Women could solve the AI trust gap, but they aren’t in the room

When I was offered the CEO role at Smart Communications, a digital customer experience company, my instinct was to say no. I thought I wasn’t qualified, lacking depth of experience in product or engineering. I believed a CEO needed a background in every department, and by that standard, I didn’t measure up. Thankfully, the people I trusted convinced me otherwise. They helped me see that the perspective I brought – having spent my career in marketing and strategy, obsessed with how customers experience a product rather than how it gets built – was my strength, not a gap. I’ve thought about that moment many times since. But never more than when I started looking closely at how women experience AI. What the data told me about my own career Every year, my company surveys thousands of consumers across healthcare, financial services, and insurance about their experiences and expectations. Over the past two years, I’ve noticed a recurring trend in how women respond to questions about AI. Women aren’t less interested in AI than men. But they are more cautious about its risks. Across every industry and geography we surveyed, women expressed higher levels of concern about AI than men and lower levels of confidence in AI-powered tools. The gap was widest in healthcare and financial services, exactly the sectors moving fastest to deploy AI in consequential customer interactions. The standard read on data like this is that it represents a problem to solve. Women need more education, more reassurance, and better onboarding. Close the confidence gap, and adoption will follow. But, as a female CEO, I read it differently. Women’s caution about AI is not a gap in understanding. It is a considered response to real questions about accountability, transparency, and what happens to the person on the receiving end when something goes wrong. The same questions that I have spent my entire career learning to ask. The question nobody is asking The industries we support are m