Why I started Reejig

When I was on maternity leave, I decided I was going to start an AI company.

I think people thought I was crazy. Someone actually told me I was crazy.

Given my background and the world that I had seen in the workforce strategy space, I've seen all the things not to do. I know why those things are happening and what's causing them, so I know what I would actually do if I had my own way.

And that was really when Reejig was started.

I always remember this conversation that I had in our legal practice when I was working with one of the governments and we were looking at bringing in AI.

People were talking about the use of AI in HR. And at the time, this clever lawyer was saying, "There's a whole pile of risk that comes along with that, we wouldn't be able to bring that in here, that's too much risk. How do you know how that decision has been made in the AI and what would you do if it discriminated against an individual? How would you be able to explain to the judge while in fair work or in court, how you made that decision?"

So that was really where that early trigger point for me around trying to understand AI and specifically AI and in talent decision-making happened.

So again, I fell down another rabbit hole and started researching everything. And I wanted to come up with a practice where I could build AI that I knew was explainable in the same way that you get your taxes audited — I imagined that you could do the same with AI, but that didn't exist in the market.

I followed along with the World Economic Forum and for me, they were like the policy and the change-makers of the world. I followed a lot and I contributed a lot with some of their folks around AI and our approach to how we wanted to create Ethical AI.

And for us to get recognized as a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer this year for me was just — I think it kind of put to bed the "Siobhan, you're crazy this is a stupid idea", and actually made me feel super happy that I took the risk essentially, and for me to get that sort of recognition, that was incredible.

When you look at the World Economic Forum Tech Pioneers, they are some of the most transformational companies in the world like Spotify, Airbnb, and Atlassian. It was kind of like a cuddle and to keep going from the World Economic Forum.

So thank you to the World Economic Forum. There's more to come and I'll keep you posted on sort of the stuff that we're doing there, the trips that I'm doing, and the projects that we're on.