AppliedAI

Sacha Sweeney-Newman
Founder Atlasticity
Sacha is a cloud and AI business strategist and co-founder of Atlasticity, an AWS Advanced Tier Partner focused on helping organizations modernize responsibly and extract real value from emerging technologies. With deep experience across AWS cloud operations, managed services, migration, and applied AI, Sacha regularly advises executive teams on how to move from experimentation to production—with low disruption of modernization.
Outside of work, Sacha runs almost entirely on creativity, curiosity, and controlled chaos. She’s passionate about serving people in need and constant growth—whether that’s in business, mindset, or life in general. That growth mindset is tested daily while juggling four daughters, an impressive 34 nieces and nephews, and—at last count—nine “outside” cats (it's a long story!).
She’s also a firm believer in saying yes to fun while being gloriously mediocre with old and new hobbies alike: wake surfing on the lake in the summer, heroic but inconsistent attempts to keep a golf ball on the fairway, and monthly appearances at Billiards & Bytes, where tech conversations are seriously great but pool skills are optional.
As today’s moderator, Sacha will guide the panel toward actionable insights and real lessons learned from the field.

Norman Owens
Senior Solution Architect - AWS
Norman Owens helps customers get the most out of the AWS cloud. He has acquired deep expertise with traditional AI/ML tools by building solutions for customers, and supplementing this activity with a Master’s of Science in AI/ML.
As a proud University of Minnesota alum, Norman enjoys working with students to help them reach career starts faster. He is curious about what is working in today’s gloomy job market and is always willing to take a first appointment via LinkedIn. Norman is grateful to be able to help future leaders now.
Norman recently acquired his 12th AWS certification and is anxiously awaiting the arrival of his AWS Gold Jacket.
Outside of work, Norman is supporting the youngest of his two children through university and is proud to enjoy the achievements of all three adult children.

Jena Zangs
Chief Data & AI Officer, University of St. Thomas
Jena Zangs is a Chief Data & AI Officer who helps education leaders move beyond AI hype into real-world impact. At the University of St. Thomas, she leads enterprise AI strategy, governed data infrastructure, and applied innovation focused on trust, usability, and outcomes that matter. Her work has been recognized with an AWS Education Champion Award and a Top 50 Data & Analytics Team honor. With a masters in data science, Jena brings a builder’s mindset to every opportunity, showing how educators and institutions can design AI that supports people, not replaces them.

Megan C. Starkey
Founder and CEO - RBD
Megan C. Starkey is the founder and CEO of RBD., an AI advisory firm helping mid-size organizations build capabilities for the AI era. She has spent two decades helping global organizations like Target, General Mills, Chase, and IBM turn emerging technology into business performance. She is the author of The Intelligence Organization:
Redesigning the Firm to Outcompete in the AI Era and creator of the Starkey ModelTM, a use case prioritization framework. She is a founding member of AI Circle and holds credentials from Harvard Business School and MIT.

Sponsors
This event is sponsored by Lab651 & Recursive Awesome

Organizers
This event is part of the community interest groups series at Applied AI, where community members power sessions for niche interest areas through the Applied AI platform.

This event is organized and hosted by Cameron Gross, John DeBauche, and Beth-Alison Berggren.

This panel shifts the focus from employer expectations to student reality. Moderated by Jena Zangs, Chief Data and AI Officer at the University of St. Thomas, the session features graduate and undergraduate students actively working with AI across disciplines.

Panelists will share how they are using AI in coursework, research, internships, entrepreneurship, and personal projects. They will discuss what tools they rely on, how they are learning beyond the classroom, and how they view the evolving expectations of entry level roles.

This conversation offers Applied AI leaders a rare opportunity to hear directly from emerging AI builders and to better understand how student capabilities are developing in real time.

Agenda
6:00pm - 6:30pm: Networking - food & drinks
6:30pm - 8:00pm: Presentation & discussion
8:00pm: Networking at Lake Monster Brewing

Meet Our Featured Speakers
Esse Komlanvi: Graduate Student
Esse Komlanvi is an AI and business analytics professional building technology that expands opportunity in underserved communities. As a Graduate student at the University of St. Thomas she founded Nuse, a voice-first AI platform designed to help women entrepreneurs in emerging economies manage their businesses, access financial education, and unlock funding. With a background in IT consulting, data analytics, and digital transformation, Esse focuses on making artificial intelligence practical, inclusive, and human-centered. Her work sits at the intersection of AI, financial inclusion, and women’s economic empowerment. She is passionate about ensuring that AI is not only innovative, but also equitable and accessible to those who are often left out of traditional tech systems.

Arthur Kennedy: Graduate Student
Arthur A. Kennedy is a Master’s candidate in Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas, where he builds applied AI solutions and collaborates on real-world projects across data analytics and machine learning. After completing his undergraduate degree in computer science, Arthur chose the AI program to deepen his technical expertise and move beyond using tools to understand and develop intelligent systems. He has worked with proprietary datasets, trained and fine-tuned models in specialized domains, and contributed to campus hackathons and AI community events that connect industry challenges with student builders. Arthur is passionate about expanding what it means to be an AI practitioner and empowering his peers to translate academic learning into practical impact.

Jena (moderator): Chief Data& AI Officer
Jena Zangs is the first Chief Data & AI Officer at any higher ed institution in Minnesota, she specializes in moving organizations beyond AI hype into production-ready, governed, and scalable systems. She leads enterprise AI strategy, modern data platforms, and applied innovation spanning infrastructure, AI, and machine learning, with a focus on trust. Her work has been recognized with an AWS Education Champion Award and a Top 50 Data & Analytics Team honor. A Lovable Global Buildathon Winner, Jena brings a builder’s mindset to every engagement, bridging executive strategy with hands-on implementation.

Sponsors
This event is sponsored by Lab651 & Recursive Awesome

This talk explores Co-Intelligence—a term popularized by Ethan Mollick, and extended here into a practical framework for how individuals can think with AI rather than merely use it. Co-Intelligence is not about automation or shortcuts; it is about designing persistent, learning partnerships where human judgment, creativity, and context combine with machine speed, scale, and pattern recognition to produce outcomes neither could achieve alone.

Through real-world examples—from developers and analysts to consultants and knowledge workers—we will examine what changes when AI becomes a collaborator: how workflows evolve, how insight emerges faster, and how capabilities begin to compound rather than reset with each task. We will also address the behavioral shifts required for true collaboration, along with the common failure modes that keep people trapped in tool-mode, including over-reliance, cognitive offloading, and false confidence.

Attendees will leave with a practical Co-Intelligence stack they can apply immediately, including methods for building persistent context, frameworks for cognitive delegation, and ways to measure augmented performance. More importantly, attendees will see how professional value in an AI-driven world increasingly comes from building strong cognitive partnerships with AI—moving beyond simple tool use toward sustained, amplified capability.

Agenda
6:00pm - 6:30pm: Networking - food & drinks
6:30pm - 8:00pm: Presentation & discussion
8:00pm: Networking at Lake Monster Brewing

Meet Our Featured Speaker
Nick Roseth explores how humans and intelligent systems think, create, and evolve together. With more than 25 years of experience at the intersection of business, design, and emerging technology, he has helped startups and Fortune 500 organizations navigate transformation across industries including healthcare, finance, and construction—building everything from early digital platforms to immersive XR experiences and, more recently, Agentic AI and human-machine systems. As the founder of Explore Design, he advises organizations on AI adoption through a distinctly human lens that integrates psychology, behavioral design, and strategic foresight, with a focus on trust, culture, leadership, and decision-making. His work centers on designing adaptive systems where humans and machines co-create rather than compete. Nick is passionate about the tech and entrepreneurship community, a perspective he shares through speaking, writing, and advisory work, including a TEDx talk on technology and workforce transformation and the film DocuMntary. Follow Nick’s work on the Adaptive Intelligence Substack.

Sponsors
This event is sponsored by Lab651 & Recursive Awesome