How To Build A Massive AI Literate Workforce & Prepare For The Future of Work - Lisa Coulson, CHRO, Principal Financial Group
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan · 2026-04-20 · 46 min
Episode notes
Technology is moving faster than ever, and many of us feel the pressure to keep up without losing our human touch. We need a clear path to help our teams embrace change while building a culture of trust and growth. In this episode, Lisa Coulson, SVP and Chief Human Resource Officer at Principal Financial Group, joins me to talk about what it means to build an AI-literate workforce at its core within financial services. We explore how their data literacy and employee training program reached 90% of workers and how internal AI tools helped with their AI adoption. Lisa shares their step-by-step "funnel" approach to reskilling and upskilling, the impact of AI in leadership development, and how to build an internal talent marketplace to match employee skills with new roles. We also tackle the necessity of governance in a regulated industry and the ongoing challenge of measuring AI's ROI and productivity gains during a workforce transformation. This episode is every CHRO's clear guide for leading a digital shift while keeping the employee experience strong.