In this episode of Conversations with Zena, My AI Colleague, David Espindola and Zena welcome Joanna Zhang, founder of a successful virtual assistant business, to explore the evolving relationship between human and AI assistants. Together, they unpack when it makes sense to hire a virtual assistant versus when to train an AI assistant — and how business leaders can best leverage both for efficiency and growth. Joanna shares insights from her experience running a distributed team of virtual professionals, while Zena offers an AI perspective on automation, personalization, and trust. The result is a thoughtful conversation on the future of work, human-AI collaboration, and what it really means to build intelligent support systems that empower people, not replace them.

Opening to Conversations with Zena.

Music at the the end of each episode