How to Lead Innovation for Impact with Kirsten Baker at Jeenie

In this episode, I speak with Kirsten Baker, CEO of Jeenie, Inc. (ranked No. 271 in 2025), a platform dedicated to breaking down language barriers through live interpretation. We explore the powerful intersection of AI innovation and the irreplaceable human element required for meaningful communication. Kirsten shares her perspective on building a culture of innovation, highlighting collaboration, embracing failure as a learning tool, and leading with purpose. We also discuss Jeenie's mission-driven approach to leadership, the importance of hiring for values alignment, and the successes of managing a diverse, fully remote team. Our conversation offers a compelling look at the future of Jeenie and underscores how effective leadership empowers people, nurtures creativity, and drives collective innovation. Episode Highlights & Time Stamps 2:08 Leading Innovation 10:23 Core Leadership Principles 16:35 Embracing AI in Business 17:35 Creating a Culture of Innovation 23:20 Wrapping Up Insights Follow me on Twitter @genehammett Website: www.genehammett.com About Kirsten Baker Kirsten Brecht Baker is CEO & Co-Founder of Jeenie, an AI+Human multilingual and multicultural platform powering the next generation of smart-tech and AI for more inclusive communication. A Wharton MBA and serial entrepreneur, she has built and scaled ventures across SaaS, tech, and global market development. She is an Ernst & Young 2025 Entrepreneur of the Year, and made the top lists of Forbes, Inc., and Fast Company for leading in equity, innovation, and human connection. She is also a member of YPO, the SAFE-AI Task Force, INC. Leadership Forum, and Fast Company's Impact Council. How to Connect with Kirsten Baker: LinkedIn: Kirsten Baker https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsten-brecht-baker/ Company Website: Jeenie, Inc. https://jeenie.com/ Resources & Next Steps Ready to take your leadership energy to the next level? Explore free training and resources at training.coreelevation.com to help you identify energy leaks, strengthen your leadership presence, and elevate your team's performance. 🌐 Explore More: training.coreelevation.com 🎧 Listen to the Full Episode: Growth Think Tank Podcast

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You know, the future of this world is not all AI and it's not all human now. We actually have very good proof that AI can help humans make bigger decisions with a lot more data and a lot shorter periods of time. There's a lot of empowerment and enablement that AI can provide for humans. And we also have a lot of data that shows that AI being trained on text without humans is far less effective, far less helpful, far less accurate, maybe even dangerous if we don't have humans in the loop working with AI. So we really think the world, the future is hybrid when it comes to this. And that's why we've been working on kind of AI, human hybrid solutions for the future.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Welcome to Grow Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hebbitt. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today, we talk about how to lead innovation. When you think about innovation or company, is it all up to you? Or do you have a team around you sharing those ideas and giving you insights and challenging the way we've always done things? Well, I think a lot of CEOs would like to have a lot more innovation inside their businesses, especially in the era of AI.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  When you think about the innovation in your business, are you leading it powerfully? Or is it sort of just something you wish you had? Well, today's conversation will help you unlock how to lead innovation for impact. Our special guest is the CEO of Genie. They are an incredible online sort of marketplace connecting the world through translators. They have kind of a promise behind this that you could be sitting next to a doctor or a lawyer and you could in eight seconds have a qualified interpreter so that you can connect with your client. And that is an incredible promise.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  But we speak with Kirsten Baker about how to lead innovation. Some of the things that we kind of unpack here, we do talk about the values of the company. We talk about how do you get employees to embrace Failure because failures are part of innovation. They go hand in hand. You cannot innovate if you're not willing to endure the failure and the missteps and the mistakes and employees have to be tuned into that and they have to be led through that process. We also talk about some of the other aspects of this as relates to you being the CEO. So I think you'll get a lot out of today's conversation with Kirsten. My name is Jean Hammond. I'm a CEO coach. We work with growing companies in growth mode, typically 20 plus employees

• 2:54Speaker 01

  that are really driving to have an impact. And if you want to explore some of the work we do about having a fully aligned executive team, just go to training.coreelevation.com. You can sign up for the next workshop that we have. It's absolutely free and will help you become a better leader and help you grow your business. All you have to do is go to that URL I already gave you, training.coreelevation.com and sign up today. Now here's the interview with Kirsten. Hi, how are you?

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Great, Jean. How are you doing?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  I am so excited to have this conversation with you. And before we dive in, Kirsten, let's talk about your company, Genie.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Great. Thank you for having me, Jean. Excited to see all the work that you're doing in leadership and helping CEOs like me to kind of tackle the tough stuff. So grateful to be here.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Tell us about what you're doing at Genie.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Well, our, our company Genie, J E E N I E, you and I were talking about sort of the origin of that. Yeah, our mission at the company has been, is today, will always be to connect people in the world through language and culture. And we started that a couple of years ago with a virtual interpreting platform where we are connecting mostly clinicians and doctors in the medical field, but also lawyers, also educators in, in, in other fields as well to an interpreter at the press of a button in under eight seconds where they get to use that interpreter in a live conversation that they're having with their patient or with their client or with their student. And the goal there is really to kind of eliminate all language and cultural barriers. And you know, what we find

• 4:33Speaker 00

  in the medical field as an example, is if you're my doctor and I'm your patient, if you understand my symptoms, you will diagnose me more effectively, you will treat me more effectively. And we can mitigate all of that very high misdiagnosis risk.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  I love that. I never even thought about this because everyone I go to is English speaking, but I know there's a lot of people that need to have this, whether it be medical or legal.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  It is. It is actually, I think, surprising to most people. In fact, the last number that we saw just from a medical standpoint was that an average of one in 12 patients in the US show up language discordant, but it can be as high as like one and two and a half in a state like California where you have so much diversity. So, you know, being able to make sure that people can come and show up and know that their interpreting is available so that they feel understood, so that they feel like they will be able to understand, that's what kind of builds all that trust between patients and clinicians and leads to better adherence of treatment. Again, you know, that waterfall of outcomes. We've sort of been called the Uber for live interpreting, but we really think about it more as like it's multilingual, multicultural communication empowerment.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Well, I am fascinated to talk to you about this. I know your company's grown really fast. The Inc. 5000 is an incredible honor to be there.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  1400% growth over three years is phenomenal. So I'm kind of curious, what is the core leadership principles that drive you and the success of your company?

• 6:03Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting. Core leadership. I was having, you know, a conversation like this just the other day. You know, I think it's a combination, if you will, of being mission driven, but also performance driven. And I think there's a misconception that if you are mission driven, that you can't also be performance driven. And I resist that perception. I think you absolutely can be. In fact, I think, you know, probably many mission driven organizations could benefit from more performance driven, you know, kind of backup. And to me, you know, Jean, what that means is not only kind of like attracting the right people who align with the values, and we can talk about values later. We're very big on culture and having values in our company,

• 6:47Speaker 00

  but it's finding people where it's important to them to do well while doing good, or to do good while doing well, and to really kind of talk all All the time about that mission. So we don't just hire for it, but like we're living a day in and day out. You know, we like remind each other every day in company meetings. It's our why we leave all company meetings saying, let's go leave the world a better place out there. And I think that's that constant reiterating of mission. It's important. And then the performance driven side, I can talk more about that too, but that is that combination of leadership. Style for me.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  I know not everyone's familiar with my research. I just want to share a little bit with you and the audience here. When I was started studying fast growth companies, I had a few clients make the ink list. And so I dedicated myself to make a few phone calls. It was totally the wrong time, but I was really fascinated around what's driving their growth. And I had all these conversations with CEOs like yourself and they, I had a good key question and it was, how do you get your employees to take responsibility for your big goals? And the, the people came back, those CEOs said, it's not really about responsibilities, it's about ownership. And I saw this pattern over and over and over. So I had to really understand ownership. There's six core elements behind it.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  One of them is mission driven. When you hire people that are aligned and excited about the mission, they will have more ownership in the work that they do and the challenges that they, they face. I, I would imagine you could give a story after story about hiring people that just were excited to be a part of what you're doing.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Uh, we can, and we've been very fortunate to actually find people who, you know, we're an entirely virtual organization. So that's kind of a cultural, you know, difference in and of itself. We grew up virtual. But you know, we've been hiring people from all over the world because we get to benefit from having people in different locations. And you know, a, a recent example is an exec who we've hired to kind of lead up our AI strategy, who came 18 years out of one of the largest L L Ms out in Silicon Valley. And it was the mission that he and other people who have joined the, you know, this company have been looking for. You can find a lot of very smart companies, or at least a few, right? High growth, smart companies doing great things. But are they doing it for, you know, a reason and something that makes you?

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Heartbeat fast, something where you wake up every morning and like you kind of like can see like this is what I'm doing today and this links to the impact it's having. You know, to your point, Jean, one of the things I always say to folks in the company is like, if you ever wonder in any moment during the day when you're doing a task, no matter how menial, how that task links to the impact that we're having in the world or on our patients, or how that links to the goal of the company, like Ping Me, I can explain that. And it's important, I think, that we ladder, you know, those metrics. We show these are company goals because this is what drives mission. These are department goals that feed company goals, and these are individual goals that feed department goals.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  And if we do that effectively and that's transparent, I think that ownership is built in.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Well, transparency is another one. When you have this level of transparency.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  People are gonna think we set this up and we didn't.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  But I've just done my homework. It feels like, and I talk to clients all the time, even though some people are really scared about transparency. I won't dive into that. I want to kind of back up to why you're here. We did a lot of research on you and the company and we found that the whole leading through innovation and having a human centric technology is really that driving force. Tell us a little bit more about how you see innovation within your company and then we'll get into the human centric in the second part.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I think, you know, I don't know if you in your work have come across people who can lead without innovation. To me, I don't know kind of how that's done. I think you can kind of perform without innovation, but I don't know how you can lead without it. And, you know, in any company, including ours, it's always a balance of how do you give enough resources, time and energy to kind of pushing forward, you know, with what's working and the existing model and still leave that space for innovating, for thinking about it differently. You know, we have another saying in the company where like anytime anyone is sort of talking about how it's done, if you say, well, it's always been done that way, that's our first reason to try to do it another way or think of another way to get it done. So.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  We're constantly, you know, pushing on boundaries of the way things have been done before. Our, our cultures actually spell out the word brave, B R A V E. And the first B for brave for us is Bayesian. So I think innovation for us is about this kind of relentless curiosity to seek information, not to, not to kind of passively wait for it, but to proactively go after that information and continue to let it inform the next decision. So we need more information, that information has to keep making us smarter. And we have to stay open to that information, making us smarter and helping us to see it differently. And I think that's the way we really encourage everyone inside the company to see innovation.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Well, I love the, the way you frame all this because I think it really helps people and other CEOs look at innovation as a part of their job. I think some CEOs want to outsource that to others, but I don't think we can because we're able to connect the dots across many different departments and even look out into the, the competitors. Because most of them have their head down in the work. And it, you know, the CEOs that do this well, really do win the lion's share of the business. The other element behind that was human centric. I think all of us think we understand that, but I'd love for you to break it down to, to really understand human centric technology and the way it performs for you and your clients.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, you know, the, the term human centric, again, for us is really representing, you know, thinking about technology, thinking about innovation, thinking about solutions through the eyes of the human that you're meant to help and impact. So when, you know, people talk about patient centric, you know, technology and health tech, they're really looking at technology that can be effective for patients through the eyes of a patient in a patient workflow, not necessarily how it's happening through the clinician workflow and affecting the patient. And so when we talk about human, you know, we're very much, you know, trying to kind of, you know, keep that human in humanity right now. So much of the work that we're doing is about.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  You know, equity and you know, whether it's equity in health or whether it's equity equity in in kind of, you know, legal and education. We want everyone to have the same access to quality services. And we know if you don't always speak the same language, you're not going to get the same access to that language. So that is really what, you know, human or the same access to those services. That's really what human centric means for us. And, you know, I I think in an AI world, Jean, you know, that is taking on a very different meaning for us. And I'm I'm happy to drill down there further if you if you want me to go there.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  I I am curious around this because my first thought when I heard translation is, oh, you're probably getting decimated with the AI. Hopefully you have a game plan. Now I know that you do. Um, so I'm kind of curious, what where do you where do you see the future of your business going? Um, as it relates to AI and and servicing your your customers?

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Well, you know, so so just for the audiences, you know, benefit, our business is, you know, connecting people again in eight seconds on any device, any OS system at the top of a button to hundreds of languages for interpreting to a live interpreter. That's what it's always been. You've got the live interpreter. We've got twenty thousand linguists all over the world and over one hundred and sixty five countries. And, you know, even to today, you know, live interpreters are considered, especially in highly technical fields like medical, like the gold standard uh, in doing, you know, medical interpreting or other interpreting, you know, I I've got a great partner over at a big healthcare system we work with. He's a surgeon. He's a, you know, a bilingual Dominican and he will say, I should not be a Spanish English medical interpreter, right?

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not trained for that. So it's really important to have these, you know, medical interpreters, and that's been the business. But we recognized, you know, uh, I mean, almost two years ago that AI was going to have a big impact here. And when I say recognize, you know, I think we may have had a different reaction than a lot of the people in the industry. We we kind of embraced that fact for the simple, you know, reason that there aren't enough interpreters in the entire world to kind of be available where anyone needs them at that moment of care, at that point of need. And so, you know, having any Tool that will help people get access to language assistance like really if you're in language services that's what you really are about because what you want is to make sure

• 15:45Speaker 00

  people can have that communication again that understanding it as soon as they can as long as it's safe and as long as it's accurate right that's the kind of threshold so we started thinking about you know AI years ago and I think what we realized is like you know the future of this world is not all AI and it's not all human now we actually have very good proof that you know AI can help humans make you know bigger decisions with a lot more data and a lot shorter periods of time there's a lot of empowerment and enablement that AI can provide for humans and we also have a lot of data that shows that AI being trained on text without humans you know is far less effective far less helpful far less accurate maybe even

• 16:26Speaker 00

  dangerous if we don't have humans in the loop working with AI so we really think the world you know the future is hybrid when it comes to this and and that's why you know we've been working on kind of AI human hybrid solutions for the future.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  I've got a friend of mine who is a interpreter in books and she was like you know what's happening with AI she goes no I use it I'm embracing it but there's so much nuance to the language that you know there's slang and there's colloquialisms and it's different and different things different areas that she's like I'm not worried about where this is going to impact my business so I see you at scale doing something completely different but the human element is the key behind all of this and so thank you for sharing that with us Kirsten I am gonna switch gears just a little bit here we've been talking about the company and the leadership behind it I want to combine this

• 17:22Speaker 01

  together like what have you learned about leading innovation getting others to think about new ways to do things thinking about breaking the patterns of the old way.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  I mean, I think the, you know, I'm going to go back to one of the things you and I were talking about earlier, which is first and foremost, you know, you have to find the right people when you're hiring that aren't afraid to kind of make mistakes. And then you have to create an environment for them that makes them believe it's okay to make mistakes. So, you know, back to that being the Bayesian and, and, and you're brave in our cultural values. Um, you know, you want people who are kind of, kind of, you know, run so fast that they're going to trip and fall on skin and knees. Sometimes you want them to take risks because if they're not taking those risks, if they're not making mistakes, they're probably not stretching themselves. And if you're not stretching yourself, you're not going to get to that innovation. Because if innovation were easy,

• 18:20Speaker 00

  right, everyone would be doing it. And you and I would be sitting here calling it innovation. We'd be calling it just the next thing that everybody else did. So it really is about finding those right people. And then we're building a culture where they can feel like it's safe. And, you know, when we were a very small company doing our all company meetings, people actually had to show up, you know, in those all company meetings with the mistake that they had made in, you know, their recent last, you know, week or two weeks. And we did that to kind of promote the idea that making mistakes was not only like, okay, but it was a badge of honor in some ways. Um, you know, we talk all about all the time about how you can't have success without failure. And I think we really believe that. So we've, we've built that into our culture.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  I'm glad you've said it. It's been a pattern through, you know, not as prevalent as like the company values of being a part of, you know, driving growth, but underlying to any company that has innovative culture and they're expected to create new is this safeness around ideas and sharing that. I talk about my clients a lot about psychological safety. And it's not something that I grew up with, right? In the nineties, when I was working in corporate America, there was no such thing as psychological safety.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Or at least we didn't talk about it. We also didn't talk about mental health and things like that. But, you know, you're creating a space for that. What is your way of pulling that out of someone when you feel like they're playing too safe, getting them to realize that mistakes are a part of growth? How do you do that, Kirsten?

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Boy, that's a, I mean, that's a great question. I think that, you know,

• 20:06Speaker 00

  First, the innovation has to genuinely be part of the culture again. So, you know, our B R A V E is Bayesian relentless. And that's relentless, like relentless pursuit of anything you're pursuing accountability. But visionary is the V. And then our E is about equity and diversity. And that visionary, that vision piece, you know, is very important because I don't think you can have innovation part of the culture if you don't talk about vision. Right? Innovation is the next step towards the future and the vision is the future. So if you haven't laid out a future for your company and you or the product or the solution or the audience or the market in the industry, then where are people kind of, you know, driving their ships towards?

• 20:51Speaker 00

  And so I think, you know, having clear vision, having clear why, you know, helps to build that foundation around the innovation. And then I think if you've built that, if you've built that vision and you've built that why, then it's an easier conversation to say to somebody like, how are you rowing your ship, you know, towards that vision without kind of stopping innovation along the way? And, you know, so much of that comes from modeling, right? So much of that comes from like how leadership talks about it. It's important that when I, you know, show up that I'm constantly talking about ways in which we can innovate, ways in which I've innovated, ways in which I have failed when I've innovated, but tried again. Like it is very important that it just works itself into the culture.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  And then in our, you know, our valuations, our 360 evaluations, we're asking, you know, each other to evaluate colleagues and, you know, staff members on their ability to be innovative. And so people know that part of the, you know, metrics that we're using as a company to understand your fit here, your performance is around your ability to kind of innovate. But it certainly hasn't stopped, you know, um, you know, those conversations. There are still conversations every now and again where I have to say, we have to talk about kind of getting you out, like what's keeping you in this protected safe zone where you seem to, you know, kind of nervous, reticent or afraid, you know, to come out of it, like what am I doing? What are, you know, what's the, what are your colleagues?

• 22:18Speaker 00

  What's the team doing that, you know, isn't allowing you to come out of that, you know, kind of like, you know, safe zone?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  As we wrap up here, I want to kind of reflect a little bit here because this really hits a lot of the coaching I do when I'm working with not necessarily CEOs, but more of like the VPs and executives that are expected to to drive innovation. And I have to make the decision, the distinction between managing work and leading the person. And the managing the work is very easy because we do this all the time. We talk about the projects and, you know, KPIs, or we talk about this problem, or making this customer happy, or getting the next customer, whatever, that's work. But leading the person is getting them to have the confidence and to overcome the fear of the things that are related to their job.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  And we confuse the two, and we over-index on managing work and not so much on leading the person. I'm sure that you have an answer for that, but I, we're kind of out of time. I wanted to reflect because it is something that comes up quite often. I'm sure you're doing this across your culture. But Kirsten, I really appreciate you being here, being a part of the podcast and sharing your wisdom with us.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you, Gene. Well, we'll have to have a part two, and I'll, I'll bring my best answer for that one. Thank you for all the work that you're doing in this space.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Well, another great interview here on the podcast. I am loving bringing you new, fresh voices and the stories behind them, helping you become a better leader. If I can help you in any way, make sure you reach out to me, [email protected], or come to that special training that is really about you being a better leader and creating a fully aligned team that grows beyond you. Just go to training.coreelevation.com and you can sign up for free. When you think of leadership and you think of growth, think of growth thinking. As always, the courage will sing.