“With AI there’s constant disruption,” says Monica Marquez. “It’s about how do you get people to become very agile and comfortable with that disruption? And how do you leverage and sustain that change?”

A “MacGyver for Agentic-Human Reinvention,” Marquez does not shy away from disruption – she wholeheartedly embraces it. Previously profiled in 2021, she spoke with theglasshammer.com on the next chapter in her journey of pioneering change, as she dives into the evolving intersection of human potential and artificial intelligence.

Q: Tell us more about what you’re working on now and how your new venture, Flip Work, is helping organizations navigate this era of rapid change.

At its core, Flip Work helps organizations achieve measurable ROI from AI by focusing on human adoption. According to a 2025 MIT report, 95% of AI pilots have failed, not because of the technology itself, but because people aren’t adopting it, reinventing workflows, or using it to augment their work.

Many companies implement AI without a real plan for how people will use it. The question becomes, how do you help people shift their identities to see themselves differently in the way that they work, and in the way that they must reinvent themselves in the AI era? Because the reality is, AI is changing work faster than people can adapt.

This widening gap is what we define at FlipWork as the Exponential Divide, the moment when technology evolves faster than people can change how they work.

That has been our focus, and we’ve built a human and agentic system that helps people reinvent the way that they work, from a three-pronged approach. First, we help people reinvent themselves from a behavioral and a mindset perspective with the support of FlippyAI, which acts as a daily AI coach and change agent. Second, we reinvent workflows through Flip Lab, our 90-day reinvention sprint. Third, we reinvent workforce tools through Flip Factory, where agentic automations bring redesigned workflows to life. With AI, disruption is constant. The goal is to help people become agile and comfortable with that reality, to leverage it rather than resist it. This is how individuals become People², exponentially capable professionals who evolve at the pace of technology. That’s what Flip Work is all about.

Q: The work you’re describing sounds very much rooted in organizational development, guiding people through behavioral and mindset change. Would you say that’s part of your approach?

Yes, definitely, it’s change management, but traditional change management is no longer enough. When companies are thinking about AI adoption, they think that if they buy all the tools and give them to employees, that will be enough, but no one is really helping the people change and leverage the tools.

Recently I was at a conference talking to senior leaders at Microsoft and they told me that despite rolling out Copilot across their entire professional population, adoption is only 47%. That means that more than half of people aren’t using the tools, often because they’re waiting for permission or guidance from leadership. The impact of that is that people are going to get left behind.

Everybody is fearing that AI is going to replace jobs. The reality is that yes, it will, but we always reinvent ourselves. If we look at the past, think the dot-com era, digital cash registers, or similar technological shifts, people often said, “This is going to displace jobs.” And yes, some roles change, but people reskill and find new ways to contribute. At the end of the day, human discernment, creativity, empathy, and expertise remain essential. Our lived experience still matters in ensuring that outputs are accurate, meaningful, and impactful.

It’s about helping people reinvent themselves, recognizing what your zone of genius is, and how you augment or amplify your zone of genius with AI, and delegate the things that you don’t like to do, so that you can focus on your genius zone. This is the identity-first reinvention that FlipWork is built around.

Q: This is obviously a very exciting moment and project. What brought you here?

As a leader, I’ve always been curious and an early adopter, a pioneer. An example of that is when I was at Goldman Sachs, back in 2008, I spearheaded the Returnship Program. Later, I co-founded Beyond Barriers to accelerate career advancement for women and underrepresented talent. My mindset is always you have to disrupt yourself before you get disrupted. I’ve always operated like a MacGyver, finding resourceful ways to reinvent how work gets done. AI fits in with that because I’m very comfortable with disruption.

When I had colleagues, some of whom are now CHROs at major companies, coming to me and saying, “Our company is adopting all this AI, but I don’t even know how to leverage it. How do we roll out AI adoption for our people?” I started to see a real gap in the marketplace. It’s not just about using the tools; it’s about shifting mindsets. Many people think AI is only for coders or tech experts, and they feel it’s not for them. The truth is, you don’t have to understand how AI works; you just need to know how to use it to do your work better.

Q: What would you tell a digital native, then, entering the space in this exciting world of AI?

Digital natives may have an easier time embracing new tools, but I would be careful that it doesn’t cause creativity and diversity of thought to become lazy. Even though you’re a digital native and you may be an early adopter, you must continuously make sure that what you’re practicing doesn’t lead to intellectual atrophy, making the technology smarter and the humans less smart.

For example, you shouldn’t just be taking the output that ChatGPT or another AI tool gives you and putting it out there without utilizing your own expertise, judgement, and discernment.

One way to think about AI is as your “Artificial Intern.” You wouldn’t give an intern a task and then pass their work along to the higher-ups without checking it first. The same applies to AI. You have to coach it, refine it, review its work, and ensure what it produces reflects your expertise. You wouldn’t pass along unedited intern work to an executive, and the same rules apply with AI.

Q: You’ve long been an advocate for Latina representation in leadership and tech. As a board member for Latinas in Tech and the Association for Latino Professionals in America, how are you helping the next generation of Latino leaders prepare for this new era of work?

Supporting Latinos, Latinas, and other marginalized groups has always been a huge passion of mine, helping them accelerate their careers and expand beyond the limits of their cultural upbringing and conditioned beliefs.

What we’re finding now, though, is that some of the fear around the digital divide is widening. I was at the ALPFA conference over the summer, where we soft-launched Flip the Script, a program designed to help people start thinking about how to adopt AI. The feedback I heard was interesting in that many participants told me, “I’ve always been taught I have to work twice as hard to get half as far. If AI helps me do something in 30 minutes that used to take three days, what does that say about my worth?”

That mindset runs deep, the belief that effort and hard work equal success. But in this new era, we help people rewrite the script to say that impact equals success. AI amplifies your value; it does not diminish it. If you can use AI to achieve more in less time, you’re amplifying your impact, not diminishing your value.

For many, especially those from cultures where perseverance and grit are tied to identity, this shift is difficult. I’ve coached young Latino professionals who feel like using AI is “cheating.” They’re hesitant to embrace it because it challenges their definition of what it means to earn success.

So part of my work now is helping people rewire those conditioned beliefs—whether they’re cultural, societal, or organizational—and help people recognize that their true value lies in their expertise, discernment, empathy, and creativity, the exact human strengths that AI amplifies inside the People² model.

Interviewed by Nicki Gilmour, founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com