This week I sat down with Ioanna Mantzouridou Onasi, Co-Founder and CEO of Dextego.
Ioanna is an applied AI thought leader with a mission is to help people and organizations thrive by developing soft skills like communication, empathy, and leadership. Through Dextego, she’s showing how AI goes beyond automation to drive human potential. With a background that spans founding a sustainable fashion company at 16 to leading talent development at a B2B SaaS AI startup, Ioanna’s experience is as diverse as it is impressive.
This conversation digs into how AI can free us up to focus on human connections and creativity. Ioanna breaks down the practical ways AI can enhance, rather than replace, our ability to lead, collaborate, and problem-solve.
If you're looking for ways to leverage AI in your startup without losing the human touch, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Check out the full episode:
Here are five moments that stuck with me from my conversation with Ioanna.
Ioanna makes a case for AI helping us develop the qualities that are more essential than ever in today’s workplaces—communication, empathy, and leadership. At Dextego, they are giving people a way to build these skills:
"Dextego, in short, is an AI coaching platform that develops these skills through scenario-based challenges, simulations, chat, and video interactions that are personalized to the user's role in the industry."
Users get to practice soft skills in a hands-on way that’s relevant to their daily tasks. Here, AI is assisting people in being better communicators, more empathetic leaders, and sharper collaborators. This allows folks to stay competitive in a world where technical skills alone aren’t going to cut it anymore.
One of AI’s biggest benefits is its ability to handle repetitive tasks that eat up our time. This frees us up to focus on connecting with people. Ioanna breaks it down:
"And to me, these are the skills that separate the average from the best, especially in an AI-driven world where we see more and more of the technical tasks, even coding, being replaced with co-pilots."
By letting AI take care of the boring stuff, we can spend more time building relationships with our teams and clients. This not only boosts efficiency and improves the bottom line, but it also creates space for stronger, more trusting relationships, which are the cornerstone of sustainable business success.
Ioanna thinks one of the coolest things about AI is how it can offer personalized coaching to everyone on the team—at scale.
"It's really your own personal and professional AI coach that collects data as you use it, and it becomes even better with time."
Every team member gets a development experience that’s custom-fit to their strengths and areas for growth. AI helps make this possible by constantly fine-tuning its coaching, ensuring that learning is personal and always moving in the right direction. This empowers teams to grow in ways that would otherwise be impossible through traditional, one-size-fits-all training.
Ioanna also points out how AI can be used to gain a deeper understanding of others, whether it’s customers or colleagues.
"We can get internal data out of the client, like your playbook and best practices, and combine it with external data from sales experts known for negotiation, pricing, etc."
This data gives leaders a clear view of the needs and challenges people face, allowing for more empathy in decision-making. With these insights, organizations can better address issues and have more meaningful conversations—helping to create a workplace where everyone feels understood. Ultimately this can lead to both improved team morale and customer satisfaction.
Finally, Ioanna touches on how AI will enhance human creativity rather than stifle it. By handling the data-heavy tasks, people have more freedom to focus on innovative thinking.
"The question is, what are the skills that will help you distinguish? It is skills like communication, collaboration, leadership, empathy."
When AI takes care of crunching numbers, people can dig into creative problem-solving. It’s all about collaboration—between human intelligence and AI—so we can tackle challenges with fresh ideas and a more strategic approach. This partnership between AI and humans accelerates innovation, enabling teams to address complex issues with next-level clarity and agility.
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