From Surfer to Tech Leader: Shahin Mohammadkhani on Leadership, Innovation, and AI in Entertainment

Shahin Mohammadkhani has built a career at the intersection of technology and creativity. As Vice President of Engineering and AI at United Talent Agency (UTA), he uses his technical expertise to unlock new possibilities in the entertainment industry while championing innovative, people-centered leadership. From his unexpected start as a surfer-turned-computer-science-major to his work at CBS Interactive and Sony Pictures, Shahin’s journey is a testament to resilience, curiosity, and the power of fostering environments where both ideas and people can thrive.

The 1% Rule: How Psychological Safety Fuels Innovation

At the heart of Shahin’s leadership philosophy is the idea of creating “psychological safety.” He explains: "Safety in failing, safety in challenging ideas, and safety in innovating." This mindset encourages his teams to experiment, fail, and challenge the status quo—all without fear of judgment.

His golden rule for himself and his team is simple yet profound: "As long as we try to be 1% better than we were yesterday, not compared to someone else, what could I do today better than I did yesterday? And to do that continuously every day, that naturally leads to innovation, creating better things, creating better ideas."

Shahin emphasizes leading by example. "I will never ask you anything that I haven’t done myself before in some shape or form," he says. Whether it’s working overtime to meet a deadline or ensuring personal commitments are respected, Shahin ensures his team operates with both purpose and balance.

Empathy-Driven Leadership: Building Teams That Thrive

Shahin’s leadership style is rooted in empathy and connection. One of his guiding principles is to understand and nurture individual strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses. "You essentially have to find your force multipliers rather than identify people's weaknesses and say, ‘You're weak at this and you can't do this.’"

He credits one of his early mentors, the CEO of ConsumerTrack, for shaping his perspective on leadership. "He was extremely empathetic. He saw potential in people rather than immediate knowledge, and he allowed you to fail. He allowed you to experiment. He allowed you to push yourself further. And that really stuck with me." Shahin now applies the same approach, building trust and support within his teams.

Another cornerstone of his leadership style is personal connection. "One thing I ask my fellow leaders when they say I’m a great leader, I was like, ‘Great. Do you know every employee’s spouse’s names?’ And they say, ‘No.’ Then there’s a lot of room for opportunity."

AI in Entertainment: Amplifying Creativity, Not Replacing It

As VP of Engineering and AI at UTA, Shahin leverages artificial intelligence to transform the entertainment industry across three areas: technology, business operations, and revenue generation. He notes, "AI... is just a complex system of if-else statements." When used effectively, it can "exponentially reduce the effort of development," enabling engineers to focus on innovation rather than tedious tasks like bug fixing.

Shahin sees AI as a tool to amplify human creativity. "Maybe you want to bring an old celebrity that you haven’t seen in a movie, and AI is going to help build that in... We will see technologies that we could not imagine before, and we will be able to have new experiences developed that we did not ever imagine before as well." However, he also acknowledges the challenges of integrating AI, particularly around privacy and speed in decision-making.

Looking ahead, Shahin predicts AI will enable entirely new creative outcomes. "We are going to see better movies, we are going to see much more profound scripts... AI can get into areas that are really going to help grow the creative minds beyond human limitations."

Shahin’s career is a testament to the power of persistence, empathy, and creative leadership. From mastering assembly language to redefining AI’s role in entertainment, his journey demonstrates how technology and humanity can drive innovation together. 

Shahin’s vision for AI as a tool to amplify creativity, not replace it, highlights the transformative potential of tech when paired with inclusive, empowering leadership. In a world of rapid change, his story inspires us to embrace both bold ideas and human connection to shape a future full of possibility.

Transcript

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

The ask that I have of my team and even myself, so, again, I'm never going to ask my team anything that I'm not willing to do myself, is as long as we try to be 1% better than we were yesterday, not compared to someone else, what could I do today better than I did yesterday? And to do that continuously every day, that naturally leads to innovation, creating better things, creating better ideas.

Can I change my thought process a little bit better? Can I change my approach to a problem a little bit better? Can I change the technology a little bit better? Challenging yourself every day and keeping yourself in an uncomfortable system will lead to innovation as well.

Caleb Brown:

Welcome to Keep Moving Forward, the podcast from X-Team for tech professionals who are passionate about growth, leadership, and innovation.

I'm your host, Caleb Brown, and in each episode we'll dive deep into candid conversations with the tech industry's brightest minds, seasoned leaders, forward-thinking engineers, and visionary experts.

I'm thrilled to welcome Shahin Mohammadkhani, who's leading engineering and AI as VP at United Talent Agency or UTA. Shahin's journey is fascinating, from his early days as a self-described surfer dude to becoming a driving force in tech innovation. After making waves at companies like Sony Pictures and CBS Interactive, he's now revolutionizing how the entertainment industry harnesses technology and AI.

What I love about Shahin's story is how he combines technical excellence and genuine human connection. You'll hear how his leadership style evolved through his own experiences, creating environments where innovation flows naturally and team members feel truly valued. He has this remarkable way of bringing together cutting-edge AI capabilities with his deep understanding of what makes teams tick. Shahin opens up about transforming UTA's technological landscape, but more importantly, about building teams where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work.

Whether you're curious about AI's role in entertainment, passionate about creating inclusive tech cultures, or just love stories of unexpected paths to leadership, this conversation has something special for you. Ready to dive in?

Shahin, thank you so much for joining me.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Caleb.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

To put light to the picture, I was a total skater boy, a surfer dude in high school. I had long hair, now I have no hair, and I didn't know much about computer science or anything computers when I was in high school, but I quickly realized my senior year that I needed to take the SATs and ACTs, and my counselor recommended that I do that. And when I went to college, I looked at the bulletin board and I said... Back then there was bulletin boards and a list of salaries that come out of each degree, and I said, "Computer science, computer engineering." And I said, "I'm going to study that the quickest thing out of college, and then I can get back to my life."

But throughout my academic career, I started really falling in love with it. It's kind of an extension of my personality. And with computer science or any engineering degree, you're able to solve problems, look through complex solutions. You're put in situations where you have to think rapidly, and then you see the outcome very quickly as well. So I really enjoyed that.

And I purposely chose different industries, from online marketing to finance, to banking, to retail marketing at some point, and over the years, stumbled in entertainment. My entertainment career started when I went to CBS Distribution, now called CBS Interactive, and built a lot of their online digital platforms, ET Online, [inaudible 00:04:01] Doctors. Built their first streaming platform there that helped stream the Grammys back then on ET Online.

And I fell in love with entertainment because engineering in itself I would say is a tedious and... I don't want to say kind of a boring profession, but being in a fun industry, you get to see a lot of fun outcomes. And I found that with entertainment and engineering, that's where my passion kind of grew.

And then finally, my current tenure here at UTA where I'm siting in the technology division there. Now, throughout my career, I've also had the opportunities to advise, help other companies, other individuals to grow their domain or grow their enterprise, and I find it very fulfilling to be able to do what I love, but also help others, through my experience, gain the advantage that they can have within the industry.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. I really appreciate taking me through that whole thing. And there's a lot of really interesting takeaways there. My background is in software development, and I remember that moment that you mentioned of just the satisfaction of seeing something real and tangible so quickly when you're writing code. I remember that very vividly.

I always liked tech, but it wasn't until... Even just seeing that first Hello World being printed out was like... I was able to do it, played around with it, and then actually seeing it happen was just such truly, just a beautiful moment of just seeing this real work come together actually pretty quickly. So that's fascinating.

So you took us through the whole thing, which was great, but I remember when we kind of did our prep call, you had a very, I love this story, a very fascinating kind of almost a pivotal moment with the professor that you were learning assembly from, and I was wondering if you don't mind telling that story and a little bit of how that experience shaped your approach to learning and problem-solving moving forward.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Believe it or not, I failed assembly I think twice in college or three times. I don't remember at this point. I have a lot of trauma over that. So I think I've forced myself to forget about assembly, to be honest with you.

Caleb Brown:

Sure.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

But that was one of the things where provided me the, I'd say, the muscle to say engineering can be hard and there are going to be times where you will want to give up in what you want to do, and persistence is what really pays off. And that's where the professor that I had was, in a way, motivating me, but also challenging me as well. There were times that he would say, "This is not for you, you got to go to a different major." But at the same time, I remember there were times he said, "Never give up."

So as a college kid, I was really confused what I needed to do at the first. But I would say such a difficult language at that time for me, and with his, I would say, fatherly figure motivation that he would give and criticism he would give, I think persistence is what helped me push through and say, "I'm graduating with a computer science degree. Whether it takes me four years or six years, I'm graduating with it, and this is the class that's going to determine whether I'm going to have it or not. This is the turning point for me. Mentally, educationally, and emotionally, can I handle this?" That was a pivotal time for me.

Now I'm here. Went through it. Almost got expelled from the computer program because once you fail a class more than twice you have to have a talk with the dean. But I didn't give up and we pushed through there.

Caleb Brown:

I wanted to talk a little bit about sort of... A lot of the show talks about leadership in technology. So I was curious how your leadership style has evolved throughout that whole career that we just heard about, especially as you've moved into more senior roles.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Yeah. Leadership is a science and an art, to be honest with you. And I've seen the greatest engineers, borderline savants, be not great leaders. They know their topic, they know the subject matter, but they just cannot lead a group of people or lead an idea. And I've seen folks that are, I would say, on the average side and are able to really influence people but cannot carry the thought through. So the science is you have to have both, and the art is how do you take both tools and combine them to push through. And the good thing is you don't have to be great at both to be a great leader, you just have to understand how to use both to be a great leader.

And one of my motivating factors was the first CEO of a company that I started with. They were called ConsumerTrack then. Now they're called BankingRates. He was extremely empathetic. He saw potential in people rather than immediate knowledge, and he allowed you to fail. He allowed you to experiment. He allowed you to push yourself further. And that really stuck with me.

And naturally, I would say I'm an empathetic person as well, very understanding. And one thing I learned as I got into the leadership position over the years is aptitude and attitude are the most extreme important levels in finding great people to work with you, but also as a leader, you have to understand people's strengths and capitalize their strengths rather than what your strengths are. So you essentially have to find your force multipliers rather than identify people's weaknesses and say, "You're weak at this and you can't do this."

So as a leader, I say if an organization is failing, it's the leader's responsibility, and it's really the leader's fault. If an organization is succeeding, it's also the leader's benefit because they were able to identify the people that can help as a force multiplier. And I have some theories around that and philosophies that I implement to this day is always lead with empathy and understanding as a leader.

I never ask, and this is what I say on every new hire that I bring onto my team, I will never ask you anything that I haven't done myself before in some shape or form. I will never ask you anything that I'm not willing to do with you. For example, "Hey, guys, we have a project deadline. We may need to work over the weekend." I will work over the weekend with the team alongside them. I'm not going to say, "I'm going to go on vacation. See you guys on Monday."

And family comes first. What does that mean is if we are working on the weekend, everyone needs to call their spouses, confirm with their spouses that their spouses are comfortable with that, and then you can come in with a clear mind. Because if you have a guilty conscience in working, you don't put your best foot forward. And we all do this because of our family, honestly. So we want to make sure that when we're over-committing ourselves to work that the outcome is also positive as well.

And something that I personally do, and I think it's very important in leadership is get to know your staff on a personal level. And even in large organizations, there's an ability to get to know your staff at a personal level.

One thing I ask my fellow leaders when they say I'm a great leader, I was like, "Great. Do you know every employee's spouse's names?" And they say, "No." Then there's a lot of room for opportunity. I've taken the time to know every employee, their spouse. That allows me to have an understanding of their livelihood or how they live. And you can use that to help motivate and you can lead with much more understanding as well.

So I take a fairly people-based approach of leadership because everything else comes naturally. The knowledge comes naturally. If you identify people who have a good attitude to solving problems and are resourceful, the problems solve themselves naturally. And yet, we have to be good at identifying those areas.

Caleb Brown:

Well, I love to hear that. And I've been, I think, privileged, happy to work in an industry where I think we are seeing more empathy, and folks finally seeing that as a strength for a business and community, rather than seeing it as a negative or weakness, which I think may have been the case in the past.

I'm curious how you foster a culture of innovation and continuous learning within tech teams. Obviously, a lot of tech folks are just naturally that way, but I think you are particularly, being in the engineering and AI space, are just an interesting one to answer that question of how you keep the overall culture just excited about innovation and learning.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

It goes back to aptitude and attitude, right? Identifying folks who are always trying to push themselves naturally, and then you can feed on that. Kind of stepping back a little bit, again, we can find amazing engineers, but they want to stay the master of one craft. And there's nothing wrong with that. They can do that, right? That doesn't always equate to innovation if you want to do something that you're really good at continuously. What innovation allows are people who are naturally curious, have the attitude for looking for things and have the aptitude to be able to find solutions.

And the biggest thing around innovation, experimentation, and growth, is creating safety. We call it psychological safety, and I say safety. Safety in failing, safety in challenging ideas, and safety in innovating. And the ask that I have of my team and even myself... So, again, I'm never going to ask my team anything that I'm not willing to do myself, is as long as we try to be 1% better than we were yesterday, not compared to someone else, what could I do today better than I did yesterday? And to do that continuously every day, that naturally leads to innovation, creating better things, creating better ideas.

Can I change my thought process a little bit better? Can I change my approach to a problem a little bit better? Can I change the technology a little bit better? Challenging yourself every day and keeping yourself in an uncomfortable system will lead to innovation as well. Fear is the number one stopper of people taking risks, and once we remove that, you'd be surprised how many great ideas come out of people.

Caleb Brown:

Absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. I did want to talk a little bit about, obviously I mentioned it, but the AI and ML space specifically within the entertainment industry because I think that's very interesting. But so you are VP of engineering and AI at UTA. So just kind of curious about getting into it and how you're leveraging AI, artificial intelligence, to transform the talent agent business.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Yeah. So we're looking at AI in, I'd say three areas, three main areas. Direct technology, business operations, and revenue-generating ideas, right? And AI... Let's break it down. AI is just a complex system of if-else statements. That's what I think. And if you're using a tool and you don't really know what the problem you're trying to solve is, that tool, you don't get the benefits of it.

So in technology, what we are looking at AI is how do we exponentially reduce the effort of development? How do we give our development teams the tools they need where they can focus more on innovating and less on bug fixing, less on maintenance, less on doing the busy work, and using AI to be as someone's force multiplier. We're not looking to replace engineers, we're looking to provide the ability for engineers to do more work in less time. Things such as GitHub, Copilot, CodeWhisperer, tools that will help with code analysis or predictive development, all that stuff. Even if we can save an hour a day of development time, that's huge over the year.

Then it's business operations. What are some of the operations that are tedious, repetitive, and also areas where we can, again, reduce the amount of manual effort with AI and also for AI to give us the opportunity to see into the future and where areas of improvement. That's from business operations.

And revenue-generating is really looking at our client list, looking at our business that we have, getting those data sets, building the learning language models that we need to have AI provide or give us opportunities that we do not see, or areas of growth that we may not naturally pick. And with the immense data set that we have internally and we can gather externally, we believe AI can really be a great force multiplier for our company.

Caleb Brown:

Awesome. Yeah. One of the things I've been very fascinated with as I, myself, kind of jump into more of the AI stuff and play around with a lot of tools, always interested in how different kind of disciplines or industries are using it. So I was just curious what unique challenges the entertainment industry faces when it comes to AI integration?

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Well, one of them for sure is privacy of information. We are in a information-based organization where the data points are confidential. The data we have of our clients are confidential. So how do we feed this confidential information to us to a system that needs it to give us better data points? The lifecycle of information. In the agency, you need to make decisions within a couple of minutes. So having a system that's going to take one or two weeks to analyze your data, give it back to you, may not be the best model. So speed of information is also very challenging within AI to get it quickly for us.

And lastly is cultural. Agency is a very relationship-based industry, and relying on AI or having technology provides you information where historically agents can provide that information. And I would say it's helping an agents be, again, a multiplier to the organization rather than AI being disruptive to the organization.

Caleb Brown:

Awesome. Yeah, that makes sense. I believe that you kind of emphasized the understanding the problem that you're facing before applying the technical solutions, and I just thought maybe you could walk us through your approach to problem-solving in a tech leadership role like that.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Yeah, absolutely. I'll be one to blame myself as well. Sometimes we find a really great tool in the market, and then try to find a problem for it that we're trying to solve. That is not the best way of approaching things. Decomposing a problem to the point where we get to the technology aspect of it is super important because, in my opinion, problems can be decomposed to a point where it becomes a process that needs to be fixed. It's not always technology. But once you break it down to a point where it's business aspect of it, you break down the process, then be like, "Oh, the reason why the process is broken, it's because of the technology, and by addressing the technology, then we can fix the process." Then we can find the tools and services in place to fix those platforms.

So having a clear understanding of the impact of the tools and have a clear understanding of what are we trying to solve in the first place is critical to how we adopt technology and how we actually use it within our organization. So that it's repetitive, we built economies of scale, and we're not building bespoke systems.

Caleb Brown:

Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. So something at X-Team, X-Team, we have a ton of developers worldwide and they work with various clients and sometimes they'll wrap up an engagement with one client and then start with a new one. And so a huge part of our development community is retention, is building these high-performance teams and keeping them and making sure they're happy. And so I often like to ask folks, especially you, who I believe does come from an area where you have a lot of empathy, just curious your approach to talent retention and professional development within your technical teams.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

What I've seen there are there are really two groups of developers. There are those who are comfortable in following their domain and sticking there, and there are ones who are continuously curious and want to move on to other things and get bored really quickly.

By looking at resources and finding jack-of-all-trades and allowing your resources to move from project to projects, and exposing them with different business problems naturally keeps them curious and helps them look at problems differently, but also helps them reuse a lot of the same methodology, same systems that they've built for other problems.

So what this does actually is this increases productivity over time, reduces risk and knowledge transfer, and the retention stays fairly high because, one, the developers are continuously working on different projects. Two, there's a lot more cross-collaboration, and, three, they're able to solve newer problems with the same technology or adopt new technologies for new problems. It's a form of engagement that you want to have with your teams.

Caleb Brown:

That's a really good point. We wanted to see just in general what you thought the kind of role of AI would look like as it evolves into the entertainment industry specifically over the next five to even 10 years.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Yeah. I think once we get through this early adoption phase, and I would say through the pain period of continuous innovation of even within the AI space, I believe AI will... Just like we went from mail to email and email became a really great area where we can communicate faster, you can get things done much faster, AI will play the same role where you can make decisions faster, you can lead to outcomes faster. It'll be your virtual person, so essentially yourself as a virtual environment, where it can help you lead to much more detailed outcomes based on the criteria that you're asking for. I'm not just saying entertainment, but I think in any area.

I believe we will see much more creative outcomes in overall entertainment through AI. We are going to see better movies, we are going to see much more profound scripts, we will see technologies that we could not imagine before, and we will be able to have new experiences developed that we did not ever imagine before as well. And I'm excited about that area. There's a lot we need to do to get there, but it's opening doors where I would say previously could have been sci-fi, to be honest with you. And with AI, we can get into areas that it's really be going to help grow the creative minds beyond human limitations and create ideas that we could never imagine before as well.

Caleb Brown:

Absolutely. Yeah. Kind of playing on that, what emerging AI technologies or just trends in general are you most excited about within the context of whether it be talent representation or entertainment? But I'm also, after that, I do want to hear just what you're interested in AI outside of that industry, just in general, what you think is cool or fun. Or even the inverse, what you think is scary or something to keep an eye on.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Yeah. I'd say, well, some specific technologies I'm looking at is like Sora or Runway with video. I think those areas, although still in its infancy and how great it is, that's, with the entertainment, that's really going to help us be able to create visual ideas of what's in a writer's mind or what's in a director's mind beyond the physical limitations that we have. That's really going to help. It's going to allow us to reduce the cycle between idea to outcome, which will help the entertainment industry financially for sure and increase user engagement as well too, I believe.

The threshold of creative artists to exposing their art to the people is going to be much lower because now if I understand how AI work as a creative artist, I can really showcase my talent to much broader audiences without having to go through the traditional avenues. That's really going to help.

And it'll help formulate better ideas. It'll help outline new areas where we can entertain folks using AI for holographic or digital likeness of people. Maybe you want to bring an old celebrity that you haven't seen in a movie and AI is going to help build that in. I'm sure our grandparents or our parents would want to see some of their famous actors from the '30s, '40s replaying a movie. AI can do that for sure. So it's really going to help it with the creative minds for sure.

Now, one thing that really scares me is we're going to get to a point where it's going to get so good we're not going to know what's real and what's not that. And I think that's an area where we have to be able to differentiate somehow where we're saying this is not a real story or this is not a real place. As powerful the human mind is, it can also be easily manipulated as well. And that's an area where me having kids, I really need to make sure that I play my part in providing an ability to be able to differentiate between real life and make believe.

Caleb Brown:

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. My friends know me as someone that's very pro-tech. I've always been. And they were surprised to hear me say, this would've been a couple of years ago, that I thought we needed some kind of technology that would be able to detect deep fakes because I believed that there was risk there in a political sense and things like that.

But at the same time, it's so funny because it's essentially the same technology to do the stuff that's going to be and currently is really cool, like seeing an actor that is no longer with us being able to be in these productions and things like that. So it's truly just a fascinating field across the board. It really is.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Absolutely.

Caleb Brown:

What skills do you think will be most critical for the next generation, really, of tech leaders that are in this entertainment industry as they're coming up into this industry where these things are new and will obviously be growing. Curious what you think those skills will be important for them moving forward.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

As we're removing the barrier of entry in technical aspects of it through AI, I think creative minds will be much more sought after of thinking outside the box and using AI to bring those ideas to life. So we are moving towards... And this is in business, isn't even technology. We're moving more from a traditional logical centric engineers, where you have to have your right platform to implement, where it's more on thinking about bigger ideas and articulating those ideas somehow through AI and having AI help you build those. So we're moving towards more creative-based approach than the traditional logical base. And I think that's going to be a transition. But also, I see that already happening. I see some of the newer generation developers being much more creative in how they approach problems than some of the old schools, as we call them.

Caleb Brown:

That's interesting.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Yeah.

Caleb Brown:

What do you think caused that? Do you think they're realizing that they have to have a different skill set, or it was just something that happened natural based on their ecosystem?

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

I think it's part of the digital age. A lot of the newer generations grew up in the digital age. Some of us were the guinea pigs of that digital age. We grew up playing with dirt and rocks and then learned about the internet and then learned about that. So we were kind of the guinea pigs of it. And then the generation before us, they don't even know what some of this stuff is still.

But a lot of the newer generation who grew up with technology, who grew up with the internet, who grew up with all of these interactive devices, I'd say just their way of thinking is much greater, much more creative than some of us, and they're naturally thinking that way, and they're seeing opportunities in these tools that can bring up more innovation, and they're not really looking it as a system of record, but a tool that they can help them create amazing ideas. And I think that's naturally baked into the way they think.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah, that makes sense. So I truly only have one last question for you, which is, this is the only question that I ask to everyone at the end, and I love this one. I am just always curious. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the tech industry or its culture, what would that be and why?

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

I'm a big believer in open source, and I think by opening technology to the masses, we actually help humanity, and the ideas are just much greater. So if there's one wish that I had it is that we get rid of proprietary software and allow people just to create much more powerful systems. That's one thing within technology that I would change.

If I were to change something in the world with technology is there is a lot of stuff going on in the world that technology can save, and using technology in more of a humanitarian aspects of it, I think we're at a place where we can really use that to help people in the world for sure.

Caleb Brown:

Absolutely agree. Great response. Well, like I said, that was it for today, and I really enjoyed this chat very much. So, Shahin, thank you so much for being here. I really do appreciate it.

Shahin Mohammadkhani:

Thank you for having me. Appreciate you guys.

Caleb Brown:

What an energizing conversation with Shahin about building technology teams that are both innovative and deeply human. I was particularly moved by how his approach to leadership has evolved from his own journey. He showed us that great leadership isn't just about technical decisions, it's about creating spaces where people feel valued enough to take creative risks and push boundaries. His perspective on AI was eye-opening too. Rather than seeing it as a replacement for human creativity, Shahin shared how it can be a force multiplier, amplifying what teams can achieve, and freeing them to focus on what humans do best, innovate and create.

What really stood out was his commitment to psychological safety. Shahin's stories about building trust through transparency and personal connection reminded us that the strongest teams are built in relationships, not processes.

Thank you, Shahin, for sharing your journey from surfer to tech leader. And thanks to our listeners for being part of this conversation. It's stories like these that remind us how technology and humanity can work hand-in-hand to create something extraordinary.

Join us next time for more inspiring conversations with leaders who embody what it means to keep moving forward. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music, and share this episode if it sparked something in you. Until next time.