Claudia Harris OBE: Empowering Careers and Navigating the AI Revolution
"What is the world you want to build?"
In the premiere episode of Force Multiplier, Danny Attias sits down with Claudia Harris OBE (CEO of Makers) to discuss why the future of work isn't about code, it's about becoming a "fearless learner".
Claudia shares her journey from McKinsey and Tony Blair’s Delivery Unit to leading Europe’s first coding bootcamp, where she proves that resilience and emotional intelligence are the true skills of the future. Together, they strip away the sci-fi fear of AI, reframing it as a "word calculator", a tool that requires human mastery, not just blind adoption.
They dive deep into:
* The 3 Stages of AI Adoption: Moving from Mastery (prompting) to Automation (efficiency) to Re-imagining (complexity).* The "Playground" Trap: Why AI "friends" who never disagree with us might be dangerous for human resilience.* Agency over Anxiety: Why we must stop reacting to tech trends and start deciding what meaningful work looks like.* The Optimist’s Case: Why this is the most exciting time to be alive, if we are willing to.
00:18 The Change Makers: Transforming Careers
01:28 Personal Passion and Professional Journey
02:22 The Genesis of Makers: Coding Bootcamp
03:17 The Importance of Fearless Learning
04:05 AI and the Future of Work
04:35 Claudia's Career Path: From McKinsey to OBE
06:39 The Role of AI in Career Education
07:24 The Impact of AI on Society and Work
08:09 Building Skills for the Future
17:46 Mastering AI: A Three-Tier Approach
27:03 Balancing Personal and Professional Life
27:52 The Privilege of Working in AI
29:37 Conclusion: Embracing Change and Optimism
Chief Executive Officer, Makers
Claudia believes that people should have the opportunity to do work that is meaningful to them. She also believes that too often, an individual's journey into the workplace is determined by where they grew up, who their parents were, or their gender.
For both of these reasons she is devoted to helping people find work that they love and reshape their career - at any point in their work journeys. She considers this critical for individual wellbeing and for bringing the best talent into industry and in particular the extraordinary world of tech.
She founded The Careers & Enterprise Company and has been CEO of Makers since 2020.
She has an OBE for services to careers education and lives in London with her husband and small children.