ValuesJammer in the Spotlight 

Alicia Sanchez

Who are you?​

I’m the Chief AI Officer at MPF Federal, where I do my best to reduce the barriers that prevent humans from leveraging important technologies like AI. Having spent the better part of 20 years as a Experiential Learning Designer and Innovation Leader in the US Department of Defense,  I consider myself to be an advocate for bridging technology and people to drive mission success.  At MPF I create AI solutions and am trying to inspire every agency and organization to use AI as a competitive advantage by putting strategy first, by focusing on AI/Human Partnerships, and by driving innovation within their adoption.  

What are your personal core values?

I think I center on 3 core values that are part of everything I do; resilience, authenticity, and humility.  I’ll tell you a little bit about how and why I hold these as part of my identity.
 
Resilience – To me, being resilient is both a value and a virtue. I’m really bad at quitting, and while that has both positive and negative sides to it, being resilient to me isn’t just about not giving up. For me being resilient is about learning from a situation, creating a new strategy if I need to, and continuing forward … over and over and over again until I meet my goal.
 
Authenticity –I think I’m pretty great, but there are so many things I wish I could change about myself.  Like being more polished and professional at work. Not interrupting other people when they speak. Not talking too much or too loudly. I try to be those things, but I’m so bad at it I have no choice but to be me. I think people notice that I am authentic because who in the world would fake being awkward? So I lean into it.
 
Humility –  To me humility is a lot like Self-Efficacy, which I define as an individual’s belief in their own ability to perform a task. While my belief that I can do something is important, I think my understanding of what I cannot do is even more important, because that is what keeps me learning and growing. At work this means recognizing when someone else in the room is better suited for a task than I am, or has an opinion that I can and should learn from. In my personal life it means I accept that if I want to be able to do something that I cannot currently do, I’m going to have to work at it to get there.

Why did you join the ValuesJam community?

A mutual friend introduced me to Alan, we met and had a session and I’ve been a fan ever since! I think what I like best about this process is that serves as a reminder to be more conscious about how I  interact with the people and world around me. It drives me to both reflect on and project out my values in my every day life.

How are you using your ValuesJam card decks?

My current usage is shuffling the deck at least once a week before work and drawing a card. Then I look for opportunities to express that value in my day with whoever I am interacting with or with myself!

Favourite rock n roll moment of magic from a ValuesJam session?

There’s not one single moment, but there is a different thing that happens that I love.  When I draw a card, it often feels like that card is preordained just for me.  It’s like when you breakup and every song on the radio is about you.  I’ve heard it called the Frequency Illusion or the Barnum Effect; but if really feels like magic when something that has been clawing around in your subconscious manifests itself into the word on a single card!

How could greater WELLBEING improve the world? 

I think it’s easy to believe that well-being is the combination of financial stability, safety, physical health and psychological health. Those are elements of course, but I know I’ve spent too much time and energy in pursuit of things I thought would increase my well-being only to find out I was chasing the wrong things. I think if more people, communities, and organizations were in a state of well-being we would all spend more time doing good things for the world with the time we didn’t spend chasing the wrong things. We would have more time to focus on humanity, creativity, innovation, and advancement; and I would LOVE to see more of all those things.

Contact details

ASanchez@MPFLLC.com
Alicia Sanchez | LinkedIn

https://www.mpfllc.com/ 

ValuesJammer Top Tips

Force rank the ValuesJam cards to help identify your core values.