When I meet with Tammy Soares, she’s sitting against a wall covered in decades of art: her daughter’s paintings, sketches, even a framed drawing from the 1990s. “I moved into my new house a couple years ago,” she says with a laugh. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had my own space, so I put everything from the 90s to today up on the wall.” The collection feels like a metaphor for how she approaches technology: layers of human experience made visible.
Soares, now President of Launch by NTT Data, has spent her career translating technical possibility into something people can feel. She’s direct and unsentimental about AI’s promise. “It doesn’t have a soul. Not yet,” she says. “But if we design it with intention, it can reflect our humanity.” In her view, that’s what separates efficiency from empathy—the difference between software that saves time and systems that earn trust.
As Soares puts it, AI’s future depends on whether we “humanize before we scale.” Which is where our conversation began.
Q&A With Tammy Soares
Q
AI has become a powerful force in nearly every industry. What do you see as the biggest missed opportunity in how companies are approaching AI today?
A
Tammy Soares: The biggest miss is stopping at efficiency. Most companies still see AI as a productivity lever when, in reality, it’s a creative partner. AI’s real power is in creating humane experiences that feel intuitive, empathetic, and alive. I see AI as an ally that can uncover deeper insights, personalize at scale, and anticipate needs. But that only happens when you humanize before you scale. You have to understand the people, the behavior, and the emotion behind the data. That’s where trust starts.
The way to do that is simple and disciplined. Build an innovation roadmap that identifies where AI can drive impact across the journey. Prototype quickly to de-risk investment and learn from real people before you scale. And make sure the digital foundation is ready, with real-time data and omnichannel integration. When you start with people and design for what’s humane, that’s when AI becomes a growth engine.
Q
How can leaders build trust in AI, both among their teams and the people their organizations serve?
A
Tammy Soares: Start with the people who will use the tools. Ask what they want fixed and design for that. That’s part of what I call the trust framework: it’s about listening, being transparent, and showing, not telling. I hear creatives say, “Let AI take the administrative tasks, not my writing.” That matters. Adoption issues are often trust issues.
Leaders can address that by involving teams early, communicating the why, and making the first wins tangible. Tell the story of what’s working. Stories build understanding faster than presentations ever will. When people can see their own success reflected back, they start to trust the tools. Create safe spaces to learn, pair people with peers, and upskill around practical use cases. Break silos so legal, tech, design, and operations can shape solutions together. When people see that AI frees time for meaningful work and supports their judgment, trust grows. Trust is something you earn through empathy, communication, and real outcomes.
“Start with people, use AI to amplify their strengths, and build the foundation so ideas can move quickly from concept to impact.” – Tammy Soares
Q
Human-centered design has always been about empathy and understanding real needs. How does that principle evolve when we’re designing with, and for, intelligent systems?
A
Tammy Soares: The core stays the same. We begin with insight into real human needs. What changes is the canvas. When we bring empathy into AI, we design relationships. With AI, we are designing experiences that are intuitive, predictive, and adaptive in the moment. That means combining research and data with interaction patterns that feel natural, whether it is voice, chat, or in-person digital support.
Personalization becomes anticipation, but it only works if the plumbing is in place. You need accessible data, customer profiles, and intelligence that can power recommendations and actions across channels. Empathy guides the what and the why. Humane AI helps with the how, with heart, at speed, and at scale.
Q
As AI begins to reshape entire industries, what does it take to ensure that technology is amplifying human creativity and decision-making, rather than replacing it?
A
Tammy Soares: You have to design AI to serve, not to substitute. Clarity of intent and thoughtful design. In healthcare, the shift is from reactive care to real-time prevention. In financial services, it is from transactions to intelligence. In retail, it is from personalization to prediction. None of that replaces the human. It equips clinicians, bankers, and associates with better signals and simpler workflows so they can focus on care, advice, and service.
Keep people in the loop for decisions that carry risk. When the experience removes friction and elevates expertise, creativity rises. AI should feel like a partner that gives you time back: space to think, create, and imagine again.
Q
You’ve led teams through multiple waves of digital transformation. What lessons from those earlier eras still hold true as we enter this new phase driven by generative and predictive AI?
A
Tammy Soares: Meet people where they are, not where the technology is.
I watched smartphones turn impossible moments into everyday ease. I still remember being at my daughter’s soccer tournament, pulling out my phone to find the nearest Jamba Juice, and realizing she would never need a pay phone or the Yellow Pages.
Years later, I was with my parents as they opened a Yellow Pages to find an electrician, and I pulled up three options online in minutes. That is the bar. Make life easier in ways people can feel right away.
Early social media debates about ROI sound a lot like today’s AI debates. The hard work is still ahead. Keep the focus on real problems, break silos, and let small, validated wins pave the path. It’s the same pattern every time: the tech gets the headlines, but people create the movement.
Q
Empathy and inclusion are often considered “soft skills,” but they’re becoming strategic imperatives in technology. How can organizations bake those values into their innovation strategies in a measurable, meaningful way?
A
Tammy Soares: Tie empathy to the work. Capture the voices of employees and customers and use them to set priorities. In the workforce, make space for people at different stages. We are seeing creative ways to retain expertise, like step-down roles that pair shop floor time with knowledge capture. Use sensors, manuals, and logs to document how experts work, then have those experts validate what AI produces. Measure what matters. Track adoption, task time saved on mundane work, satisfaction with new experiences, and error reduction where it counts. Rapid prototyping with real users gives you signals you can act on.
Inclusion is not a slogan. It shows up in who you involve, what you build, and how you measure outcomes. That’s also where humane AI comes in: it respects people’s experience, it keeps the wisdom of a generation alive, and it builds systems that include, not exclude.
Q
If we look ahead ten years, what does a world shaped by truly human-centered AI look like to you, and how will it change the way people experience work, creativity, and connection?
A
Tammy Soares: I think it looks like technology that’s so embedded into everything we do that we don’t even think about it anymore. Take GPS, for example. You don’t think about GPS as a technology; it’s just part of the fabric of how you move through the world. AI will be like that, but 10x. Right now, people still think about AI as a souped-up chatbot. Eventually, it will fade into the background and become part of the core fabric that’s predictive, intuitive, and contextual.
Experiences will just know you. They’ll understand who you are and what you care about. The systems around you will anticipate your needs, adapt in real time, and feel more human, not because they’re replacing people, but because they’re designed around us.
Work will feel different, too. AI will take on the repetitive stuff, so people can spend more time on creativity, relationships, and problem-solving. The tools will learn alongside us, carrying our values and our voice. Technology will move faster, but life will feel calmer, because it will be intuitive and predictive, built around what people actually care about.
Follow Tammy’s Journey
Who Is Tammy Soares?
Tammy Soares is a people-first technology leader who serves as President of Launch by NTT DATA, where she drives customer experience and digital product innovation at the intersection of design, strategy, and engineering, with AI and innovation at the core of her approach to creating human-centered experiences.
With over two decades of experience spanning startups and global enterprises, Tammy is known for building cross-functional teams that don’t just imagine the future—they realize it. She believes real innovation happens when you co-create with clients, focus on momentum over vision decks, and design AI that augments rather than replaces human potential.
Her career includes executive roles at Soul Machines, Accenture Song, and Rosetta, where she scaled teams, turned around business units, and led award-winning transformations for some of the world’s biggest companies. Today, Tammy is a voice for human-centered AI and inclusive product leadership. She is on a mission to help large organizations deliver meaningful innovation at speed, drawing on a career that began in the early days of Silicon Valley’s tech boom, where she helped shape the first wave of internet innovation.
From her startup roots to leading creative technology and business transformation at scale, Tammy brings both the heart of an innovator and the discipline of an experienced executive.
