Laureen Rwatirera

Laureen Rwatirera, wonderful to have you with us. To start, could you tell us a bit more about yourself, your background, and your current role?
Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Laureen, and for the last 25 years I’ve worked at the intersection of human potential and organizational transformation, two areas I absolutely love.
I have been leading talent and learning at Prosus, and before that I served as Chief Learning Officer and Head of Organizational Development at ASML. I also spent time in financial services, working at an investment bank in South Africa connected to one of the country’s largest investment companies. I’ve been living in the Netherlands for the past seven years. Before that, I lived in both Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Learning has always been a central passion throughout my career. Much of my work has focused on learning and development, organizational transformation, talent management, and broader business transformation initiatives.

The intersection between people and AI is, of course, becoming increasingly important and will also be a major theme during the HR event. What currently excites you most about your work?
For me, it feels like we are experiencing a revolution, and I would actually say one that is even bigger than the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution mainly disrupted factory work and manual labor. What makes AI different is that almost everyone’s role is going to be affected in some way. I feel like I’m playing two roles at the same time. On the one hand, I’m trying to learn as quickly as possible how to use AI effectively myself. I already use AI in many aspects of my work, and I absolutely love it.
At the same time, wearing the HR and people development hat, I’m also thinking about how we help people build the skills they now need. I believe AI literacy will become just as fundamental as computer literacy. This is something everyone will need. We also need to help people redefine where their value lies. The way many people have worked, and the value they traditionally brought through that work, is fundamentally changing.
I think organizations have a huge responsibility to help people rediscover their passion, purpose, and direction. We need to help people rethink their careers and the work they care about, while also learning how to leverage AI in meaningful ways. What excites me is both sides of that challenge: learning and adapting quickly to new technologies myself, while also helping people reshape their purpose and find new meaning in their work. That’s really what energizes me.

You’ve worked across organizations such as ASML and now Prosus. What has most shaped your perspective on AI, people, and leadership? Is there something in particular that stands out to you?
Absolutely. I feel very grateful to have worked for some incredible organizations throughout my career. Each of them taught me different lessons, often from very different angles. Take engineering excellence, for example, which you really see at ASML. Building highly complex machines at that scale simply doesn’t happen without significant investment in people.
In my 25 years working across many global companies, ASML is by far the biggest investor in learning and development I’ve ever seen — easily more than 10x the global industry average. When you look at the success of ASML and what they’ve achieved, so much of it comes back to investing in skills, capabilities, leadership, technical expertise, and highly specialized engineering talent. For me, that’s incredibly powerful.
At Prosus, what has been exciting there is being part of the AI evolution at a very early stage, experimenting with AI, adopting it quickly, and learning through doing. That experience taught me the importance of speed, agility, and helping people adapt to change.
We’ve run AI programs across many different functions, including finance, HR, legal, and even executive assistants. Interestingly, one of the groups that impacted me most was the executive assistants. Some of them were genuinely anxious at first. They were asking themselves, “Am I even going to have a job because of AI?” But once they started using AI in their day-to-day work, the transformation was incredible. We brought in a specialist focused specifically on how executive assistants could use AI effectively in their roles. Now some of them say things like, “I no longer spend 80% of my time managing calendars or scheduling meetings.” Even invoice processing became automated in some cases. Some executive assistants built workflows where invoices automatically move from the inbox into spreadsheets and then directly into finance systems. It’s incredible.
What I loved most was seeing the shift from fear to empowerment. Instead of AI being perceived as something threatening, it became something that freed up time, increased productivity, and allowed people to focus on building entirely new skills they previously never had the opportunity to develop.

One of the things that happens when change moves this quickly is that leadership also needs to evolve. Do you think AI specifically requires human-centered leadership? And what does that mean to you?
I’m a big believer in human-centered leadership because ultimately, no matter how great the AI agents become, it’s still people who make businesses successful. Despite the evolution of technology, and despite the amount of productivity we can unlock through artificial intelligence, people still come to work for people. People also want to find purpose and meaning in their work, and I think that sense of purpose is very much shaped by the kind of leaders they work for.
One of the best examples I recently came across was the approach IKEA took when parts of their call center operations became redundant. What I loved about that story is that they didn’t simply say, “Your roles are becoming redundant.” They also asked employees, “Would you like to be trained in another area?” Most of them said yes, and many ended up learning interior design.
On the one hand, IKEA could simply have shut down the call center and moved on. Instead, they invested in an area that created additional value and revenue for the business, while at the same time helping people discover new purpose and build entirely new skill sets. It enabled individuals to learn something new, build different careers, and potentially even move into more fulfilling work, while also helping the business continue to grow.
For me, that is a reflection of culture. It reflects the kind of leadership you have within an organization. So absolutely, I believe human-centered leadership sits right at the center of this transition.

I love this conversation, Laureen, and I think this is only a teaser of what we’ll hear at the event, where you’ll also share practical examples of how organizations are combining the human side with AI. As one of the speakers, what are you most looking forward to discussing or hearing from others?
I’m really curious to hear how AI capability is evolving specifically within financial services. The sector is dealing with a number of competing pressures at the same time: regulation, accountability, workforce concerns around purpose and career direction, and of course the speed at which AI itself is developing.
I was recently part of conversations where people were asking questions like: who is actually accountable when an AI agent makes a mistake or pulls data from the wrong source? In financial services, the stakes are incredibly high. So I’m very interested in how organizations are navigating that balance.
On the one hand, companies can’t afford to move too slowly. They need to help people adapt and help their businesses evolve. But on the other hand, the risks are very real and need to be managed carefully.
So the big question becomes: how do we maintain speed and agility while still managing risk in the right way? I’m really looking forward to hearing how others are thinking about and solving those challenges.

Well, same here. I’m very much looking forward to continuing the conversation on the 18th. Laureen, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.