This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brit Morenus, a 37-year-old senior AI gamification program manager, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I’ve been at Microsoft for a total of 13 years, but for five and a half, I was a contract worker.
I graduated from college with a degree focused on English, communications, and marketing. I first landed a job at Microsoft as a contract executive assistant. I stayed in that role for about eight months, then joined the marketing team.
Eventually, I had the opportunity to take a really special position, but it required knowing gamification. Gamification is about integrating game mechanics and motivators, such as storytelling and reward systems, into learning. So I was going to teach people about our products and sell them in a gamified way.
I spent about a year getting certifications that taught me about gamification. I upskilled and learned how to create games, what game mechanics are, and what motivates someone when they’re learning.
That was the position where I was able to prove my impact, and they decided to bring me on full-time. I stayed in that role for another six years, training the frontline and customer service support to develop the right sales skills.
Eventually, I had the opportunity to start gamifying learning about AI. They wanted someone with gamification skills, and my certifications and experience made me the ideal candidate.
I didn’t know much about AI yet, aside from using it for personal reasons, but transitioning to an AI role was actually faster than pivoting to gamification. Since I held the gamification role for about six years, I became really good at it. It only took about three months for me to upskill in AI.
In my first three months on the team, I made myself knowledgeable about AI to the point where I could teach others about it. That’s when I got a certification in Azure AI Fundamentals. It was a certification specific to how Microsoft’s AI works.
I helped my entire team get it, and then I helped my entire organization start working on it. Then I helped the greater customer service support organization work toward getting it as well.
Get outside your comfort zone
My advice to those who want to transition would be: Don’t let fear keep you from stepping outside your comfort zone. There’s so much ambiguity about changing roles or companies, but there’s no time like the present.
With AI specifically, you just need to learn. Everyone already uses it, but you need to understand how it works, because that’s how you can understand what to do with it.
It’s also important to upskill yourself. You have to be willing to constantly move and learn more, because it’s going to keep changing — and faster than you can grasp it. Sometimes AI makes wrong predictions, but it is using words to make that prediction. So I absolutely need to use my English degree in order to figure out keywords and how to prompt it to do the right thing.
I don’t regret my English degree
Up until this Al role, I always joked that I wasn’t using my English degree. But now I use it everywhere, and it truly does help. It helps with things like talking to executives and also with the role itself.
It’s important to know the language of AI and how it operates. So now, more than ever, I am using every bit of my English degree and understanding English, grammar, and how it all functions.
For example, there’s a tagging process that happens behind the scenes with AI, just like on social media. Looking at an image, it might tag it as a woman, or a supermarket, and that gives it a confidence score and tells you if it’s relevant or not, and if it’s what we’re looking for.
A lot of it is more about understanding how to apply the English language than about AI — so, thanks, Mom and Dad, I am using the degree you paid for.
This is part of an ongoing series about workers who transitioned into AI roles. Did you pivot to AI? We want to hear from you. Reach out to the reporter via email at aaltchek@insider.com or secure-messaging platform Signal at aalt.19.
