Planning for End of Life is a Love Letter
📢 She Leads AI Society Members Making an Impact
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Vannessa Weber is Vice President of Strategy and Impact at Veracity Research Solutions, LLC, a Latina-owned research and data analytics firm she has been part of since its founding. The company's work spans program evaluation, needs assessments, veteran education support, and data science — built specifically to make rigorous research accessible to organizations of all sizes, not just those with large budgets.
Her degree is in Research Psychology and Data Analysis, and her professional focus has stayed close to that foundation: developing research methodologies, ensuring data quality, and translating findings into decisions organizations can actually act on. She brings additional experience in public relations, project management, and departmental leadership to that core work.
The mission behind Veracity is personal for her. When the firm launched, she described it as a dream she had carried since completing her degree in 2019 — building something that puts serious research capacity within reach of smaller and newer organizations that would otherwise go without it.
Sarah K. Heeter is the founder and CEO of Podfox Media, a podcast production and strategic consulting company behind more than 7,000 episodes reaching audiences across 100+ countries. She also hosts Big Brave Business, an award-nominated podcast ranked in the top 2% globally, where she takes on business ethics, leadership, and what it actually means to build something with integrity.
The throughline in her work goes back further than podcasting. She studied Political Science, International Relations, and Conflict Resolution, then spent years in the nonprofit sector helping girls find and use their voices. When she built Podfox, she was building the same thing at a different scale — a platform for people who have something to say and need help saying it strategically. Her shows consistently rank in the top 1% of their categories, and she has helped clients leverage their podcasts to land book deals, speaking engagements, and meaningful business growth.
She's also a policy person in the most concrete sense. She serves as Director of Public Policy for the NAWBO Phoenix Chapter, teaches public policy and community resilience at Arizona State University, and is currently co-authoring bipartisan legislation for the Arizona State Legislature. She was named Outstanding Faculty Associate of the Year at ASU in 2023. Her book, Liberate Your Business, came out earlier this year.
On AI specifically, Podfox is actively building proprietary technology and, in Sarah's words, "leveraging the power of AI in a rapidly developing world to help amplify the underrepresented voices of marginalized folks doing important work."
Merry Ellen Austin is the Marketing Manager for Events and Community at Osano, a data privacy management platform that helps organizations build compliance programs across GDPR, CCPA, and more than 95 other privacy laws globally. Her work sits at the point where marketing, community, and privacy regulation converge — and as AI governance becomes an increasingly central part of what Osano does, that position puts her closer to the AI policy conversation than most marketers ever get.
Her background isn't a straight line. She holds a B.S. in Therapeutic Recreation from the University of Toledo — a field built around using activity and engagement to support health outcomes. That training shows up in how she works: prior to Osano, she built her career in event management and community programming at Navisite and Naylor Association Solutions, and outside of her day job she co-chairs the Columbus IAPP KnowledgeNet, coordinating continuing education and networking for privacy professionals in her region.
She's also on the founding committee establishing recognition awards for recreational therapists in Ohio, and she's been active in the Columbus Young Professionals Club's leadership development program. The thread across all of it is the same — she builds community, connects people, and takes the infrastructure of belonging seriously.
👀 What's Happening in the Society
🖋️ Our Featured Artist(s)
We are excited to be currently featuring artwork from The Yellow Muse
Zine, a monthly creative challenge series.
This week's piece comes from Bárbara Estebaranz. Bárbara is an AI visual storyteller from Spain and the creator behind Barbtech Creative who uses generative AI as a creative playground to build hyperrealistic images and short cinematic stories that blend emotion, imagination, and symbolism. Her work often explores themes like human connection, nature, humor, and surreal twists on everyday moments — transforming simple ideas into visual worlds that feel both familiar and unexpected. Coming from a background in business, strategy, and innovation, discovering AI as an artistic tool opened a completely new way for her to express creativity, and through open calls, challenges, and creative communities, she shares experiments that push the boundaries between technology and storytelling. For Bárbara, AI isn't just a tool — it's a new canvas, and her goal is to create images and stories that spark curiosity, evoke emotion, and remind us how powerful imagination can be.
🎙️ AI Readiness Project
The AI Readiness Project Series Finale
Season two of The AI Readiness Project ended the way it began — with sharp conversation and people who show up for it.
Anne Murphy and Kyle Shannon wrapped the season reflecting on where things stand: Anne rebuilding her organization from the ground up with an agentic team structure, Kyle learning that a great agent without a clear purpose is just "a dude on a chip." Then they brought back a group of past guests — Jyunmi Hatcher, Marisol Rios, Chris Vallone, Marlene Paul, Suzanne Welker Jurgens, Trudy-Ann Armand, Tracy "the Safety Lady" Hawkins, and Niki Weiss — for a reunion worth watching.
What does AI readiness mean to you? Answers ranged from "build local AI" to "never having to be a hostage again." Anne closed with the same answer she's had since the beginning: curiosity, vulnerability, community.
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