Dr. Khairunnisa Mohamedali is a social anthropologist, MD and Chief Innovation Officer at the Smarty Train — an award-winning learning, onboarding and behaviour change agency. She works at the intersection of human-centred design, the science of how people grow, and the hard reality of shifting organisational cultures at scale.
In this conversation, Tom and Khairunnisa explore:
Why AI fluency isn’t the same as AI literacy — and what organisations keep getting wrong when they train for it
How convenience erodes the skills we don’t realise we’re losing
Why the best learning design makes everything except the moment of discomfort frictionless
How to get from base-level competence to higher-order thinking when AI has already automated the base level
The difference between inclusion and belonging — and why the entry point to that conversation matters as much as the conversation itself
Why you can’t change minds with facts, and what you actually need instead
The case for optimism about human resilience — and the responsibility that comes with it
Khairunnisa also shares her own system for navigating discomfort: how she wrote her PhD 2,500 words a day (borrowing a method from Stephen King), why self-awareness is the most under-invested skill in most workplaces, and what belonging actually feels like when you encounter it versus when you only perform it.
If you’re building learning cultures, navigating a career in an increasingly AI-shaped world, or just wondering whether convenience is quietly making us worse at thinking — this conversation is worth sitting with.
Links
The Smarty Train: The Smarty Train An award-winning learning and development agency specialising in early talent, organisational culture, and human-centred design.
Dr. Khairunnisa Mohamedali, PhD. MD and Chief Innovation Officer at The Smarty Train. A social scientist by training, she uses methodological rigour and a holistic systems approach to lead the design and delivery of experiences that have impact, embed learning, and change behaviours. She is a published methodologist, an award-winning innovator, and was selected as a Woman of the Future 2018.
Thomas Horak is the founder of All Shapes, a design and product studio working with founders, scale-ups and innovative enterprises to build meaningful digital tools that last. All Shapes blends craft, culture and human clarity — helping teams move from early concepts to high-performing, values-aligned experiences.
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