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#176 | From PhD to Director: What Academia Never Teaches You About Leading People w/ Quentin Reul (Director of AI Strategy @expert.ai)
Published 2 months ago
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▶︎ #176 | From PhD to Director: What Academia Never Teaches You About Leading People w/ Quentin Reul (Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai)
In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Quentin Reul: Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai, a Belgian-born computer scientist whose one-year English adventure in the UK quietly turned into a decade - a PhD in symbolic AI, a front-row seat to the academic-to-enterprise transition, and eventually a leadership path built through teams of data scientists, software engineers, knowledge engineers, and QA specialists spread across continents.
The conversation opens with one of the most underexplored tensions in tech: what actually breaks when you move from academic research culture into enterprise delivery. Quentin is precise about it - it is not about intelligence or even drive. It is the completion mindset. Academia rewards the idea, the paper, the demonstrable prototype. Enterprise rewards the shipped thing, the SOC-compliant thing, the thing a customer can buy tomorrow. The gap between those two modes is where a lot of technically brilliant people quietly stall - and where Quentin has spent years learning to bridge it.
If you came up through a technical or research background and are now leading - or thinking about leading - people for the first time, this one will land.
✉︎ FOLLOW QUENTIN ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @unlockdatawithquentin
YouTube: Quentin Reul on YouTube
✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/
In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Quentin Reul: Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai, a Belgian-born computer scientist whose one-year English adventure in the UK quietly turned into a decade - a PhD in symbolic AI, a front-row seat to the academic-to-enterprise transition, and eventually a leadership path built through teams of data scientists, software engineers, knowledge engineers, and QA specialists spread across continents.
The conversation opens with one of the most underexplored tensions in tech: what actually breaks when you move from academic research culture into enterprise delivery. Quentin is precise about it - it is not about intelligence or even drive. It is the completion mindset. Academia rewards the idea, the paper, the demonstrable prototype. Enterprise rewards the shipped thing, the SOC-compliant thing, the thing a customer can buy tomorrow. The gap between those two modes is where a lot of technically brilliant people quietly stall - and where Quentin has spent years learning to bridge it.
If you came up through a technical or research background and are now leading - or thinking about leading - people for the first time, this one will land.
✉︎ FOLLOW QUENTIN ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @unlockdatawithquentin
YouTube: Quentin Reul on YouTube
✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/