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Dr. Svetlana Pidasheva on Scientific Manuscript Development in the Era of AI · Expertly Said

• Kristen Sweeney: My guest today is Svetlana Pitesheva, Director of Scientific Communications at Radius Health. Svetlana has 19 years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, multiple therapeutic areas and organizational stages. At Radius Health, she leads scientific communications, overseeing data dissemination and enterprise-wide communication strategies. Her previous roles include Senior Director of Scientific Affairs at Excella Therapeutics and Global Head of Scientific Communications at Sanofi. where she established global communication capabilities across geographies. Earlier in her career, she held publications, planning and research positions at Allergan and Genentech, focusing on inflammatory and autoimmune disorders. Svetlana holds a PhD in experimental medicine from McGill University. She's lived in four countries, speaks three languages and enjoys water sports, international travel and cultural exploration. Svetlana, welcome to the show. Svetlana Pidasheva: Hello, hi, Very quick disclaimer, everything here, all opinions are my own and ⁓ not ⁓ opinions of employer, Radio Scout. Kristen Sweeney: Thank you. Appreciate that disclaimer. ⁓ And so with that focus on you and your opinions, I want to dig a little bit into your origin story. We heard kind of ⁓ the dots your bio, but I want to hear about what connects those dots. ⁓ First, you your career in science. So what drew you to get a PhD in experimental medicine? Svetlana Pidasheva: during my undergrad, ⁓ one of the classes I took was in ⁓ genetics and got really, really interested in genetics and I to ⁓ switch completely and do my research in human genetics. Kristen Sweeney: your career, ⁓ you've worked with a number of different disease areas. And so ⁓ obviously like the skills of communication, this been a topic we've talked about ⁓ with several different guests, like comms pros their own set of skills. Communication is a set of skills. It's often viewed as soft, ⁓ but those skills are moving with you. but you've got to get up to speed in a completely different disease area, different sector, there's different stakeholders, different needs. How do you approach kind of coming in and saying, here's what I already, here's what can translate and here's what I've got to kind of learn from scratch and how do you do that effectively? Svetlana Pidasheva: It's a really good question. So when you're in big pharmaceutical industry, they always give you a lot more time to onboard, to learn, to figure things out before you actually start working in smaller companies. And I have experience in both. There's no time, so you have to do it so quickly. There are so many ways to do it. So obviously... Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Svetlana Pidasheva: One, most important, you talk to your colleagues and turn up and you ask millions of questions. You go to internal meetings, you figure things out and you read. So probably the first thing that I do, I just read key publications from the company as well as key and latest review articles in the therapeutic area. Second thing that helps tremendously to onboard quickly and understand the field is attending Congresses, scientific Congresses and talks and discussions. So that it's incredibly helpful. And now in post AI era, have your AI agents that are extremely, extremely helpful in terms of summarizing the latest, most important parts, ⁓ mechanism of actions. You have a lot of videos and YouTube. and publications to help you really deeply understand. But also if you already have a really, really good science background at the end of the day, once you understand cellular pathway, it's just a matter of... applying your basic knowledge to other therapeutic areas. And this is actually one of the reasons why most of the scientific communications professionals are PhDs, OMDs, or FMDs, because it's so much easier for us to switch and to learn because we have really good ⁓ basic knowledge already. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, absolutely. I can appreciate what you said about needing to get up to speed quickly versus kind of having all the time in the world. You know, obviously we're a partner to organizations and so getting up to speed quickly is the name of the game for us, right? We don't have the opportunity to just kind of hang around, not hang around. I don't want to diminish the work at all, but to sort of be a fly on the wall for an extended period of time to absorb, we've got to find ways to really proactively. take in as much information as possible. And I'm always surprised by the range of things that are valuable. So often, we're in conversation, they'll say, oh, do you have something about that? Oh, yeah, I have three slide decks that explain. I'm like, great. We don't need to review that here. Just send us that. We'll use and absorb all of that. But it definitely does need to happen at speed in a lot of cases. Yeah. ⁓ so as part of, you know, I loved how you talked about understanding the core mechanisms of science and that allowing you to translate between different spaces, but you've also, because of the variety of disease areas you've worked within, you've worked with very small, narrow focused patient populations, very broad ones, and subsequently kind of very specialized sets of, ⁓ healthcare providers. Svetlana Pidasheva: No. Kristen Sweeney: versus very broad or several different segments you're working with. So can you talk about some of the differences in your strategy when you maybe have a very narrow focus versus one that's much, bigger? Svetlana Pidasheva: Yeah, absolutely. So for example, in my previous companies, I always worked with like narrow specialty. For example, I started at Allergan in plastic surgery. So I worked with plastic surgeons and they're very unique population. Very unique target population. obviously... First thing I did was talking to my colleagues, figuring things out, what works the best in terms of understanding their role, how to communicate with them. And they're all different, but in general, physicians have very, very little time. So you have to be extremely, extremely respectful of their time. when you do get them, you have to maximize it. So that's across all specialties. ⁓ And going to conferences, same thing. I think the biggest learning is going to conferences, interacting directly with them, observing them, what works, what doesn't, how do they present, how do they like data to be presented, how do they learn from each other, because peer-to-peer communication is key for us. And that's basically my entire strategy is based on how to communicate effectively to the physicians. So that's one good example. Now in my current role, I'm in osteoporosis space. It's very, very different and unique and challenging in a way because osteoporosis is treated by multiple specialties, by a rheumatologist, endocrinologist, physician assistants. And I have to completely rethink, when I first joined, I had to rethink my strategy, communication strategy. So if you look at my plan for the Congresses, I have to make sure I communicate data across all specialties and I thought more coverage, more... Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, more coverage, yeah. Svetlana Pidasheva: And also the way data is communicated. So rheumatologists are very different from endocrinologists in the way you present data. And all this has to be taken into account. Sometimes I have projects where I have multiple specialties together and they're very, very productive. So during ⁓ our manuscript development, it's extremely helpful sometimes to have multiple specialties because then they look at the disease from different point of view. and you end up publishing a much more impactful manuscript for broader audience. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. And it's that balance, right, of being tailored to individual segments and individual audiences. But also, it doesn't matter how big the organization is, there's not unlimited budget and resources for those kinds of things. So imagine it's helpful to look when there are areas of kind of natural overlap or similar messaging can be used. ⁓ But I'm sure there's decisions you're making all the time around, you know, Intense personalization, one-to-one personalization, right? Maybe the ideal, but that's not the reality of the environment. ⁓ Any of us are working and non-specific to any organization. We all have to make those kinds of decisions about how specific can we be based on our other constraints. Svetlana Pidasheva: you Kristen Sweeney: So I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about, not segment specific as we were just discussing, but in general, when you think about creating communications, developing communication that's going to have an impact, what does success look like for you? Svetlana Pidasheva: So it all depends on the life cycle of the drive, where you are. you know, whether it's you're just launching a new, old company where you are as a company. So I've been in companies where really small and the most important goal was to raise money and, you know, continue to phase three of trials. So the strategy in the smaller company is very, very different ⁓ to my current strategy, for example. So, but in any case, What's really important is to maximize data dissemination. And that's one trick that I'm going to share with you. When you get data, regardless, whether it's clinical trial data or real world evidence, my goal is to make sure that Kristen Sweeney: Great, great. Svetlana Pidasheva: I maximize Congress presence, which means I ⁓ use the, you know, I kind of, not just me alone. So when I say I, it's the whole team. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Svetlana Pidasheva: So this meeting I'm saying hi, but it's always a team. So we always make sure that the most important data set is prioritized for our key Congress. So for example, if your market is the U S you, you choose the most important, biggest, most impactful Congress. And that's where you submit your most important data. And then from that data, you can always look at other meetings, you know, smaller ones, especially the ones that allow. modified encores or encores so you basically take the same data or add some additional sub analysis and submit to these meetings. And what's also really important is geography. Here I'm just talking about the US but I have a lot of experience with global communications. So we want to make sure that we present our data on the west coast, on the east coast. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Svetlana Pidasheva: to different target audiences. And once we're done with maximizing our podium poster presentations for that purpose of peer-to-peer communications, then we in parallel develop manuscripts. I highlight develop, we don't write, we develop manuscripts. So by using this approach, Kristen Sweeney: Can't wait to get into this with you, yeah. It's coming. Svetlana Pidasheva: You maximize your data. You make sure that everybody hears about it. Everybody talks about it. They just, and then you publish your, your manuscripts. Same thing with manuscripts. You, you always try to get into the highest impact journal if time allows, because sometimes you have to be, it's a balance. So what do you want to deal with the highest impact journal, rejections, resubmissions, or you want to go maybe to a lower impact journal and quickly all depends on the needs of the company. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I'm hearing, I mean, I love your talking about maximizing, but ⁓ in a way that also has prioritizing as the core of it, right? You're saying like, pick that first target. This is a somewhat unrelated story, but I think it has relevance. years ago, I have a background as an actor. And ⁓ during kind of peak audition season, you can drive yourself crazy, like running all over Midtown in New York City, running back and forth to different auditions. And I was standing at a table trying to figure out what time slot I should come back to. And I made some remark like, ⁓ I'm just trying to strategize, like, how can I do the most? And he was at the monitor who ⁓ was frankly just giving his two cents unasked for, but it stuck with me. So I guess it was worth it. ⁓ He said, like don't strategize, you should prioritize. And so what he meant was like, you should probably pick that one audition you care about the most and focus on that versus seeing how many you can hit in a day. So I love that even though you are talking about maximizing, it feels like that's maximizing impact by being really thoughtful about kind of priorities. ⁓ Svetlana Pidasheva: It's a really good point because actually almost every company that I joined, big pharma and really small companies, I ended up spending a lot of time prioritizing. Because if you're not an expert in incentive communications, you tend to publish whatever comes your way. Just you think the more the better, but that's not the case. That's not the case. Quality is more important than quantity in communications. You're much better off saving and Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Svetlana Pidasheva: and maximizing your most important data at one or two meetings rather than just going little pieces and bits everywhere and then you won't get much in return. So it depends, but most of the time prioritizing and better quality content is much more valuable than a lot of abstracts and papers everywhere with little to share. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, no, it's interesting. ⁓ So my background is in, I come more from the marketing side and content. And in the last few years, we've done a lot more communications work with organizations. And one of the big differences to me is that content is typically thought of in terms of output and communications is as much deciding what not to say. as what to actually say or produce, right? And that can be tricky when you get into metrics and things like that, ⁓ because it's sort of hard to quantify, like here are all the great decisions we made that resulted in us not doing something. ⁓ But it's definitely one of the key differences I've noticed and really appreciate. ⁓ So I wanna switch gears just a little bit. We heard in your bio about international background. You've lived in four countries, you speak three languages, you love to travel. Svetlana Pidasheva: Yeah. Kristen Sweeney: How have those experiences shaped your approach to communications? Svetlana Pidasheva: Yeah, So as you can hear from my accent, probably I was born and raised in former Soviet Union. So we left, can safely say, escaped communism before it collapsed. So, and we ended up in Canada, in Montreal, where French is important language. So I learned French and I actually met my husband there in Montreal. whose background is Hungarian. And then, you know, we moved to the United States. So I speak Russian, I speak ⁓ English and French. Not very fluently, but when I was in school, I had more opportunities to practice my French. But as far as helping me to understand different needs and... relate to different audiences, was incredibly, incredibly helpful because ⁓ my current role, I'm mostly focusing on the US. So ⁓ a little bit less important, but in my previous roles, like Sanofi, ⁓ of my roles was taking care of emerging markets. literally my was to ⁓ travel to areas ⁓ like Latin China. you know, Middle East. figure out what their local needs are and adjust and help them to prepare for launches of Sanofi products. So having that experience of understanding and quickly adapting to different cultures and listening a lot before talking and really understanding was the key. Kristen Sweeney: And I love too what you said about like listening, ⁓ kind of being your physical presence. I imagine there's a lot of observation too. ⁓ I think, you know, because there are the whole point of this conversation is there are cultural differences, regional geographic differences. And I would imagine that in some cases, behaviors may speak louder than words in some cases, right? Or convey something that's maybe not being said explicitly, but you can dig into it a little bit more based on something else you're observing by kind of, again, sitting back and not making too many assumptions to begin with. Yeah. Plus. Svetlana Pidasheva: because we know 50 % of communication is non-verbals. Kristen Sweeney: Exactly. All right, Svetlana, it's time. So now we're going to switch gears and cover our one big idea. This is where we're going to get into some of the details of a specific insight. And you came into this conversation knowing exactly what you wanted to discuss, which is developing a manuscript, role of AI, but also giving clarity for our audience on exactly what are we talking about when we talk about a scientific manuscript. why don't we start there, have a little bit of education for our audience in case they're not familiar. And then we can get into how that's done, how it's co-developed, and what role AI does or doesn't play. Svetlana Pidasheva: Yeah, so that's really what I wanted. My My big idea I wanted to discuss. actually I want to back up a little bit when I began my career in scientific communications. I, just like most people, I assumed that writing manuscript is just like, you know, during your PhD or postdoc, you do research, you results ⁓ mostly on your own with a couple of involved. ⁓ Then you sit down in front of computer, you write your manuscript, which actually doesn't take so long. You write it and then you send it to your supervisor to review or whatever, you know, a few collaborators. That was my idea. And that's really was that's what writing a manuscript is. And that's what the graduate students do and most academics. So when I joined Allergan, I learned very quickly that this is not how manuscripts are developed in pharmaceutical industry. It really is a lot of people don't understand that being a scientific communications professional takes a lot more than just writing a manuscript or knowing therapeutic area or knowing the audience. So. You have to understand the rules. You have to understand compliance. And that's why at Allergan, I learned really the most basic, most important part of getting my CMPP certifications, certificate for medical publications professional, And we always went to ⁓ ISMAC meetings, professional communications, publications, professional meetings, and every time you go, you learn so much. So you have that huge background. So let me tell you what it takes to develop a manuscript in pharmaceutical industry. First, when you get your data, a top line or final data, you have to work really closely with physicians who were part Let's talk about clinical trials. There are different ways of getting data, different kinds of data, but the simple. Clinical trials. So you get clinical trials data and then you have sort of like a publication committee meeting, usually in person. So it's like advisory board with, I don't know, five, six, seven. physicians who were directly involved in conducting clinical trials, collecting data. And then you have also internal team, always medical director and ⁓ a biostats person who analyze the data. So you usually spend entire day, and that's all part of developing publications, believe me. So you spend entire day digesting every part of that data. And we prepare way in advance for this meeting. have all our... Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Svetlana Pidasheva: strategy, all our congress planning, journal, proposed journals, etc. But when you get to that meeting, you listen to what physicians care about, how they want this data to be communicated So during this entire day of discussing, digesting, we ⁓ collect, we take notes, we take their opinions, everything, and we go back ⁓ to the and we kind of ⁓ redesign and we adjust our plan which we right, based on the feedback we got. then you start that process of... ⁓ you know, first with your different abstracts. So let's say you decide to go to top five meetings or whatever, and then you send out author invitations. And believe me, writing the actual abstract takes almost no time. But this entire process of engaging physicians, setting up, inviting them to be authors, then setting up author calls, again, discussing everything, discussing what, what the most important message that needs to be communicated. Which data table should be included, which figures and how. Who should be presenter, who should be first daughter, who should be last. And these are very sensitive discussions. It takes a lot of time. And also remember, remember I told you upfront that physicians are extremely busy. So you can only imagine how difficult it is to bring them all together on a video call like this. It takes forever. So, but once you bring them in, you take notes, you develop for the manuscript, for example, an outline, send it to them. for their input, intellectual input, they review it, they provide their input. We take it back, we implement everything, we go to the next version of the manuscript. we're not, we're physically writing parts of it, but it's that face-to-face communication with physicians, constant. And that's what brings value to the manuscripts. You know, it's not just sitting down in front of the computer. Any PhD student can write a manuscript in like a couple of days. But what's the value? Because at the end of the day, you have peer to peer communications and physicians trust each other. And when they see the authors on the manuscript and they know that it was developed. with the appropriate process, they trust the data and then they change their practices based on the data we communicate. ⁓ And I can tell you it did happen many times when physicians, authors on the publications came up to me during the Congresses and told me how they appreciate and they thank me for keeping this process very strict and going properly. They appreciate and they appreciate, you know, all the organization around it and support. So that's what I'm talking about developing. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, so good. ⁓ Two big takeaways for me. One, you know, I like how you're languaging around data and it's not twisting the data. It's not spinning the data, but it is what is the key message? And maybe there's an assumption that, it's data, so it just kind of tells its own story. But what I'm hearing from you is that you have to make very intentional decisions about what you want to. Svetlana Pidasheva: We're here. Kristen Sweeney: again, maybe prioritize the word kind of coming back here. ⁓ The other thing you did such a good job explaining, I might have to re-listen to this and think about it in our own messaging. So we don't work on scientific communications, but we do collaborate closely with executives and experts for many of our clients, subject matter experts, technical experts. And it is this process. It is not measured in how many words are there at the end. ⁓ you know, or how many paragraphs or is it a blog or is it an article or is it a this? is the bringing all the ideas together, finding the right people in the room. And, you know, with what you're discussing, you know, often in some of the work we're doing, we are sometimes helping clients honestly say, do we need eight people involved in this or could we do two or three? ⁓ Sometimes the answer is two or three and depending, sometimes the answer is eight. All eight, you know, so you've got to adapt to and certainly with what you're talking about, we're being accurate, being precise. All of these people's voices matter. That's where the real complexity comes from. Certainly that final presentation in terms of the words that end up on the page, it does matter, but it is as good as the whole process that's led up to it. Svetlana Pidasheva: And it's the process that matters. And I know it matters to physicians because when they read publications and they know that very respectful peers developed it, it's their ideas, their input, their trust. If you have a high agent writing it in 10 minutes, beautifully, there's no trust. I mean, you're a big... Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. So yeah, let's talk about AI where, you know, Are there opportunities? Are you seeing some danger zones? And how overall is scientific communications maybe thinking about AI as a sector? Certainly we've talked to folks across life sciences companies who are being pushed to figure out how to integrate AI in other areas. But I'm curious about scientific communications and what the mindset is around that right now. Svetlana Pidasheva: So, you know, I'm kind of early adopter of technology. Chat GPT came along, I quickly took all the trainings, online trainings on like the most sophisticated prompting and everything and it was extremely helpful. I felt like I'm ahead of the game and I was so excited. So I kind of quickly adapted and... Kristen Sweeney: Okay. Svetlana Pidasheva: And I spoke to my friends and colleagues in Big Pharma because remember it takes a lot of money to implement AI agents because we can't use open public like chat with you know. Kristen Sweeney: Sure, exactly. Svetlana Pidasheva: So it takes a lot of time and effort. And that's why at that point, like a year ago, year and a half, only big pharma really could afford to implement all these internal closed loop agents. I mean, others like us, we already have it as well, but that was the beginning. And let me say something upfront, because I think a lot of people misunderstand AI agents. They're not tools. People think of AI as a tool. It's not a tool. ChatGPT is not a tool. It's your agent. It was designed to work with you or alongside you but not necessarily augment you. Like Microsoft Office is a ⁓ ChatGPT is not a ⁓ or copilot is not a tool, but people always refer, ⁓ it's a great tool. It's not. So to me, my copilot is basically my admin or my personal assistant or project manager. Because I remember at the beginning when people were saying, ⁓ I tried it. It's not so good. It's like that. ⁓ But can you tell me me how did you prompt it they basically use a chat bot select a tool as if they're like you know searching in Google for whatever it doesn't work this way and now obviously Within a year, it became even more sophisticated. So you don't really need to have any special skills in prompting. There will never be such thing as prompt engineer because there is no need for them anymore. AI agents are smart enough to just... Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah. It was interesting when you said you felt really ahead. I was thinking, how long did that feeling last? That you felt ahead of everybody else. Do you still feel that way? Svetlana Pidasheva: So now getting back to scientific communications, I know for a fact, and I have friends who work in big pharma, so at the beginning there was a lot of excitement, know? A lot of money was poured in into these agents and they tried to kind of implement it across. Everything including developing manuscripts like, you know secondary or whatever They were holding off on primary manuscripts, you know, the most important from the clinical trials But anyway, so what happened, and it's my personal opinion, it's amazing, it's really amazing to have your personal assistant or your project manager right next to you, staring at you from the screen, helping, you know, ready to be available anytime with any questions you might have. But it can only, at least right now, things will change very soon. As far as developing manuscript, I don't use it and I'm not planning to use it anytime soon because it's this process of interpersonal communications with physicians which is extremely valuable and it matters. It matters. And as a matter of fact, I believe that we are now at the point of... we're getting to the point of having that luxury, if I might say luxury communication and, and content, especially scientific literature versus generic, like in China, for example, they have paper mills of like AI tools that can develop your manuscripts in what, a few minutes, whatever, and that's where they're submitting. So we're getting to that point of critical thinking and the... I know it's a weird word to use, know, luxury manuscripts by humans in the way I described to you versus the other mass production of, you know, beautifully written AI agent manuscripts, which... Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Svetlana Pidasheva: trustworthy and I can even tell you publishers are it's really hard for them to keep up with it's hard for all of us to keep up with the product progress but they're trying really really hard to implement rules so like a year ago they came up with all kinds of guidelines for example AI cannot be an author on the manuscript because it cannot attest to any of the work it can't you know it can't take any responsibilities so that extremely important and they came up with all kinds of rules as far as disclosures you have to clearly disclose which tools you were using for what and I in our company I actually was again ahead of the game so when all these agents came out I implemented the rule of including specific language in our disclosures in all our communications starting from posters presentations and manuscripts where we clearly state that any AI tools or AI agents were used to develop this content. So we clearly stated upfront so that there would be no gray areas and no guessing games because it's important to disclose if something was used, but I think it's also important to disclose upfront that it was developed by humans only. So that's all. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah, I love this take on it. so the mission of my company is to share great ideas with the world. And I thought about that as you were talking, because any output we create, any writing we do, and don't get me wrong, I'm extremely proud of the writing capabilities of our organization, as I'm sure you are as well. but it is the vehicle, the medium for conveying some kind of ideas, right? And so not only is the idea really important, but whose idea? The person behind the idea matters too. And so all that relationship building and, ⁓ you know, I imagine there are a hundred different small ways in which it makes a difference if that physician had a really good experience and is extremely proud of the process of... the order in which their name is listed as author on the paper, on the manuscript, and how that influences dozens of micro conversations they have about it, right? Like all of that matters and compounds and the actions they might take to make it more visible and help support it versus being kind of neutral. so that, again, going back to... Svetlana Pidasheva: you Kristen Sweeney: as a customer, that customer experience is really part of it. But also that idea of the ideas being conveyed and who's conveying those ideas. And to your point, being able to attest and having ownership over saying, these are mine and I came to them ⁓ through rigorous science. ⁓ It matters. And it matters very much to the people that you're trying to reach, of course. Svetlana Pidasheva: Thank Hmm Yeah, yeah, and also just to mention one more thing. When I developed manuscript, I always try to invite authors who are really experienced experts in the field as well as ⁓ younger. just, you know, starting off and you have no idea how important it is for them to be a part of this very, very important discussions and debates. And they learn from each other so much. And also we're getting perspective from, you know, like just the beginners, ⁓ physicians who are just starting in the field and they have different view of how they consume data. So they also provide very important input and they're also very much into social social media and sharing their experiences. So that's also really, really important. this actually manuscript development process is so valuable, so valuable in terms of the actual process of doing it and communicating with physicians. And for them, it's extremely important as well. I cannot even imagine ever, no matter how good technology will get with all these glasses. Kristen Sweeney: Hahaha Svetlana Pidasheva: your non-verbal communication. I don't think it's worth for pharma or biotech companies to ever replace this process. really is. It's our bread and butter. You spend millions of dollars on clinical trials, multiple years, and then developing and communicating content. It's like the crown jewel of the whole process. Why would you... If I may say cheapen it by, you know, using some automated process where it's the, like the final most important stage of communicating. Imagine you can get whatever results you want, but if you don't communicate your results, it's really for nothing. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, it's like that capstone. Yeah, I love that. I love that. ⁓ I could probably do this all day, but I do want to keep us moving. It's been a great conversation about developing a manuscript. This is now burned into my brain how I'm going to talk about this going forward. ⁓ But I want to take you to our recurring lightning round segment, The Last Word. So every guest gets the same five questions. You just kind of go with your gut on these answers. Svetlana, are you ready? Svetlana Pidasheva: Yep. Kristen Sweeney: We're suddenly in a game show. Question one, what's your favorite word to say out loud? Svetlana Pidasheva: Amazing. I always say. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Amazing! That's amazing! What's a word you know from reading but you're not quite sure how to pronounce it? Svetlana Pidasheva: many words. I have two, one, many. My husband is so funny. He's Canadian, very, very polite, but he is very much into words and origins of words and he speaks many languages he learned on his own. So whenever I say something and I don't pronounce it well, he always corrects me. Always. You're worse than any AI. Kristen Sweeney: What's one phrase or saying you wish could be retired for good? Svetlana Pidasheva: ⁓ my God, there's one phrase that really irritates me when people say, does that make sense? I just can't, for some reason I can't stand it. Kristen Sweeney: You know, I'm a little bit guilty of this, but more recently I was reading something about this exact phrase and how it's not only annoying to folks like yourself, but also shows you doubting yourself. So anyway, this is very interesting. This is kind of, this phrase has been on my radar to remove from my vocabulary. Svetlana Pidasheva: Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know there's a lot of people use it, but it's... don't know. And I don't even know exact reason why it irritates me. It's just... Kristen Sweeney: Just nails on the chalkboard. You know, everybody's got one, at least one. What's a communication practice or principle that's non-negotiable for you? Svetlana Pidasheva: ⁓ compliance. I will never tolerate ever any deviations. Kristen Sweeney: Perfect. Perfect. And what's the last thing you read, heard, or watched that really stuck with you? Svetlana Pidasheva: Yeah, actually the last article, it just appeared in for not Forbes Fortune, I think like a week ago, it was by Matt Schomer, who is the CEO of the other I think the other AI or something. And it was so impactful and something that I personally experienced. ⁓ So the title was something big is happening. And he was talking about AI agents and how extremely quickly they develop and most people don't even realize. So you remember how I told you when I felt like I was ahead of the game and I took all these courses and I was a little bit surprised when people were telling me, ⁓ I tried it, it's not so good. ⁓ It's really good if you try it, if you know how to use it but guess what? Today you don't even need to know how to prompt. Kristen Sweeney: Yes. Svetlana Pidasheva: And that's exactly what he's saying in his article that ⁓ unfortunately many people are not prepared and they're not. speed of development and what these agents are capable of. And just today I saw the headlines of, you know, like meta glasses or whatever, and they're always evolving and changing. And one thing we had in our favor as humans is that nonverbal communications, because pretty much everything done on the computer, on the screen can be done even better than. by agents today, but today. You know, for example, my work, half of my work, if not more, is this nonverbal communications, engaging in person, but with emerging technologies and tools, AI agents will be able to do it and already able to do it to some extent, you know, analyzing that nonverbal communication and, you know, reacting accordingly. So it's going to be. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, interesting. I think I read that article as well. And I do definitely align with the sentiment of it. I find it I've found it challenging, to be perfectly honest, because to me, I don't like open loops. And so you can't say that capability. That's not that's not an AI capability. AI is not going to assist us in that way. You got to say. Not right now. Let's check back in six weeks. Let's check back in three months and see how it's going. So it's a lot of open loops of making those decisions. And I do find that honestly challenging, but something that I think many of us are are having to adapt to. Svetlana Pidasheva: I honestly, I gave up on taking AI trainings. What for? It's like, it's outdated because yeah, it's fast. It's amazing. It really is incredible how capable it is. if obviously we're all using it and we're amazed by the capabilities, but, but still we need to figure out how to. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah. Svetlana Pidasheva: preserve our humanity. Kristen Sweeney: Absolutely. Svetlana, thank you so much for joining me today on Expertly Said. If our listeners want to learn more about you, where might they be able to connect with you? Svetlana Pidasheva: I think the best would be LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect with people and continue this important discussion. Kristen Sweeney: Awesome, that sounds wonderful. Thank you so much for being here today. Svetlana Pidasheva: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. It was fun.