Developing an Appetite for AI: ExxonMobil’s Sarah Karthigan

ExxonMobil is an energy company that’s existed since 1870, well before artificial intelligence. So, what does an AI manager at ExxonMobil do? In the latest episode of the Me, Myself, and AI podcast, hosts Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh interview Sarah Karthigan, AI operations manager for IT, to find out. Sarah leads a data science team tasked with making use of large volumes of data, with the goal of offering reliable and affordable energy to a variety of populations. A major focus of Sarah’s efforts has been around self-healing, a method for internal process improvement. Listen in to learn how her group secures buy-in for various technology initiatives and works to continually improve human-machine collaboration for the organization. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders. Read more about our show and follow along with the series at https://sloanreview.mit.edu/ai. Guest bio: Sarah Karthigan is a reputed leader with a demonstrated history of leading digital transformation initiatives in the energy industry. She was named one of 2021’s 25 Influential Women in Energy in recognition of her outstanding work to accelerate the adoption of data science to enable data-driven decision-making across the integrated oil and gas value chain. Karthigan started her career at ExxonMobil over a decade ago and has since held various roles of increasing responsibility in the areas of strategic planning, project management, scientific computing, and data science. She currently leads the AI operations practice, which is focused on realizing self-healing strategies, and is also responsible for managing external relationships with multiple technical business partners. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.