The Leadership Mindset that Drives Growth and Innovation in Any Era, with Sha Atakhanov, Vice President of Marketing & Commerce at Boiron

Transcript

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Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where industry leaders share insights, strategies, and stories to help brands win in the ever-changing world of commerce.

 

Peter Crosby (00:22):

Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. VP of marketing and commerce, Sha Atakhanov, has been driving growth and innovation at homeopathic brand Boiron for almost 17 years. From booking some of the first ads on Amazon to being an inaugural brand running shoppable ads on Samsung TVs. Sha oversees all the channels in media that touch the consumer and he approaches new opportunities in tech, especially AI, with a simple rule. It has to generate revenue, save time, and save money and have some fun while you're at it. Sha, welcome to the podcast. We are so delighted to have you on. Thank you so much.

 

Sha Atakhanov (01:03):

Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Lauren. Thanks for having me.

 

Peter Crosby (01:07):

Boiron sits in a really interesting category of homeopathic medicines, which is like I would think the over-the-counter category, but also has some complexity because it requires education and really people need to understand what they're buying, why they're buying, for what context I would imagine. Yes. And so your marketing role owns e-commerce and you've been on quite a journey at the company to build out that team. So I know our listeners will love to hear about that journey, but just tell us where it all began and how you entered into this category.

 

Sha Atakhanov (01:42):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I grew up myself and my parents were all into natural products and natural ways to feel better. So I grew up with that lifestyle. And when I joined the company about 16 years ago, it was a perfect match for me because I used some of the products, grew up using some of the products, and I love that everything is made from natural ingredients and natural substances. So Boiron is based out of France. It's a French company. It's been around for 90 plus years in France. And in the US, it's been around for 40 plus years. And we have deep roots in the natural world. We started from the natural channel, a natural world with the Whole Foods and Sprouts of the world. And then we got into mass market into e-commerce and omnichannel now. So now we're present in most of the retailers in the US where we can sell over-the-counter OTC medicine.

 

(02:51):

And as you mentioned, homeopathic medicine is considered OTC in the US and a lot of our products available at Walmart, Amazon, Target, Sprout, you name it. And I'm responsible majority for e-commerce channel, but also on the marketing side, I'm responsible for growing all of the channels from marketing perspective. So it's been a great journey and we've grown tremendously in the past 15 years. We didn't have an e-commerce channel, we didn't have a D2C channel. So all of those things I helped to start at the company. And we have a great leadership team here who believes in digital and e-commerce. So that really made the journey very interesting and very supportive in helping us launch a lot of those initiatives.

 

Peter Crosby (03:50):

Yeah, you were to e-commerce relatively early-ish when I look back, certainly over a decade ago. And I was interested, you just mentioned it as you were closing out on the transition from VP of e-commerce and digital to VP of marketing and e-commerce. Can you tell me a little bit more about that expansion?What were the business needs that said, "This is a time where we want to put these things together?"

 

Sha Atakhanov (04:18):

Yeah, that's a good question. So I've been building out the digital team for the past 10, 15 years and the e-commerce team and the channels. As the opportunities keep growing, marketing is becoming more of arts and science. You have the performance marketing, the retail media, so everything is kind of merging and converging into omnichannel, omnicommerce media, you could say. So more and more, my role has pivoted from doing just digital into more retail media, supporting retailers. And retail media itself is blending in between sales, marketing, shopper marketing, you name it. And it's really have taken over a lot of our operations. So you almost have no walls because everything has become omnipresent or omnichannel in terms of strategy. And I know a lot of companies are still struggling with that. There are silos and people always bucket things in different places and the budgets, you don't know where the retail media budget is coming from.

 

(05:38):

But here at Boiron, we decided to break down those silos and really look at things more holistically. So we created a position for retail media team. We created a position to support sales and marketing together. So that's why my role has also shifted from digital to marketing to give me a full visibility 360 view in all different aspects of marketing and help support the company. So I transitioned last summer, last September actually to this role, but I've been doing a lot of support and marketing for omnichannel retailers at our company. So the role has shifted a little bit, but it became even more, I think, giving you full view, full picture of our campaigns. And as the marketing people say, full funnel marketing is where we are at now. And that is the ultimate way to do marketing. Seeing from all the way from top funnel to lower funnel and then measuring everything and accounting for everything.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:59):

Do you find that it's been easier to get work done to understand the consumer journey with the shift of having the full view of everything? Because you're naturally breaking down some of those silos and bringing those teams together. Do you find that it's been easier

 

Sha Atakhanov (07:17):

Hopefully? It's actually been challenging because we all are creatures of habit and we're used to doing certain things certain way. And this is my lane, this is your lane, you stay there, I stay here. But when you're doing retail media and omnichannel marketing, you have to work together and you have to collaborate with different departments and different position, different roles cross-functionally. And you have to be able to be flexible and be open because at the end of the day, people are like, well, who's going to get credit for this? Is this marketing? Is this digital? Is this retail media? Whatever. At the end we got to look at as a company, are we growing the brand? Is the brand growing? Is the company growing? And that's how we have to look at it now because if we continue to look at this the old way with just different channels and a channel view, I think we're going to limit ourselves and we really limit the opportunities.

 

(08:19):

For example, when we did a campaign on CTV on Amazon, one thing we saw was that the biggest impact was not just on Amazon, it actually was offline. So looking at that holistically and saying, wow, this is not just helping Amazon, this is going to help all our channels, all our retailers on brick and mortar. And having that perspective changes the way you invest. Then you say, okay, let's do more of this because it's helping lift all the boats and then do marketing and spend more efficiently instead of just looking at from a specific channel view. So it's been a challenge, but I think the team has been very good. We have a great team in - house and everything we do in - house in terms of execution. Except for our DSP campaigns, we work with our amazing partner Exnerta, but on everything else, we do everything in - house.

 

(09:23):

And that also is an advantage I think because we keep learning ourselves, we train ourselves and we continue to expand our internal knowledge of all these platforms.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:36):

And you've gone from, I believe it was you alone doing e-commerce to now how many people do you have focused on e-commerce?

 

Sha Atakhanov (09:45):

Is

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:45):

It 10?

 

Sha Atakhanov (09:46):

Yeah, it was an army of one

 

(09:48):

50 years ago. And I asked our CEO, I said, "Hey, can I do this e-commerce thing?" And he's like, "Okay, sure, do it. " Love that. So he let me run with it. And I mean, it was just me and just trying to figure out the catalog on Amazon. We were doing some advertising on Amazon, but it was all PDF or paper-based. So the reports were emailed and PDF back and forth. You had no dashboard, nothing to look at. So my partner on the other end on Amazon would send a PDF back, "Oh, look at this ROAS or look at this Halo, this, that. " I'm like, "What are you looking at? What are these numbers?" So it was called AMG back then, Amazon Media Group,

 

Peter Crosby (10:35):

I think.

 

Sha Atakhanov (10:36):

And it was fun. I mean, that's one thing that I think we're proud of is we're always early testers and believers in different platforms and campaigns. So we're always testing different beta forms, the alpha forms. So AMG was that beta was the most cutting edge thing at Amazon back then. They were doing some DSP. We were doing some DSP ads and the Halo ROAS looked great, so I don't know what to tell you, but we continue to invest and we've grown 70X since 15 years ago. So we've really grown the business. We're the fifth largest OTC brand now on Amazon and Amazon is a great partner, but we've also grown all these other brands. Walmart.com, Target, you name it. We are everywhere and we've done very well as a company.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (11:34):

Was there a level of education that needed to be involved in that journey? Because you asked if you could do this e-comm thing, and everybody else probably like, "What are you doing? What is this e-comm thing?" So how have you really built it as a strong pillar in the organization? I'm sure that was not easy at all times.

 

Sha Atakhanov (11:54):

Yeah, and that's a very good question. First of all, I'm still in a learning mode. You have to stay in this student learning mode because e-commerce is changing as you know every day something new comes up and now with AI and everything. So I feel like I'm constantly behind. So I'm always learning. I'm always listening to podcasts, watching videos and always learning. And I'm trying to instill that also to my team. And I think they're good like that too. They're always learning on their own. We listen to their first mover webinars. We went to a lot of Amazon hackathons they used to be called. We still go to a lot of events throughout the year. We ship off the team somewhere to really, again, listen, to learn. And the biggest thing, I think a lot of times the teams stay in their own bubble and they never get to hear what's going on outside.

 

(12:50):

And I think that's been a good lesson for us to really listen to people like Lauren when she speaks when I go to some of the conferences or your podcasts and things like that. So we are all constantly learning. And I think that learning mode really helped our team to stay on the cutting edge, but also making sure to transfer knowledge too. Because like I said, Army of one or now I have I think eight or nine full-time people in the US. I have two, three people in Canada that work with me in the e-commerce. So we always need to make sure we train each other and we learn from each other and then transfer that knowledge and expertise because that's when you can really multiply the team and really it takes off, I think.

 

Peter Crosby (13:41):

Boy, that sort of team philosophy is going to serve you super well in the next era. I mean, there's a lot coming. And also in addition to that, your attitude towards early adoption is also going to really serve you because I think you saw it certainly on Amazon, the spoils are in the beginning. Yes. The real - That's right. Oh, they're just diamonds lying around the home. Yeah, clicks were like 20

 

Sha Atakhanov (14:07):

Cents or something. It was the early wild west.

 

Peter Crosby (14:12):

Yeah, so that's an amazing mindset. I wanted to come back to something that you said earlier when we were talking about the retail media thing. And I think part of it, you talked about who gets credit, where do the dollars come from? I immediately thought in my head, well, I think the consumer gets the credit because it's their journey that is feeding this necessity because they're going to go shop wherever the heck they want to shop and you have to show up and inspire them and attract them and convert them. And so I was wondering when it does come to thinking about budget allocation and also your ability to be able to respond to the signals that you were talking about, how have you been working with your finance partners and things like that to be able to execute against that more we need to be nimble and agile to grab our share?

 

(15:07):

Has that conversation come up?

 

Sha Atakhanov (15:09):

Yeah, that's a very good point. And I think we always want to make sure that we're profitable and efficient. So we look at the profitability of each product and based on that, how much we want to spend or how much really margin do we have to push against that product? So we have to be very conscious of that. And I try to train the team to look at that on our product portfolio because not every product has the same margin, so you have to look at that carefully. And then not every retailer has the same margin as you. So different retailers, for example, Walmart versus Amazon, your costs might be different. Of course, as you know, Amazon has all its fees and co-ops or whatever. Walmart has its own fees. Well, they want the lowest price EDLP, but that's also a give and take. You have the slotting fees with the drug chains and all of that, that could get really expensive.

 

(16:08):

So we have to be very balanced and make sure that we're making money. So at the end of the day, some companies really grow fast volume-wise. I've seen some 3Ps that we're doing 400 million a year and then they go bust the next year, which totally shocked me. And they were about to IPO and things like that and it didn't happen. So to me, it's very dangerous to grow without balance. And I think growing with balance is super important to us. Yeah, we're growing double digits, but making sure we're growing steadily instead of with a solid base. So that's important. And then you talked about finances. We are very careful also how we spend and allocate budget and with chargebacks and fees and late fees, all of that. We watch those very closely and the team. So as the saying goes, it takes a village to grow Amazon or any e-commerce business.

 

(17:09):

So you have to partner with your finance team, with your logistics team, because they're going to help you really to dig into those chargebacks and fees and logistics and all those and solve those issues. So our team has worked very well with all those departments and they have weekly or biweekly meetings to look at everything from all the angles. So I don't know if I answered your question, Peter, so that's how we look at on the operations side. Yeah.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:42):

I'm curious from a metric standpoint, there's so many things you can measure, especially because you own retail media and you own the digital shelf side of things. So are there North Star KPIs that you focus on or do you have a handful that are like, "Hey, if we win this, we are good to go. " Especially when you think about, you've mentioned ROAS several times, and I know there's a lot of the

 

Sha Atakhanov (18:06):

Controversy

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (18:07):

About ROAS. So I'm just curious, is there a clear focus for you around metrics or is it a big framework?

 

Sha Atakhanov (18:14):

No, that's a good question. I think digital shelf is super important to us. So one of the first hires we had to expand into and developing omnichannel was a digital shelf person. So her name is Digna, so we hired her to really just focus on digital shelf, to really develop that so that we have consistent digital shelf everywhere, all the retailers from Amazon to Walmart and Target, et cetera. So the biggest KPI for us to really is looking at do we have the best in line of PDPs? So look at all the images. We do an audit regularly every six months looking at all our product pages. We have close to 2000 SKUs. So it's not easy. It takes a lot of time, but we still do it to check on all the things, making sure we have good reviews, all the imagery, assets, videos, bullet points, all of that.

 

(19:12):

So those are, I don't know how to maybe digital shelf score. So we look at that. And then we also look at the end of the day, we look at the conversion rates too. So we look at why one product is converting at 30% while the other one is converting at 10%. So we look at the spend, we look at the pricing, we analyze and see where the problems are. And usually it's almost like an x-ray. You do an x-ray of the product X versus Y, and then you look at it and then you immediately find what the issue is. And so for me, it's fun and working with the team. We also using some AI tools like Visit. So I've spoken about a couple times. Visit is a fantastic AI tool, so we use that to optimize all our creative assets and images. So that also gives us a score, like a conversion score.

 

(20:07):

So based on that, we also evaluate how good of an image is it for converting on Amazon or Walmart, et cetera. So we're using a bunch of different tools like that to do the KPI analysis.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (20:22):

There's so many things that go into what effective content actually looks like, so that makes a ton of sense. And there's also many channels that you focus on. One of them still being TV. I know that's a controversial topic, but on the brand side, it's still super important. And you recently just did a pilot on shoppable TV. So can you talk a little bit about that just in terms of how you think about new channels or new things to experiment with?

 

Sha Atakhanov (20:51):

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. And just came out, we just partnered with Samsung TV. They have about 80 million TVs in the US. They're one of the largest TV sellers in the US. They reach about a hundred million households. So it made sense for us to do a partnership. They came up with something innovative where you can use their TVs to shop on Amazon with their remotes. So before you had to use Alexa or you had to use Fire TV to do the shopping, but now Samsung has introduced this really cool future. So you can sit on your couch, Lauren, and order Arnicare right from there offer a good TV. I have

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:34):

A Samsung TV, so I was about to write it myself to go try this.

 

Peter Crosby (21:38):

So do I. I have a frame TV. Yeah. Oh,

 

Sha Atakhanov (21:41):

Okay. There you go.

 

Peter Crosby (21:44):

Give this a try.

 

Sha Atakhanov (21:45):

Yeah, you should try that. So they're experimenting with something neat like that and you advertise as a brand awareness, but also you can test out the conversion and attribution of sales from that. So they've partnered with Amazon and it's very innovative that you are able to do that using a third-party TV like Samsung on Amazon. So if you don't have a Prime membership, I think you can send it to your phone, things like that too. So they're trying to make the whole product discovery and shopping very easy. So they just published some articles about that and Samsung is doing a big reveal about that because obviously they're one of the largest TV producers and sellers in the US. And also they're one of the largest advertising networks too. So everybody's an advertising network. So naturally, Samsung was a good partner for us and we're going to see how our alpha test goes at the end of August.

 

Peter Crosby (22:56):

Well, I think Lauren was talking earlier just about probably saying it was an eye roll is too much, but just about TV's gotten a bad rap, but because you can't trace the big TV campaigns, which have their place still. It's not like I'm counting them out. But when you're looking for something that's actually connecting with the consumer in their moment of need and can get them to take an action, this sounds like it will be super trackable. You will know whether this is working or not.

 

Sha Atakhanov (23:27):

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. They seem to be able to connect that on the backend with your Amazon account and they can track all of the campaigns. So we were already advertising with Samsung TV through Amazon Prime TV. So they're already partners anyway. So to us, it made sense. They're one of the largest networks. And as you see, the CTV field is getting really heated. I mean, everybody's shifting lots of money from linear TV to CTV because like Peter's saying, you can now track everything from A to Z. You saw Roku just was bought -

 

Peter Crosby (24:07):

Yeah, $22 billion.

 

Sha Atakhanov (24:09):

Yeah. So I mean that's nothing to sneeze at. And Roku is a pretty big network too, so that tells you everything. So yeah, a lot of the brands are testing CTV and they're finding it very impactful, both from brand awareness perspective, but also in the lower funnel conversion actually. We're seeing some amazing results with Amazon and other CTV partners even in the lower funnel in conversion, which is very surprising.

 

Peter Crosby (24:42):

And you were talking earlier about the work and the research and just the amount of essentially manual brain labor that you and your team put into keeping this process running. So I wanted to close out with that big conversation of as the Agentic shelf gets added and your machine becomes a new customer and all of that stuff that we've all been talking about, do you feel like we're reaching a tipping point where given the way that that shelf works and also just the scale of things, I mean listening how many SKUs you have, it can't work manually anymore. You're missing out on opportunities. And so I'm wondering, how are you thinking about this next period? Do you have a sense of how you will be able to work at the machine speed necessary to be able to do all of this? Do you feel like you folks are building out that strategy to be able to make

 

Sha Atakhanov (25:47):

Management? Yeah, that's such a timely question, Peter, because this is in the minds of everybody right now who's trying to solve for this. And to be honest, I think for me, we have to combine the AI and artificial intelligence with human intelligence. I think that human intelligence still needs to drive the strategy because otherwise AI will not know what to do. You have to give them even the best AI tools, you have to have a strategy behind it. So I'll give you an example. So we manage all our Amazon ads, for example, AMS ads using this AI platform with Exnerta. And we have over 50,000 keywords and we cannot humanly... I have two full-time Amazon people. They cannot fully manage twenty four seven even if they didn't sleep to manage and optimize those 50,000 keywords. It's just humanly impossible. So we need to use AI tools and we are using an AI tool to optimize those keywords and constantly watch every single keyword twenty four seven.

 

(26:54):

And that's what AI is good at the machine learning or the AI, whatever you want to call it. So we are exploiting that and taking advantage of those tools for anything that you need to scale where you have 2,000 SKUs or 50,000 SKUs, you need to use AI and these type of tools to manage your campaigns or catalog for digital shelf, same thing. You need to use a tool to manage that because otherwise it just becomes too unwieldy. But also from efficiency standpoint and being impactful. The AI will every day it makes recommendations. It has 300 recommendations for us on our dashboard. This, this, this keyword didn't convert. And after 10 clicks and you wasted this much dollars, it's not converting. So I'm going to shut this off. Okay, go ahead and do it. So you can create those type of automations and AI rules and then gives a strategy for the AI to manage your campaigns or manage your retail media or whatever you're using, the tools you're using.

 

(28:00):

So for us, I think with agentic AI, we still need to be using human intelligence even more critically, especially setting the strategy and the focus. What is the focus and what are we trying to do with AI? Because AI could really distract you also from the actual work. For us, we look at three things. So it needs to generate sales or revenue, the AI tool, it needs to save time and it's to save money. So if it does those three things, we will definitely use that tool for that purpose. Otherwise, it could be a distraction. We have so many different AI tools out there to do a million different things. So we have to consistently stay focused as a business leaders, you have to look at the AI. It's going to become super expensive adding all these AI tools and then all the premiums that you're going to pay, plans you're going to pay.

 

(29:04):

So you have to make sure that it's actually serving your business. So for me, even with agentic AI, it's super important to make sure you have the best of digital shelf, you have a good AI strategy and making sure it's really generating sales and supporting your business.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:25):

And Sha, I had the opportunity to see you speak on a panel a couple of weeks ago. I don't even know. It feels like it was yesterday. Yes, that's right. And you were talking about some of the tools that you use on Google as well because you also own social media. So I was listening to you talk about your social media strategy, but I loved that you were highlighting some of the tools that are available through Google to look at your search terms as well as trends in your category. So do you mind sharing that? Because I though that was super insightful to pull from also some different categories to bring out. Yeah,

 

Sha Atakhanov (29:57):

Absolutely. Yeah. So Google just we' Rolled out so many AI announcements in the last two, three weeks. If you were at the Google Marketing Live, one of the biggest ones is so the Google AI mode is going to become a default I think within a few months. So that's a huge implication for SEO and all the people doing SEO or SEM on Google, and they're also providing some really amazing tools for free. So in Google Search Console, so use the Google Search Console, you can see your Google AI visibility and your visibility rank. So in line with the SEO keyword, you'll see that. So that's available now. Google Merchant Center also has a bunch of tools now for AI and AI generated ads. So right within there, you can create different AI ads, AI-based ads and launch them in Google Shopping. So with Google's UCP and their version of connecting the AI to e-commerce, I think it's a huge win for the brands and for the retailers.

 

(31:11):

I know some of the bigger retail like Walmart and Target, some of them are signing on to that. So I think it's going to be huge. And as you know, Google is massive and they have so many data points and eight billion searches a day. And they have so much information about us and what being searched and AI mode. We're noticing now that some of our organic traffic is dropping because the AI mode is answering the questions right there on Google. And that's okay. I mean, it's pulling it from our website or it's pulling it from our digital shelf from Amazon or Target or Walmart. We're happy about that. So like I said, it goes back to the digital shelf. You need to have the best presence because all of them are start to pull it into their AI LLM platforms and you're going to win because at the end, the consumer wins, they get to discover your product, and I think that's the ultimate goal.

 

Peter Crosby (32:08):

And that's where I think your position and the way you've all designed it opens up the door to making those choices and to feeling that confidence because it's absolutely true that while your direct traffic may go down or even to the PDFs, the engagement of the shopper, and we've seen some really strong conversion numbers for those journeys as well. And so your central role I think really helps make you all process that together so that it's not siloed and somebody's over here going like, "Well, what are you doing?" Exactly. I just love the way you're thinking about Sha. It's really good.

 

Sha Atakhanov (32:49):

No, thank you. And it's very refreshing because we're trying to make sure everybody comes along with the journey because you have the PR team, you have the marketing, you have the product management. So we want to make sure that everybody is part of that journey and have that visibility and also that mindset because at the end we need to, like you said earlier in the podcast, you have to keep the consumer in the front. And if we keep that mindset and if the consumer wins, we all win. So I think that's the key for us.

 

Peter Crosby (33:25):

Yeah. And I'd love to close out actually with the people part of it because we hear various stories about some places where there are people that are really worried about their job going away or something like that, which is totally understandable to have that concern,

 

(33:45):

But we often talk with folks about it becoming a promotion. You were talking about it earlier, the fact that your people are going to stay focused on the strategy and that strategy over time should get closer and closer to being a growth strategy rather than a process management strategy. And I was wondering if your people, because of the way that you all work together on this, are feeling that when they see that tool, take care of the ads for them and then they can focus on something more value-added. Does that take a little bit of the pressure off of that fear, do you find? Yeah,

 

Sha Atakhanov (34:22):

It does. It does. Because one thing we want to make sure is that the tool is not the solution, it's the people and the tool together because at the end of the day, they need to drive that car. We're giving you this really nice sports car as an example, let's say, but you still need to drive it because otherwise it's going to go nowhere. So we have to train them, make them feel comfortable. In the beginning always, there's a hesitation like, "Oh, I'm doing this way or that way, but this tool will save you so much time." You have to show them and educate them why the tool is going to serve them or the AI or those solutions. And once you show them, then they love that. They

 

Peter Crosby (35:08):

Brought in, yeah.

 

Sha Atakhanov (35:08):

Same thing with, for example, our visual scoring tool that I was telling you about. Our graphics team was taken aback a little bit in the beginning. They were surprised what we're doing and we are scoring their work. And so people don't like that when you say, "Oh, I don't like this. " So we had to explain to them, it's not about what you've designed, whether it's good or bad, it's about the consumer. Is it converting the consumer? If it's not, I know it's beautiful what you've designed, but it's not converting. So we have to shift that. So once it clicks, then they're like, "Okay, so we need to design so that it converts," and then they focus on that. And just small tweak like that, it helps them because otherwise it becomes, "I like this, I don't like this. " It becomes a personal preference.

 

(36:04):

It's not about that. And I told them, "It's not about what I like. I'm not a graphic, I'm not an artist, but I can help maybe with conversion and I can tell you why this one converts better than this one using this tool and it's going to help you. And we can do it at scale with 2000 SKUs. We can do it very, very quickly." And it worked. And once I showed them the dollars and the cents, it really blew their mind and it speaks to them after that.

 

Peter Crosby (36:33):

That's great.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:34):

Context is needed for humans and agents in order to understand

 

Sha Atakhanov (36:38):

The bigger. Exactly. Well put. That's right.

 

Peter Crosby (36:43):

Well, Sha, thank you so much for spending this time with us and sharing your really amazing career journey and then the kind of leader that you are. Thank you. It's really inspiring for us to hear and I'm sure for our audience. So thanks for taking the time and sharing with us.

 

Sha Atakhanov (37:03):

It was my pleasure. It was great to see you both and thank you for giving me this opportunity.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (37:08):

Thank you so much, Sha.

 

Peter Crosby (37:11):

Thanks again to Sha for his leadership lessons today. Many great leaders are featured at digitalshelfinstitute.org. Should check them out and become a member while you're there. Thanks for being part of our community.