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Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias
Suspenders & Double Dutch: Scaling AI Without Losing the Human Touch with Vicki Deal-Williams | 143
57 minutes Posted Jul 16, 2026 at 10:00 am.
Introducing Vicki Deal-Williams
Vicki’s Path From Clinician to CEO
Leading AI in a Legacy Organization
Inside ASHA’s AI Innovation Day Approach
Why This Was a True Culture Shift
Creativity vs. Capacity Constraints in Teams
AI Use Cases and the “Suspenders Group”
What Small Teams Should Replicate First
Rethinking AI Policies to Enable Adoption
Debating AI’s Role in Healthcare Access
AI as a Complement to Expand Healthcare Access
Building an Evidence-Based AI Navigator
Final Advice: Jump Into AI Like Double Dutch
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Show notes
Send us Fan Mail In this interview episode, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan sit down with Vicki Deal-Williams, CEO of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), to explore how a century-old organization is thoughtfully embracing AI. Vicki shares how ASHA’s AI Innovation Day sparked a cultural shift across staff—from skeptics to the “suspenders group” eager to experiment—while reinforcing a people-first philosophy. The conversation dives into balancing governance with creativi...