You're Never Stuck: Erica Rooney on Curiosity, AI, and the Questions That Change Everything

You also have the people leading these organizations.

Many of them are cozying up to people who just think, at least in the U.S., that citizens should look like one thing and you cannot be an American if you don't look like this one thing.

But there is a different layer, the four gaps that you talk about in your book.

Can you give us an overarching view? Also, I want to know what's the favorite gap to talk about?

All right, girl.

So we've got the awareness gap.

We've got

the authority gap, which that's really the distance between you're doing really amazing, strong work and having work that is actually being seen by the people, by the LLMs.

How are they being ranked? All of that.

So awareness gap, authority gap, the compounding gap, which for me, that is the distance between the contribution and ownership.

And that's where we start talking about dollars and income.

We also have what I call the infrastructure gap, which is really the distance between who is participating in the system, who is actively shaping what comes next, right? And who is sitting it out, right? Who is creating the infrastructure? Who becomes part of the infrastructure? And I think the most popular one to talk about is the compounding gap, just because it's all about our dollars.

We all know that women have been underpaid for the same work that men do, and that our women who are people, you know, identify as a person of color, any Black woman is making even less.

Like, the data is there.

I don't even need to dispute it, right? Nobody does.

And so...

My concern, and I think a lot of other people's concern, is with AI scaling everything so rapidly, we have this gap that we haven't closed.

It's just going to expand even further.

And what's interesting, too, is when we're talking about the compounding gap, we're not just talking about the pay gap, right? But we're talking about, like, who gets capital? Who receives funding? What do those people look like? We already know for women, it's a very small number.

And so and again, people of color, even tinier, you know, even tinier pie.

And so to me, the compounding gap, it's probably one of the most important because when you have capital, you essentially have power or at least you can build it.

Oh, I think that's probably the most fascinating one.

Appreciate that.

There's this theme that's coming up in my conversations, the ones on the podcast and offline, gender equity and the wealth disparity.

And that's exactly what you're hitting at with a compounding of impact.

You also have the people leading these organizations.

Many of them are cozying up to people who just think, at least in the U.S., that citizens should look like one thing and you cannot be an American if you don't look like this one thing.

But there is a different layer, the four gaps that you talk about in your book.

Can you give us an overarching view? Also, I want to know what's the favorite gap to talk about?

All right, girl.

So we've got the awareness gap.

We've got

the authority gap, which that's really the distance between you're doing really amazing, strong work and having work that is actually being seen by the people, by the LLMs.

How are they being ranked? All of that.

So awareness gap, authority gap, the compounding gap, which for me, that is the distance between the contribution and ownership.

And that's where we start talking about dollars and income.

We also have what I call the infrastructure gap, which is really the distance between who is participating in the system, who is actively shaping what comes next, right? And who is sitting it out, right? Who is creating the infrastructure? Who becomes part of the infrastructure? And I think the most popular one to talk about is the compounding gap, just because it's all about our dollars.

We all know that women have been underpaid for the same work that men do, and that our women who are people, you know, identify as a person of color, any Black woman is making even less.

Like, the data is there.

I don't even need to dispute it, right? Nobody does.

And so...

My concern, and I think a lot of other people's concern, is with AI scaling everything so rapidly, we have this gap that we haven't closed.

It's just going to expand even further.

And what's interesting, too, is when we're talking about the compounding gap, we're not just talking about the pay gap, right? But we're talking about, like, who gets capital? Who receives funding? What do those people look like? We already know for women, it's a very small number.

And so and again, people of color, even tinier, you know, even tinier pie.

And so to me, the compounding gap, it's probably one of the most important because when you have capital, you essentially have power or at least you can build it.

Oh, I think that's probably the most fascinating one.

Appreciate that.

There's this theme that's coming up in my conversations, the ones on the podcast and offline, gender equity and the wealth disparity.

And that's exactly what you're hitting at with a compounding of impact.