself, but she used AI to write the literature review, which is standard practice now for most science journals. They’re fine if you write the lit review with it; they just want you to do the math yourself. So I came back and said, okay, there are six major studies we have to do. That was also the summer of 2022 when all the AI art generators came out. All the controversy, bans on AI art—they were all over social media. I knew I already had to do studies on that. So I came back and set up six studies across the U.S. We asked, how is AI going to be used in art classes, from web design to 3D design to drawing to digital art? I have those going. Then I came back to my counterpart, Dan Plate, and said, because he was in English, this is going to impact how we teach reading and writing and research and communication in general. We should probably do studies on this now. At the time, you had OpenAI Playground, Jasper, and some of these other writing tools. We chose six of them. At the time, of course, they weren’t that great, as everyone remembers. So we did it across different English composition classes the entire term. We thought this is going to be great—they’re going to see how they can use this to help communicate more effectively and efficiently, get their writing and thoughts out there. What we found was the students just wanted to see if they could jailbreak it and get the Terminator to admit that it’s going to destroy us all. That’s all they wanted to do. They weren’t using the tools for what they were meant for. At the very end of that session, GPT launched in November, the very last tool we had them use. We published on that because we gathered good data on that comparable with the other tools we looked at. Then we went down for a long winter’s nap and kept playing with it. ChatGPT came out. It wasn’t supposed to be the official release. It was kind of an oddity in educational circles. No one thought about it because it was released during finals, during the end of the term. So they weren’t even paying attention. And so we were studying all through the winter, end of 2022, early 2023, realizing this is going to change everything. We woke up in a cold sweat, writing administration like, this is what’s going to happen, we need to prepare now. I kept getting the response, “Oh, you’re being alarmist. It’s going to be fine.” Then schools reopened. New York State shut down access to it completely in all their schools. We had immediate bans. It was just chaos. But we continued our studies. I kept going and comparing the data as we went, trying to figure out why certain populations adapted well and liked the tools and others absolutely hated them. It took nearly a hundred studies to get to it. It was actually Dr. Jason Lively, my mentor, who was teaching web design at the time, coding and the design side, who helped us frame it in a way to test a hypothesis. The hypothesis was that if the tools did something to augment you in a way that you didn’t identify with, such as if you considered yourself an artist, then you probably would be fine being augmented by low code or no code tools to do the coding and programming. But if you were a computer science major and you spent all your time learning to code and program, you’d be fine putting off the artsy stuff on the AI tools. We tested that and asked, why do you use these tools, why did you not use this for the final version, etc.? That’s when we finally got concrete evidence that it’s tied to both one’s identity and vocation. That really formed the core of what we’re doing even now. The biggest areas of resistance that we saw earliest on in our research were computer science departments and English departments because it hit them first—coding and writing. In the same way now, in trying to do workforce development and looking at the institutional level, the biggest obstacle we run into is IT, of all people, because they were the gatekeepers. They controlled what tools people could and couldn’t use. They are the least likely to be learning any of the coding assistive tools, for instance, or any of the others we have. That and legal. Legal was the second major roadblock because of the fear of data privacy leakage and all that. So we did those studies. We have over 200 now. I expanded, started a human-centered AI program so that students across all disciplines could apply it in their area, breaking it down into various sections. Then we expanded, realizing that not everyone wants to go for a full year or two years for a graduate degree. They want immediate results and to apply these right away to what they do. So that’s what led us to look at broader institutional, city-wide, county-wide types of upskilling approaches. That’s what we’re doing now, trying to get a model down that works at scale. So that’s roughly the kind of roundabout way I took.
- What’s your perspective on tech education today? What is the value of a bootcamp compared to other options like teaching yourself or getting a masters, associates, or 4-year degree?
- That’s very interesting, and it’s actually very controversial as well, with a lot of our research looking at what education in general does, how it’s not equipped for this, and it’s not really set to prepare the generation coming up for what’s happening. And we see that right now, with the unemployment rates of recent Gen Z graduates among the highest unemployment, computer science majors, those that did nothing but coding and programming all the way through, because the low-level coding and programming is going to change in companies. So as far as what we’re looking at, as far as the value, it really depends on what you are, if you’re looking to advance a career that you’re in, or if you’re looking to change gears and move to an entirely new career. So, and how much time and resources and bandwidth you have, right? So a lot of workers, that’s not up for debate, right. All economic forecasts state that 30% of workers will have to completely retool their core fundamental skills by 2030. 60% will have to do upskilling, which means, you’ll still be a coder, you’ll still be a systems architect, you’ll still be in management, but you’re going to be doing different things. You’re going to have to learn that. That means same job, different skills. And this is kind of where that comes into play. Either one of those two pathways I see as relevant here in the boot camps compared to traditional degrees. If it’s the 30% that have to completely rearrange their entire lives and start from scratch, you need more time. Therefore, more traditional routes, and by traditional remember that most college students now are non-trad. They’re non-traditional, the majority of them are over 25, they work, they are married with children and or are single parents, etc. So really kind of on-and-off frames. But as far as educational institutions as traditional, that would be that 30%. Now the 60%, however, would be the kind of bootcamp approach, which is I don’t need to completely, if I’m an accountant, and I hope no one is an accountant because that’s going to be really rough for the next five years, but that’s a bad example. So if you are a systems analyst, or you’re a broker, or you’re a realtor, whatever that might be, you’re still going to have that job, but you need those AI skills, right. So you don’t need to completely replace your core set of skills. You need to layer on top some additional skills in tech to help you do what you’re already doing. And that’s what boot camps are really good at. If you have to continue working, you just need that additional, how do I apply this? And in all my classes, that’s what we focus on at Flatiron. Are we in pharmacy? Are you in nonprofits? Do you work with consulting with boards of directors, etc.? So then, how does this relate and help you specifically? It’s all about kind of tailoring it, like well, this probably won’t help you as much, so let’s focus on really digging into this. This part of making dashboards, for instance, is going to be really useful if you’re talking to boards, so they can once again understand big data really quickly and make decisions, really simplify things. So that’s what I would argue is kind of the difference. But we’re going to see a radical shift in “traditional” higher ed over the next five years. You’re already seeing it. That being across the board, everyone is, whether they like it or not, adopting AI in all curriculum. So it doesn’t matter. I am lucky I was able to control my curriculum, so I used it as the guinea pig first. So, what would that do if we put it in something as far away from tech as art history? I also did that with VR as well, so they’ll have to buy VR headsets, and we are. But we said, okay, what is this actually going to do, what does it look like? So it’s already being embedded everywhere. And what you’re finding is a decreased emphasis and need for rote memorization and an increase in the ability to have transferable skills or to see how what you do can move across different industries. So it’s broader. It’s not just, you’re only going to be a data scientist if you do a boot camp. That is not the case. You’re still going to do consulting work for nonprofits, as one specific example that I’m working with now, and also have these skills to help you with that. You’re not switching careers. So yeah, that’s what I would say is the major difference, looking at the myth that AI is just going to replace everyone, and then we all have to start from scratch. If you look at what’s happening with the economy, that’s not the case. What’s happening is, yes, you’ll have some roles that are going to be eliminated, but most are going to be transformed in this way. We’ll just be doing different things for value creation and how we define that moving forward. And that’s going to be one of the main things we have to decide — what does work look like in the future, and what do we value?
Lessons Learned: What have you learned along the way?
- What’s one lesson from your career that has stuck with you?
- That would have to be 2016. So that really stuck with me as far as realizing we’re not all limited to the path that we’re on, right? That being, we all think and we’re told as kids, what do you want to be when you grow up, right? So, okay, let’s get you focused narrowly on that. I have specific books on this in parenting that say you should not do that, right? You should not limit kids to one specific pathway. You want to make sure that they can diversify their skill sets and interests, right? Because it’s going to be necessary. So it was at that time, you know, I was on one track, which would be just to be a professor in that field for the rest of my career. And then a mentor switched and showed me that there’s another path, right? There are many paths, there’s a multitude. There are multiverses of paths that you can possibly take. But you might not see them or think that you have the ability to take advantage of them because, you know, a great example is I came from an entirely non-mathematical, non-quantitative background in that way. What business did I have running entire programs or businesses and or startups? We do AI accelerators and tech startups. I was a director of technology for a company, etc. So how possibly could I do that? And so really, it was that realization that to make progress, you have to make your identity small. That being, you are not just a data scientist, you are not just and only a musician, right? You keep your identity small, and then it’s easier to pivot, right? So it’s not as painful to move in different directions. And then in addition to that, note that anything that is going to be uncomfortable, right? So that being any time that you’re comfortable in what you’re doing for a period of time, you likely are not growing, right? So get used to, if you want to grow, you want to change careers, you want to advance, you want to adapt to what’s coming, it will be uncomfortable. And so you might pull back from that, but resist that urge.
- Was there a moment where you faced a major challenge or failure?
- That was not really of my doing, but fate, right? Circumstance, which is why we really need to remember to pivot. And I certainly could have handled it better in hindsight. But in 2020, we had a new administration, and anytime you have a new whatever, a new president, governor, president of a university, they all have to make their mark. So generally, they do that by restructuring things, changing things, renaming things, putting people in different roles. At that time, they actually merged together various units, and I lost that first position and was instead restructured into a director role over a cluster of five programs. That period really showed you that adaptability is key in that being technically demoted at that point, right? It does sting, right? But then what do you do? How do you pick yourself up? And that’s really learning new things, right? So I was put in charge of different things. And then, of course, the following year is when I was told to do AI, right? So I’m like, “OK, we’re going to pivot in this way.” So yes, you know, you were on, and everyone probably feels as though they’re on, a particular path, a trajectory of promotion and or a direction in their careers, right? But unexpected things will happen, and you have to be able to pivot and react to it, right? Not let things happen to you, but react and really move the needle on what’s going to be happening moving forward, making new opportunities for yourself. That being, if I’d stayed in the original path that I was in, I certainly wouldn’t be known for AI right now internationally. There’s no way. I would have been locked into a completely different trajectory. So it was all about not fighting the current and having the foresight and really the fortitude, and knowing it’s going to be uncomfortable, that, oh, this is happening, this is not going to be comfortable, changes are coming. Are you going to do nothing and then just hit the wall, or are you going to prepare, even though it’s more uncomfortable now, to make that transition later? So that would probably be a great example, probably one of the greatest setbacks, but that led to something entirely new.
Mentorship: Why did you decide to become a mentor?
- How did you first get connected with Flatiron School, and what inspired you to become a mentor?
- I’m very active on LinkedIn, and so I want to make sure that we share our ideas as broadly as possible to assist as many people as possible with what we’re learning about the impact of AI on society in general and technology in general. And so it was there that I saw the school and reached out and got in touch with representatives and then met with them, liked the philosophy, liked the idea. And that’s what really led to what I’m doing now. So it was kind of in parallel. That there’s not a one-size-fits-all model for absolutely everyone. Not everyone needs to go to college. Not everyone needs a particular collegiate certificate in that way. They might need the skills, and they might not have the standard kind of background that you would imagine, but they still absolutely have the ability to change, to learn, to grow, and to apply it in their own area. And so that’s why kind of moving outside, right? So let’s go out in the community. Let’s go and help people, show them it’s not the ivory tower. It’s not something out of their reach. It’s not a skill that only 2% of the population can actually master. And so that’s really what Flatiron kind of espoused as well—meeting people where they are and providing the resources and support and mentorship as they look to upskill in a particular area. Many of them that I’ve met so far really are in the 60% kind of margin that we discussed in that they’re not looking to become data scientists. They’re not looking to just drop everything and be machine learning engineers. They’re looking to, of course, get a valuable skill that everyone agrees you need now, which is going to be in technology and AI, machine learning, data science, all that. But then also, how does it apply and help me in my given area? And that’s what we all are going to have to do, right? So that’s the trajectory and the path, given our research, that no one’s going to be able to escape. There’s not a single career, working or not, right? So even in the domestic sphere, even for retirees, this knowledge is still going to be necessary just to engage with the world. So that’s how I got connected there. And really, the mentoring, instead of just going through lesson plans and proofs and step-by-step, instead of that, really focusing on, let’s just talk about your career, right? Let’s actually spend time once a week just focusing on what you’re doing. How can we build out something? We did that just last night, where they were looking to build out another arm for their entrepreneurial enterprise in training up and doing ROI analyses. And I walked them through what we were doing and how to actually take an assessment of what an organization is doing, find out what the workflows are, identify the pain points, and then go into the appropriate Agentic AI solutions with particular worksheets that we develop. So, I mean, that was really concrete. And we just finished working on that actually this morning and sent it to them. As far as inspiring me to become a mentor, that probably would have to be certainly Jason Lively, given that he showed and made it seem really straightforward that paying it forward was necessary. But I’d say what jump-started it was probably my son being diagnosed with autism in kindergarten. And so what that led to was looking at how we can take technology to improve people’s lives. But I knew nothing about it, and so in order to learn, you have to get in touch with people that do know something about that and that are willing to share. And in that particular community at that time, 2019 and 2020, everyone absolutely was very open and willing to share all of their proprietary information and what they were working on, etc. And so with each person that I met with and learned something new and had that in my tool belt, I knew that I needed to pay it forward, right? And then mentor anyone else who needed that information because I had gotten it that way. And so that just kept growing in that way—reaching out, meeting new people, getting more mentors, getting new skills, getting more information that I could then share with other people—until we have like 20,000 now on LinkedIn, which share as much as possible. And that gave me the ability to help my son. So that’s kind of where you learn that if we want to get ahead, it’s not just promoting yourself, right? It’s “a rising tide lifts all ships.” You have to share it with others who then, of course, if you want something really practical, you’re going to get a better reputation for being a team player, being willing to share, being a good colleague, etc., and then that is also in turn going to elevate you where you’re at. So that means everyone, once they get to a particular point where they have something to share, should be a mentor.
- What’s been the most rewarding part of mentoring students so far?
- It’s very interesting because you don’t see it right away. It’s just like being a parent, right? You don’t know how what you’re doing is going to pay off, right? You might not even live to see it. So really, it’s in those retrospective moments. I keep a social media account just so I can keep in touch with alumni and past students that I’ve had. And so, you go on there, “Oh, now they’re getting married. Now they’re having children. Now they’re going into careers.” And then they come back and they say, “It was because of you that I was able to go on and do this. It was because of what you taught me that I could get this job, this career, this degree that helped.” But that’s kind of the long game. It’s kind of what they tell you as far as mentoring: don’t expect an immediate payoff where everyone is immediately appreciative of what you’re doing because they might not see the results of it immediately. So it’s like, once again, planting a tree in which you’re never going to sit in the shade in that way. But it still puts good out in the world, and you do see that periodically, and you realize there’s an exponential effect to you mentoring them, them sharing that information and attitude with others, and so on and so forth. And so it really kind of solidifies that no matter how small you think you are or how limited you think your social or professional reach is, it can exponentially multiply very easily.
- If you could give advice to someone just starting out in tech, what would it be?
- So it’s twofold. If we’re talking about someone just going into high school or graduating high school versus someone that is mid-career and looking to upskill or change careers, the best advice would be don’t focus strictly on syntax-level coding. It’s important to understand the structure of it, how code works, how programming works, what the platforms do, and how they interact. But it’s more important to focus on the kind of systematic, the systems-level thinking of how they actually work with each other. What kind of logic are they using that you’ll have to carry through? Your if-elses, your loops, right? So all that. It really is just kind of step-by-step instructions that get ever more complex algorithmically, and then connect with other systems now with Agentic AI, with different agents all working in tandem. But it all starts really simply. So don’t think that if you have your first, and this is really the problem with education in general, we always have gateway classes that weed people out. That being, if you can’t pass Programming 101, you can’t be a computer science major. So they come out, they go in, they take the class. They don’t immediately take to it or understand it because it’s not intuitive to many people. Then they’re like, this is not for me. And they just give up. So the advice would be: fight that urge, because that little voice that says you can’t do it is wrong. You absolutely can. It’s a different way of thinking, but really think about tech in terms of problem-solving and systems instead of specific languages and specific proprietary solutions. So don’t tie yourself to one programming language. Don’t tie yourself to one platform. Instead, think about something that is device, programming, and company-agnostic.
Lightening Round Questions
- What’s something you’re listening to or reading right now?
- The Coming Wave by the Microsoft CEO of AI. And so that one really is talking about how technologies converge and looking historically at the previous waves of technology like electricity, agriculture, etc., and why AI is going to be a bit different. And we can’t stop it, right? So really just thinking through the scenarios and how we can prepare for even more instability, even more change. And the workforce of today is not built at a neuroscience level as a report just came out two days ago for this type of change this quickly. And so we have to have some leaders, some individuals that understand that and can figure out ways to soften the blow just neurologically so we can survive it.
- What’s one product or tool you’re into right now?
- My tried and true is going to be a GPT Pro. So I pay for the $200/month subscription. My other colleagues, obviously, they’re all clawed all day. Others actually really love Perplexity so that’s the go-to. But then, now trying to branch out and looking at other things like Base44, which is a great no code, low-code coding tool for building apps and websites, straightforward in that way. And then looking at different agentic solutions, there’s four major ones we’re playing with right now. But my go-to is always still going to be straightforward Pro subscription to GPT. That absolutely is the workhorse.
- When is your next cohort?
- I think my next cohort is going to be starting in two weeks. We’re finishing up one this weekend, moving on with AI Foundations in the second in that group. But as far as a whole new cohort, I believe that starts on January 10th.
- Where can listeners find you?
- You can find me on LinkedIn. You type in just my name, James Hutson, make sure it’s a T and H U T, and I’m the first one that pops up. I’m happy to connect and always happy to share what I know.
- What made you smile this week?
- My five-year-old daughter, who is the light of my life, made up a completely ridiculous game yesterday to where she pretended to be a Jedi and doing strangleholds from across the room. We had to pretend that we were dying and passing out, and she thought it was the funniest thing ever. It was hilarious.
