Stop Waiting to Be Chosen: How One Leader Invented Her C-Suite Role in the AI Era

Picture this: You walk into a meeting with a CEO. There is no open requisition for the role you want. Ten minutes later, you have an offer—and a start date.

That’s not a LinkedIn fairy tale. It’s how Gena Hoxha, now chief people and AI officer at Ignitium, a marketing technology company, landed her job as director of organizational development. She did not wait to be chosen. She named the problem, named the solution and named herself as the person to deliver it.

It is no secret that AI has scrambled how leaders think about titles, skills and succession. Boards and founders are pouring money into tools while teams brace for change they do not understand. Research from BCG (2025) underscores a tension you’ve probably felt in your own organization: Most CEOs prioritize AI investment, yet far fewer have turned that spend into durable value. And people leadership is often underestimated in the AI transformation story.

So what does this mean for you? If you are a growth-minded executive, a people leader or a professional who feels “behind” on AI, Hoxha’s path offers something rare and valuable: a path for self-authorship—building the job, the influence and the adoption model you believe the moment demands.

Why ‘Waiting to Be Chosen’ Keeps You Stuck

Hoxha’s story does not start in a corner office. She came to the United States from Albania at age 15 on a student visa, with the kind of pressure that trains you to read rooms fast: maintain the GPA, stay out of trouble, renew paperwork and accept that status can be fragile.

She spent 15 years stabilizing her immigration status—summers at the embassy, a life built in one country with no guarantee it would hold.

Her early dream was specific: She wanted to be a buyer for Nordstrom. She studied the company the way serious operators study a market—every paper in her business program became a lens on Nordstrom’s management, culture and operations. She landed an internship in San Francisco that felt like a win—until sponsorship rules ended it.

“They were like, ‘You’re qualified. We’ve really connected… oh, no, we actually don’t sponsor visas,’” she recalls. That kind of “no” hits differently. It’s a door that slams for reasons outside performance.

That moment—and the recurring visa reset each summer—taught her something she still impresses upon leaders today: Creativity comes from limitations. Boundaries force your mind to improvise. You learn to push for the yes inside the no.

After all, she says, “You cannot be the one to say no to yourself.” In her words, the world is already positioned to reject you. Your job is to keep shooting your shot.

If you have ever talked yourself out of a stretch role because you’re “not technical enough” for AI, that rule applies. You don’t have to fake expertise. You have to refuse to self-disqualify before the conversation starts.

The Job Description Is Only a Skeleton

After the Nordstrom pivot, Hoxha built her reputation in higher education at Gonzaga University—starting in an entry-level online student role and choosing to run it with the service mindset she admired in brands she had followed closely.

In her view, the job description is a skeleton. You can flesh it out. You have more agency over what your work feels like day to day than most employees believe—especially now, when a thoughtful prompt to your preferred assistant can help you clarify strengths, draft plans and prototype ideas faster than ever.

At Gonzaga, she partnered with a leader she describes as both mentor and sponsor, someone who not only advised her, but mentioned her name in rooms where decisions get made. That leader, Jen Towers, helped her see something crucial: Immigration and compliance had trained her to think in black and white, but leadership requires living in the more gray areas: judgment, relationships and trust.

Together, they automated roughly 80% of repetitive work in her role. That efficiency did not make her obsolete. It made space for a new function focused on research, scholarship and community engagement—projects with local schools, health fairs, grants and faculty-community collaboration.

Her takeaway: If you lead with a coordinator mindset (“I just do what I am told”), you shrink the aperture. If you lead with an owner mindset (“What conditions would let this team excel?”), you expand it.

The Meeting That Was Not an ‘Interview’

When Hoxha was ready to scale her reach, she targeted Ignitium, then a high-growth shop in the 40- to 60-person range. The posted role did not match her aim—account management was not the work she wanted—so she did what trailblazers do: She opened a conversation anyway.

A VP she knew from a weekend class agreed to coffee. The conversation ended honestly: “I really want to hire you, but I don’t know what for.” Then the CEO wanted a meeting.

One simple reframe changed her trajectory—she decided she wasn’t going to a job interview. She was going to a working session with her future boss.

“If I already had this job… it would be my job to tell him how he can solve his problems,” she explains. So she walked in with a thesis: A company at that size would have predictable people and systems pain points. She pitched herself as director of organizational development, brought a job description and outlined how she would solve those problems.

The CEO’s response was immediate: “What do you want?” She named it. He asked when she could start. She says the meeting lasted about 10 minutes.

The lesson she pairs with that story is practical: Act as if you already have the role—then become the obvious choice. Halfway through excelling as director of organizational development, she saw the CEO drowning in scope. She began operating like a chief of staff before the title existed—until hiring her for that role became common sense.

Now she encourages others to think about how to borrow that move. Where is the unowned problem everyone complains about in Slack? Where is the thread only you are willing to pull? Start doing the smallest honorable version of that work where you are.

From ‘I Don’t Know AI’ to Chief People and AI Officer

When AI arrived in the workplace, Ignitium did not have a natural owner for adoption strategy. Hoxha had no technical background—but she had something executives undervalue: change management fluency from her PhD in organizational leadership.

She proposed a three-month pilot to build a companywide approach anchored in identity and values. Her north star was simple: AI should make people’s lives better and easier. If a tool added complexity without relief, it was not the move.

One thing she’s emphatic about—“AI is not going to transform your company. Your people are going to transform your company.” She had watched the culture conversation swing hard toward the next shiny tool and away from the humans expected to use it. She refused that trade.

Her people-first commitments were concrete:

Reskill and upskill if roles evolve. Ownership is on the company and leadership.
Explain the why. Employees fill the blanks with worst-case scenarios when they lack information.
Co-create adoption. Cross-functional teams and AI champions across levels are essential because executives are “not in the weeds.” The people who know the work best should guide how tools save time without eroding quality.

She also preaches a grounded filter she calls entrepreneurial scientist energy: be excited about what is new, but stay disciplined. Her team built a checklist so they would not chase “latest and greatest” demos that could violate security, bias safeguards or risk the company’s quality identity.

They started with focus groups in every function, mapping pain points, not tool catalogs. “Use AI to solve the boring problems,” she says. “Not the shiny new tool. You’re going to be ahead of like 99% of organizations.”

Her constant refrain in this regard: “AI knows more than you, but it doesn’t know better than you.” The model has breadth; you have context—team norms, customer promises, ethics and the invisible glue of culture.

Industry research keeps pointing where Hoxha leads. Human-centric change communication reduces fear, resistance and silent disengagement—the very friction that sinks AI programs after the press release glow fades. When leaders skip the “how we walk there together” work, efficiency gains get eaten by turnover, mistrust and shadow IT.

Hoxha’s internal vision is worth stealing verbatim: Getting there matters—but how you get there matters just as much. Ambition without compassion is how organizations break people while upgrading software.

When You Feel Stuck, Run Her 3-Step Reset

Hoxha has a framework she uses with rising leaders in Ignitium’s New Leader Experience program. If you feel underqualified, you are often overthinking and you lack language for what you already bring.

Know your strengths—and how to say them. She recommends CliftonStrengths as an evidence-based starting point. Confidence is easier when you can name what’s true about you.
Write what you want to be known for in one or two sentences—a reputation sentence. When decision-makers talk about you in a hallway, what problem and solution should they attach to your name? If you cannot articulate it, sponsors cannot carry it.
Stop asking, “What do I enjoy?” Ask, “What problems do I want to solve?” Every role has problems. The question is which ones light you up even when they’re messy. For Hoxha, it’s people problems—emotional, complex and human.

Do those three, and you will feel less like a passenger in your career—even if your next challenge is AI-shaped.

The Climb Does Not End With AI

Hoxha still thinks about the kid who kept a New York skyline on her nightstand—a symbol, to her, of freedom and possibility. She says she never gave up because she could not betray that girl’s dreams.

That stubborn optimism isn’t naive. It’s operational. Courage compounds. Each “no” teaches you to ask with less drama and more precision.

Her mindset and focus is to scale beyond any single technology wave: AI will not be the last great disruption. There will be another mountain after this one. “If we get really good at climbing the mountains together… this isn’t the end.”

For you, that’s the invitation. You don’t need permission to start climbing—you need clarity, sponsors and the refusal to be the first “no” in your own story. Pick one boring problem AI could genuinely simplify. Name your one-sentence reputation. Book one conversation that’s not an interview, but a working session with a decision-maker you respect.

The trail appears when you walk it.

SUCCESS Tip: Before you evaluate a new AI tool, identify three specifics: security/compliance, value fit, and pain point it removes. If you can’t fill all three, it might be entertainment—not strategy.