The AI economy is creating roles that didn't exist two years ago and filling them with people who didn’t follow a traditional path.
At Pursuit, this is exactly what we are building for.
This spring, Pursuit welcomed OpenAI’s Erica Vlahinos Anstine for a fireside chat with our Builders. Moderated by Devika Gopal Agge, Pursuit’s Chief Development and Employer Services Officer, the conversation explored what it takes to build, lead, and succeed in an AI-native economy.
Erica’s own path made the conversation especially powerful. She started her career as an Off-Broadway playwright and actor, pivoted into tech sales at 27 with no background in the field, became the number one sales rep at a deep-tech engineering firm within her first quarter, and is now a member of the GTM Staff at OpenAI.
Here's the recap.
When Erica joined OpenAI, there was no New York office.
"To be a founding member of a team is a lot more similar to being a member of a startup than it is to joining an existing company. We were looking for a collection of people to start a culture and to really start an office within a different location."
Today, as a GTM Staff member at OpenAI, her job is to help enterprises evaluate, implement, and measure the impact of AI on their business. That means figuring out which solutions are the right fit, getting them deployed, and making sure the investment is working.
Erica grew up in an immigrant household. Her father immigrated to the US from Greece in his late twenties without speaking a word of English. The lesson she absorbed early was simple: opportunity here is earned.
She spent her twenties as a playwright and actor in New York. At 27, she made a pivot to tech sales with no background in the field. What she had was a question list and the humility to use it. She sat in on calls, wrote down every question she had, and sought mentorship from anyone willing to give it. She became the top sales rep in her first quarter.
The skill that carried her wasn't technical. It was curiosity, and the ability to read a room.
"I came from theater world. I would write material, go out on stage, perform it, look at a room of people and see how they responded, go back the next night and make edits. I had this really fast, iterative loop of storytelling. That's exactly the same skill set I used in sales."
For a long time, she hid her theater background, worried it would undermine her credibility. Then her CRO pulled her in to coach her own team on storytelling before a major pitch to a large aerospace manufacturer. The room was full of people who had been doing this for 20 years. She had something they didn't: she knew how to structure a narrative, hold an audience, and make something complex feel human.
Once she started owning that background, she kept getting invited into rooms like that one.
For Pursuit Builders, that message matters. Erica’s story reflects a core belief behind Pursuit’s model: nontraditional talent, when given access to the right skills, networks, and expectations, can compete in — and help shape — the AI economy.
The lesson was not that everyone needs a traditional tech background. It was the opposite: the skills that make someone excellent in AI-enabled work often come from unexpected places.
Most AI initiatives stall for the same reason: lack of committed strategy. Disparate tools across departments, conflicting priorities — these are the real barriers. The technology is only as powerful as the care and scale with which it is deployed.
But Erica has also seen what it looks like when a leader gets it right. She worked with the CEO of one of the largest employers in the world, who came to her with questions he couldn't easily ask elsewhere. How do I talk to my people about what's coming? How do I lead through a transition this fast? He sat down with her and worked through it. She leads call like this with skills learned in her previous career.
"The empathy to say: how must he feel? This guy is responsible for hundreds of thousands of people's jobs. He has been in the role for two years. CEO turnover has never been higher. He is looking for guidance. That is exactly the skill set I was given in the arts — how does it feel to be this person? And with what I know from seeing this play out every day — how can I help?"
That CEO's willingness to ask for help is what separates the companies winning on AI from the ones stuck. The leaders who succeed are humble enough to admit they don't have all the answers, transparent enough to bring their teams along, and brave enough to reward experimentation over perfection.
What this means for Pursuit:
AI adoption is not just a technology problem. It is a leadership, communication, and execution problem. That is why Pursuit trains Builders not only to use AI tools, but to understand workflows, communicate with teams, and turn real organizational needs into practical solutions.
AI fluency has become more valuable than tenure. Erica gave a concrete example: a major movie studio recently hired a new head of special effects. The top candidate had two to three years of AI experience. The runner-up had 20 years in the field. The job went to the person with less experience, because their AI skills mattered more.
That pattern is playing out across industries. The people who will win are the ones building AI-powered workflows for their specific function, not waiting for someone to hand them a tool.
"Any role that exists today: figure out how to utilize AI for it at an advanced level. That person will get a job over somebody who has 15 years of experience. That skill set is incredibly valuable for any business to bring in."
What this means for Builders:
The labor market is beginning to reward applied AI fluency over traditional credentials alone. Builders who can use AI to solve real problems, automate workflows, and create new tools are developing the exact skills employers are starting to value most.
One Builder asked about building an automated outbound Sales Development Representative (SDR) agent. Erica didn't hesitate. Build compartmentalized agents: one for research, one for outreach, one for calendar management. Orchestrate them. The person who can do that today will replace a function that used to require multiple hires.
Don't build an AI version of something that already exists. That was Erica's clearest piece of advice. CRM tools were designed around the limitations of what software could do before AI. Those constraints no longer apply. The better question isn't "how do I make this tool smarter?" It's: what problem was this tool trying to solve, and how can AI solve it from scratch? Customer data may not need a user interface at all in a few years. It might live in a system you simply talk to.
"Get the old way out of your head. Look at what problems people are trying to solve and how AI can solve them. Zoom out. Those are the ones that will lead to transformative technologies."
What this confirms for Pursuit
Erica’s perspective reinforced several ideas at the center of Pursuit’s AI-native program:
The most valuable workers are not just those who know AI tools, but those who can apply them to real problems.
Career paths in the AI economy will be more nonlinear, and hiring will increasingly follow demonstrated skill.
Human skills — empathy, storytelling, communication, and curiosity — are becoming force multipliers in technical roles.
Employers need talent that can bridge technology and execution, not just write code in isolation.
This is why Pursuit Builders work on real-world projects, engage directly with industry leaders, and build portfolios that show what they can actually do.
The AI economy will not reward credentials alone. It will reward people who can learn quickly, apply tools creatively, and work across disciplines.
That is what Pursuit is building.
For Builders, Erica’s message was clear: your path does not need to be traditional to be valuable. The skills you have built across your life - curiosity, persistence, communication, empathy - can become advantages in the AI economy.
For employers, the talent you are looking for may not come from the places you have always looked.
And for partners, the opportunity is to help shape an AI economy where access to new careers is not limited by pedigree, network, or zip code.
As Erica told the Builders:
“You guys are already examples of excellence for being in this room at all and for committing your time to learning this skill ahead of everyone else.”
Our Builders are not waiting for the AI economy to arrive. They are preparing to build it.
