The AI Skills Gap: What It Really Takes to Bring a Workforce on the Journey

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The technology is the easy part. Getting people ready for it, that's the hard part.

In this special compilation episode, Dr Raoul-Gabriel Urma steps back from the individual conversations and zooms out to one of the most persistent themes across the show in 2026: AI skills and literacy. Because no matter the industry, the company size, or the stage of the AI journey, the same challenge keeps surfacing. How do you get an entire workforce genuinely ready?

You'll hear from Jessica Rusu, Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer at the FCA, on building T-shaped skills for an uncertain future. From Nick Edwards and Harj Johal at the AA on the combination of tooling, training, and space to practise that has driven rapid, organisation-wide progress. From Sarah Self at Aviva on why democratising AI is as much a cultural imperative as a commercial one. And from senior data and AI leaders at Santander UK, Oxford Saïd Business School, and TransUnion on curiosity, fear, and what genuinely high-performing teams look like in an era of AI.

A compelling, cross-industry episode for anyone thinking about the people side of AI transformation. These, however, are just the highlights. Find links to every full episode below:

Jessica Rusu: Apple - Spotify - YouTube

Nick Edwards & Harj Johal: Apple - Spotify - YouTube

Sarah Self: Apple - Spotify - YouTube

Mark Bramwell: Apple - Spotify - YouTube

Luke Pearce: Apple - Spotify - YouTube

Kevin Cassar: Apple - Spotify - YouTube

Conny Ploth: Apple - Spotify - YouTube