Leman Tech Leadership Podcast · 2026-07-09 · 48 min
▶︎ #176 | From PhD to Director: What Academia Never Teaches You About Leading People w/ Quentin Reul (Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai) In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Quentin Reul: Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai, a Belgian-born computer scientist whose one-year English adventure in the UK quietly turned into a decade - a PhD in symbolic AI, a front-row seat to the academic-to-enterprise transition, and eventually a leadership path built through teams of data scientists, software engineers, knowledge engineers, and QA specialists spread across continents. The conversation opens with one of the most underexplored tensions in tech: what actually breaks when you move from academic research culture into enterprise delivery. Quentin is precise about it - it is not about intelligence or even drive. It is the completion mindset. Academia rewards the idea, the paper, the demonstrable prototype. Enterprise rewards the shipped thing, the SOC-compliant thing, the thing a customer can buy tomorrow.
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#172 | What Silicon Valley Taught a Tech Analyst About Marketing, Authority, and Never Burning Bridges w/ Mark Vena73 / 100#171 | Tech Leadership Q&A: Am I Actually Good at This… or Did I Just Get Lucky?47 / 100
