Sandy Carter

Welcome to 100 Stories. I'm your host, Paige Williams. Come along with me as I build the emerging field of narrative intelligence by learning from 100 thinkers, creators, CEOs, and people whose lives have been shaped by profound change. Together, we are exploring a question at the center of how we become who we are. That question is, how malleable are the stories we live by? And what does it take to change one?

Across these conversations, we're examining the stories we inherit, the stories that become identity, and the human capacities that allow us to recognize, question, revise, and live beyond them. What I learn through this series will help shape the field of narrative intelligence and the foundational book that I'm writing about it. This is 100 Stories. Today, I am speaking with Sandy Carter. Sandy is a pioneer in AI. Working in technology, she has held executive positions across IBM, Amazon, Unstoppable Domains, and is now the CEO of Equis, which is a privacy-first [music] AI company. It's building a trust layer for the agentic era. I invited Sandy to

100 Stories because she understands deeply the narrative behind technology [music] and company culture. Sandy, welcome to 100 Stories. >> Well, thank you, Paige. I am so excited to be here, and I'm I mean, what you're working on is so exciting. This narrative intelligence just has me can't write the book now. Like, I got to get the book right now. It sounds so amazing. >> Yes, I am so excited about it, too. And all of these interviews are teaching me so much about it, and I can't wait to dig in into AI and narrative. I think it's so important because it it's what makes us special, and also how AI can help us. So, we'll get into that, but first, I want to ask you to tell me

about the work that has most shaped how you see yourself in the world. >> I would say there's not one thing. Um, because I would have to say that my time at IBM shaped me in one direction. You know, big category category creation, really understanding how to work a matrix, really shaped my opinion of how we do things. And there understanding the narrative was so important because you had to get so many different groups in the matrix bought in. So, if you didn't have a strong narrative, one that was consistent yet tailored, you wouldn't win in the space. And then of course at Amazon, you know, the narrative was all about we're the world's largest startup. So,

we're moving and agreeing and we're moving at startup speed, but yet we have bigger resources. And there the narrative was also important because it was customer obsession. So, if you didn't have the right story to tell, the right features, the right things, you would lose. You you needed to be finding that product market fit as fast as possible. But, I would also tell you I have two daughters. And you know, that job has also shaped how I look at things and how I think about things, especially now as we're seeing so many mix of generations in the workforce and how differently they see things. So, for example, I had always wanted to be an astronaut. I'd always wanted to go to

the moon. I did work getting rover up to Mars when I was at AWS. And so, we were talking about some of the space things and one of my daughters said to me, "Mom, don't you know that going into space has so many environmental impacts?" And I was I was like, "I know that, but I didn't bring it to the forefront until she said it because her generation, rightly so, is very worried about that."

So, you know, that has shaped me thinking about different generations, how to speak to genera- different generations, and what's important to them. So, sorry I didn't give you like one answer, but it's really been a couple of different things that have shaped me along the way. >> It's the perfect answer. What story do you tell about one of the most transformative moments in your life and has that story changed over time?

>> It has. The most recent story for me actually came from Amazon. So, Amazon typically hires and promotes from within. This is Amazon Web Services. So, when I came into Amazon Web Services at the level I came in, I was one of the only outsiders coming in. And so, it was a little tough, you know, coming into the culture, learning the culture, having everybody assume that I knew everything and I didn't with the Amazon way. And so, I still remember our CTO asked me to come and present. Was there about 6 months, I think, Paige? And he said to me, "Come and present this mistake that you made. Share with us how you discovered the mistake, what you did

to fix it, etc." I was like, "No, I don't think so. I don't want to do that. Here's three great things I did. I want to share those." He's like, "No, we're going to share the mistake that you made." I'm like, "No, I don't want to. I want to do the best practices." And he's like, "No, we're going to do that." So, anyway, and he's like, "Okay, you know, at Amazon we say disagree and commit."

He goes, "Okay, you've disagreed enough. Commit, you're going to just do it." And I have to say, it was probably the hardest presentation I've ever pulled together. I had never been asked in my career to talk about failure, how I had failed. And so, I reluctantly did it. I did not want to do it. I did go back one more time to try to say, "Okay, here's the failure pitch. Here's the great pitch.

Let's do the great pitch." And of course, I did more graphics and everything on the great pitch. Of course, we didn't use PowerPoints. We did it in narratives, but you know, I had more pictures, more things, more graphics. And anyway, I did the pitch and after the, you know, after we read the narrative and we talked about it, I had so many people come up to me and say it and said, "Wow, this made me understand you more, like how you got to that point and then how you resolved the issue." And anyway, 5 years later, I was leaving Amazon to go to a startup and people were going around the room and every person was saying three things that they really remembered about me.

And of course, you know, most people said energy, creativity, that sort of thing. And then I was shocked. People said, "Do you remember 5 years ago you did that failure presentation? I loved that." Like it showed your vulnerability. It showed how you thought differently and it helped me in my business not to make the same mistake. And so, I would say, I thought that was a disruptive way to teach others, a humbling way for the leader to have to go in and said, "I screwed up. This is how I screwed up." But yet, an impactful end result. And so, when I went to my new company, I continued to do that and hopefully I'm going to bring that to Equis AI as well as part of our culture.

>> When you say bring it, what is the narrative you're bringing from that experience at AWS of what you learned from talking about the failure versus the success and how is your own narrative shaped since that moment of learning? >> So, what I brought with me from Amazon to Unstoppable was, first of all, it's okay to fail. In fact, it's better to fail than not fail because you learn more from it. And and I mean, I was surprised because that was part of the culture at Amazon was, okay, after every project in your postmortem you did, here's the three things I did great, here's the three things I didn't. And always, I learned more from the three things that

we didn't do great. Not every company does that. Not every company looks at how did you fail? And so, what I brought over was let's look at not just the success, let's look at the failure, but let's celebrate both of them equally and also no penalty for failing. Unless you fail like over and over again on the same thing. Now, so I'm not saying everybody go out there and fail, but if you learn from the failure, you're actually stronger and better as an employee. The company gets stronger and better. And so, that's what I want to bring over is the narrative that you learn from failures. You're I mean, think about it. Today you're at AI speed, startup speed. I mean, we're

moving so fast. So, if you're not failing, you're probably not moving fast enough. So, you've got to get comfortable that not everything you do is going to be successful and not everything you do is going to be perfect. >> Yeah. I work with companies a lot about the narrative that's driving under their work, their culture. And and I feel like until you address the narrative, your strategy really doesn't matter.

And it feels like bringing this openness of failure is as celebrated as success would allow for a more open workplace and honest workplace. >> I think so. And and I would say, you know, I have to I have to give Amazon a lot of credit because for the interview, I learned all these leadership principles and I was like, wow, these are really good. But I assumed just like at all the other companies I had worked at that they were going to be like a pretty picture on the wall and I would never talk about them again.

Boy, was I surprised. Like we were we were talking about customer obsession. We were talking about be curious. We were talking about frugality. We were talking about disagree and commit every single day. So, because Amazon had that narrative that ran through everything, I do think that that narrative needs to be lived. It can't just be a piece of paper or a poster. It's got to be something that the company embraces and does on a daily basis.

>> I love that. Thank you for taking me through that. That was really beautiful to hear. What story about AI do you think is shaping people the most right now? >> What you put into an LLM is there to stay. So, it's kind of like, you know, when my kids were growing up, I'd say, "Watch out what you post on Facebook. Watch out what you put on Instagram because those pictures are going to be there and it's going to reflect on you."

Now, it's "Watch out what you put in the LLM because what's in there is in there." It's not even like a picture on Instagram that you can go back later and delete. Damage is done, but you don't stop you don't you stop it for the future. Here, it is there. And so, the stories that I'm hearing now, especially because I've come over to Equis and we're now focused on data that you own. You decide who gets to use it and how they get to use it.

What's, you know, that privacy piece. I've talked to a young man who had cancer, got his reports from the Mayo Clinic, couldn't understand a word on the report, all this medical jargon. So, he put it into ChatGPT to understand it. Makes sense, right? But then he said to me, "Sandy, now I'm getting ads for life insurance. Like, you better be prepared for your future. Death is around the corner."

And so, he said to me, he goes, "I just want to take it back. Like, I want to take that information back." And you can't. It's out there now. Another story that I heard was about a board, and the board was learning how to um how to use AI. And so, one of the exercises that they did as a board, you know, as a board you watch after the company. And so, the instructor said, "Okay, everybody enter in that we're undergoing a hostile takeover."

So, everybody typed that in to try to get insight as to what would the LLM recommend that the company does. 2 hours later, media leaked that this very company was undergoing a hostile takeover, which it was not. But, every board member had entered that they were going through a hostile takeover for this exercise. So, somehow that data was picked up. And so, for me, the story we should be talking about is let's not recreate that same mistake we made with social media, which is just not caring and dumping everything into an LLM. You need some privacy protection. It can't just be all out in the open. And I don't think we're talking about that enough today. The

story Do you want me to go on to the story I think that is shaping the narrative today? I think what's shaping the narrative today is that you guys won't have to work anymore. Everything's going to be done by agents. It's going to be done instantly. So, you know, we need some sort of universal income. We need, you know, watch out for your job because AI's coming for your job. That is the narrative I think that's shaping the world today. I just went and talked to two high schools high schoolers high schoolers like senior high schoolers are afraid that there will be no jobs for them when they graduate from college.

College students are saying, "I can't get a job because of AI." And I think a lot of the big frontier models I think a lot of the big frontier models now are trying to reshape that narrative slowly. You're watching them right now. They were before going, "Oh, AI can do everything" to "Not yet. Not yet." And I think the reality is it really is not yet. I mean, if you've created an agent, I've created agents, it can't really do everything that you say yet for everybody. But, I think it is shaping the narrative of how people feel about AI. What stories make people more likely to adapt or to resist a new technology like AI in your experience? I'm writing

an academic research paper on that, and that's our our topic. So, I'd love to hear what you think. Stories to make people adopt it, I think, are a little different with this technology than with cloud or some of the other technologies where you could learn about it academically, understand, okay, your application's now not here, it's now on the cloud. Okay, I can understand that. AI is a little different. In the book I wrote called AI First Human Always, I talk about people have to play storm with it. They have to get their hands dirty so that they understand it. So, for example, this morning, I taught a class on how to create a chief of staff. Now, when I

entered with the, you know, 30 people who came to the class, a lot of them were like, "Oh, I don't need this. Oh, it's not real." And they left going, "Oh, this is so cool. I can have somebody help me manage my calendar just like an executive. Like, I can have my own personal assistant" kind of thing. And so, I think that the narrative around what's going to make people adopt it is learning from others what is really valuable and having them show you how that works so that you can do it yourself. Now, on the flip side, what is the story that people won't adopt it? I think that right now, there's still a lot of techies out there, and I think that the You don't have to be technical

to use AI, but I think there's, you know, there's a whole new language. I just wrote a post about this, right? An MCP server, there's the loop, there's tokens, like the whole new language, and you're borrowing from other terms in the dictionary. So, my nephew this weekend, I was I had to take a quick work call when he was over and and he said to me, he's like, "Auntie Sandy, you're talking about agents? Are you a spy?" I'm like, "No, no, no, I'm talking about AI agents." And then I had to explain, "Okay, a spy agent is this, a book agent is this, but an AI agent is this." And so, I think that something that turns people off or is all the new language

you have to learn and the perception that you have to be super technical to learn the technology or to be able to use the technology. >> Yeah. So, for Equus, go just give me a brief on does the protection layer lay over an LLM? Like, how does it work? How is it protecting us? Why are you leading this company cuz I know it's great if you're if you decided to be the CEO of it. >> So, essentially, what it does is it's all around the premise that the data about you should be yours. You need to own that data. So, it's just like the example I gave you earlier where the guy entered his medical data and then other people started using that. Somebody sold

it, right? So, the whole premise is it's your data, you own it, you decide how it gets used. And so, what Equus does is we use open-source models, we download them download them to a local server, so it can't get access to the internet. You enter your private data, that private data is stored in a private data storage, so nobody else has access to your private data except for you.

So, let's say your shopping preferences, your kids schedules, um the fact that you get a pizza every Friday night. Even let's say, you know, the number one use today of AI by far is companionship. Um it's so sad to say it, but it is the number one use case by far. The loneliness has crept into everybody's lives. I guess since COVID, they said it's only gone up since COVID. And so, people share a lot of things with AI companions. And so, you know, keeping all that private, right? Like today you might be sad and depressed because your girlfriend left you, but a year from now maybe you have a better life, a happier life. You don't want all that other

stuff out online where people can can can get a hold of it. >> You're building new technology that protects privacy and obviously you have a passion for that. So, what responsibility do tech leaders have in what the development of, you know, like you've mentioned social media several times. If if we had asked that of the social media creators at the beginning, that's kind of what I'm saying is as a creator of AI, what responsibility do you have and others have?

>> I mean, I I'll give you my opinion. It doesn't mean that everyone feels the same way. But, I mean my opinion is that if you're going to create something that everybody's going to use, including kids, right? I feel that you have to take some responsibility. I don't know about total responsibility cuz some of it has to go back to you as the person, too. But, I think you as the founder and the creator need to put in as many safeguards as you can. Like you got to try to protect, I think others and try to think about privacy in a real way, not just a marketing veneer way. I think I mean, I think that goes for any company, not just AI, right? Like if

you're if you're a safety company and you're working with rail railroads and your job is to protect the railroad worker, you have a responsibility in doing that to the best of your ability. If you're an insurance and you see, you know, new technology that can help to help warn you about weather, I think your job is to use that technology and protect others. I don't think it's just AI, but I think it should be across all of our companies, and I think in some regards we've lost our way and what that moral responsibility is in favor of profit.

>> Mhm. >> What do you think? Do you agree with that? >> 100%. I mean, yeah, building without regard to humanity is that would be unconscious living. >> Yeah, so I don't know if some of these people just don't think about it or they, you know, I know a lot because I I'm in Silicon Valley, so I'm with a lot of founders. I think a lot of them are just moving so fast, Paige. The like my daughters loved Alice in Wonderland. And with Alice in Wonderland, you know, um Alice says, "I have to run twice as fast just to stay in place." I feel like I feel like today is probably 10 times as fast just to stay in place. And so I can see how you would be so absorbed as a

founder. I do think that, you know, you need to slow down. This is why I like your narrative intelligence, not just narrative, narrative intelligence, because hopefully it can bring you back and really center you on what's important. Just like the Amazon leadership principles, I would consider that narrative intelligence. And that and the and they are the leadership principles don't always agree, either.

They're also in conflict because in life there's really no white and black. It's all like a like a little conflict going on. And so, for example, one of the leadership principles is empower your team. The other is that you need to deep dive. So as a leader you're like, "Oh my gosh, I got to empower my team, but I've got to deep dive." And so you figure out where that balance is, where you're deep diving enough to where you can answer questions, you know almost as much as your employees, but you're still empowering them to make the decision even though you understand it. It's not clean. It's it's a conflict, and they're designed like that on purpose. And so I

think having narrative intelligence as a startup founder or in AI where things are moving so fast could help to slow you down even for a second to just think about what is your direction, where are you headed, what are what's most important to you. >> Yeah, I love that. I was in this debate with a professor of information management systems and and he's deep in the AI world and teaching AI in business school at Cambridge in the University of Montana and we were having this debate of could can AI have narrative intelligence? He's like, well, it can if we've trained it. But, the thing that I'm deeply curious about is yes, but it doesn't have lived experience and it can

only be reflect back what we've told it. And so, it doesn't have the felt life of lived experience of like take you know, coming to a fork in the road and really having that tension of which way should I go and then making that decision and then having the results of that decision come back and have consequence. >> Yeah, I mean, this is a fascinating factoid, but um only 15% of the knowledge on Earth is digital. Only 15%.

>> What? >> Mhm. I got a source for you and everything, too, that that will show you that. So, if only 15% is digital. Now, that's today, so I don't know when this is going to air or someone watches this 10 years from now, they're going to be like, oh, no, it's much greater. But, today it's only 15%. So, judgment is not digitized today. Experience, like I went to see, you know, this piece of art and how it made me feel versus how it made you feel because maybe I think that piece of art is amazing and it moves me and you don't. Those experiences aren't digitized today. Um I know right now there's a movement in Africa. I was just at um the World Bank and the World Bank had

many countries from Africa there, and they were telling me they're trying to figure out how do they take tribal knowledge, and how do they digitize it? So, they've been interviewing like chiefs and you know, some of the members of tribes who've lived the longest to try to get their what they have in their head that's not digitized um into a digitized form so that they can use that for their LLMs in Africa so that tradition is not lost.

Um and so, there's all these things today. So, we're using LLMs like it's the end-all, be-all, right? Okay, yep, if the LLM said that to me versus how much has really been digitized? And I'll give you a great example. My daughter actually interviewed me for a podcast, and she had all her little girlfriends in the room while we were doing the interview. And And it was fascinating because she asked me if the LLM told tells you you know, you give it choice A and choice B, and it tells you to do choice A, do you always go with it? And I said, "No, I don't because, you know, maybe it doesn't understand the whole context.

Maybe it doesn't know that the last time I did that, this happened, and it didn't look at those factors." And my daughter asked me an interesting question, "Well, how How would I know that? Like, I don't have the lived experiences that you have. So, maybe I'm just going to go with what the LLM tells me cuz I have nothing else to debate it with, and isn't it smarter than me?" And so, we had that discussion, and even after the podcast went off, I talked to her friends, and they're like, "You know, Ms. Carter, how do we get that learned experience? Like, how How do we justify going against the LLM when we haven't had those experiences?" It's a great

question, right? Great question. >> Yeah, one of the things that Dr. First teaches is, okay, you have asked the LLM, you can save five kids in an or an elder, and you ask deep seek versus open, you know, versus chat or quad, you're going to get different answers based on culture narrative. >> Mhm. >> You got it. It's so interesting. >> It is, you know, it was fascinating to me when we were at Harvard, I was went to Harvard Business School. It was the first year that they introduced a set of classes on ethics, which was awesome, a great move. And one of the classes was we read a case study, and this we were pretending like we were this guy whose

his dream, his bucket list was to go up, climb Mount Everest, and get to the top of it. He saved all his money, this was going to be his last time that he could ever do it. And on the way up, there was a guy on the side who was clearly dying, was not dressed for an expedition, and you had a choice. You either had to take him back down the hill, save his life, or and and you know, sacrifice your bucket list, you never get to do this again, or go ahead and go to the top, reach your goal, and maybe on the way back down try to save him if he's still alive. And I thought, this is really fascinating to me because some people are like, well, look, if I've worked and

saved, and here's this dude who knows he's going up Mount Everest, and he's got on some outfit that can't keep him warm, it's his fault. Like, what why do I have to pay for it? It was fascinating to see. Um but I learned a ton around that because I seriously thought, Paige, I was like, you know, this we're going to get out of class early, like 5 minutes, but we're done. Like, this class this case is stupid, seriously.

And I was super surprised. >> I think that is the core of narrative intelligence. It's thinking or narrative, and then how we view it, and whether we can change it. Intelligence part is an important part. George Carlin has an a joke from way back that have you ever noticed when you're driving down the road everyone going faster than you is a maniac and everyone going slower than you is an idiot.

>> That's It's like >> We think, oh, of course we're going to save the guy. Like I would think that too, by the way. I'm in the same boat. I'm like, yeah, that's we're going to save the guy. And we think people think like us and and coming outside of that perception and hearing other people's stories is just everything. It's like so human. When you hear the phrase narrative intelligence, would you put your definition to it? Like, well, here's how I would define it and what does it mean to you?

>> So, when you told me what I thought about was Amazon leadership principles. It's the narrative that you you and your company are going to live every day that aligns with your values and your principles. It just puts it in a story form, a narrative form that enables you to make the intelligent choices that you need to make on a daily basis. >> Yeah. >> How close am I? >> Well, that's the discovery of these 100 interviews. And let me tell you something, you are interview 13 and this is the first time that anyone has spoken about it from a corporate perspective.

>> Really? Mostly personal. >> Personal narrative intelligence. So, I love your perspective and what you're bringing to the conversation because I think it's really important for companies and corporations to think about narrative intelligence and apply it however they wish to apply it because this is cuz because of consumer goods and and what we take into our world is so important on a personal level.

>> I have to give Amazon a lot of credit because those leadership principles you you live them every day, we get trained on them and so for me that was the the through line that flew through everything that we did. It was really how we made decisions. Again, there was never it's never black and white. There were some that were in conflict. So, for example, you know, you got to be frugal.

Um when I came into Amazon, we had a desk that was a door. And why did we have a desk that was a door? Well, Jeff Bezos' tradition was when he started, he didn't have enough money for a desk. So, he took a door off of one of his rooms and he put legs on it and that was his desk. So, everybody coming into Amazon got a door as a desk. So, I was like, "I want my desk to move up and down." Like, I stand up half the day, I sit down half the day. If I've got a door there, it doesn't move. And so, um you know, and so that's frugal versus convenience. Because of that tension, like we want to give our employees a great place to work and part of that is

being healthy, having a desk move up and down, we were able to change that decision. If it had been like a hard re frugal, "We're not going to replace a desk. You've got a desk. You don't need another desk." It would have been a different story. So, I I really like the way that through line went through everything that we did at Amazon. I think that's what really made the company super strong.

>> Sandy, thank you so much for your time today and your expertise. This was amazing. >> Thank you, Paige, and thanks for what you're doing. And let me know when you've got that narrative intelligence book out the door. >> I certainly will. Thank you. Before we close, here's what I'm taking from this conversation about narrative intelligence. Sandy helped me see narrative intelligence as the organizational level in a new way. A company's narrative is not the language on the wall. It's not a poster. It's the story people actually use to make decisions every day. Her experience at Amazon showed how principles become powerful when people have to live them,

wrestle with the tensions between them, and use them to decide what to do next. She also gave me something important for the question of how people adopt new technology. Sandy's experience is that people often need to experience AI for themselves before the story they hold about it begins to take change. Watching someone use it, trying it, and discovering what it can actually do may shift a narrative in a way that information alone cannot. [music] And that makes me curious whether technology adoption is partly a process of narrative revision through experience.

[music] And then there's the human piece. AI can give us information, but we will still bring lived experience, [music] judgment, values, context, and the consequence of the choices we make. Maybe narrative intelligence becomes even more important in an AI world because we have to keep asking ourselves, [music] "What story is shaping this decision? Where did it come from? And do I want to let it determine what happens [music] next?" And now I want to invite you into the inquiry.

What's your NQ? Take [music] the Narrative IQ assessment at storykeys.co. Share 100 stories, give it a like, make a comment. It really helps and goes a long way. And Sandy, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today.