Brita Turner ’04 on AI and Your Career

In this episode of Lehigh University’s College of Business ilLUminate podcast, host Stephanie Veto talks with Brita Turner ’04 about using AI to help one’s career. 

Turner is the 2026 Donald M. Gruhn Distinguished Finance Speaker Series guest and the global head of M&A integration at eBay. 

Listen to the podcast here and subscribe and download Lehigh Business on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Below is an edited excerpt from the conversation. Read the complete podcast transcript [PDF]. 

Veto: Let's start with your Lehigh story. What did you study, and what career were you interested in pursuing? 

Turner: I primarily studied finance and corporate finance. When I came to Lehigh, there were a set of business majors that interested me. Not only was it absolutely gorgeous and beautiful, but there were quite a few very classes that interested me within the finance domain. So that's what I focused on. 

Veto: When did AI become something that you started paying attention to professionally? 

Turner: Throughout my career, I've been involved in various levels of digital transformation. When I was studying abroad in France 15 years ago, I was helping Cartier think about, "Do you sell products online?" Then we went through an era of mobile apps and the importance of introducing mobile experiences. So, there's been various trends throughout my career that take a look at how technology can enable business transformation and optimization, and I think AI is one of the newest trends. 

I started paying closer attention to AI probably two or three years ago and really thinking about how it can help enable and accelerate my day-to-day work. So, just starting with fundamentals, both professionally and personally, how can I plan a trip and make it easier? I bought a new car, and AI helped me do research on it. And then, bridging it into the professional experience, how can I use it to help write emails, help with calendaring, help summarize a business case, or help build a valuation model? And so really playing with it and seeing how quickly it moves and advances, and how much it can help you in your career day to day. 

I've really fully adopted AI at this point. It's something that within Silicon Valley is incredibly important to pay attention to, and to make sure that you are up on the latest and greatest trends, and you understand the capabilities. Also, there’s corporate social responsibility that comes along with it. But I've been spending a lot of time engaging with it, playing with it, navigating with it for a couple of years now, and I've really adopted various functionalities into my ways of working. 

Veto: How should AI factor into decision-making for a student trying to decide what career to pursue? 

Turner: I think AI, based on the types of prompts that you use, can be a huge enabler to understanding the various fields, career paths, as well as open jobs within the space today. It probably can do it at a much more accelerated pace than an individual can do. Even if you were to just start with a prompt that says, "Hey, I'm interested in finance. Can you help me find all the jobs out there?" Then you can have a two-way conversation, which I think is really unique with AI versus a chat bot, or a Google search. You can talk to AI about different fields and professions, ask questions, then ask it to do a search for you on all the open roles that might be out there. Ask it for the criteria of what you would need to be considered for that role. You can also ask it to help you update your resume to make sure that your resume is relevant and tailored for that role as well as cover letters. You could probably put your offer letter in there and see if you think it's a fair offer letter and what feedback you should then go back to negotiate, because you should always be negotiating your offer letter. So, there's probably a huge amount that you can use day to day, which could be very beneficial in helping you with your job search. 

Veto: How has it changed the way you think about your own career? 

Turner: When I think about AI in my career trajectory, I kind of think of it as another element of digital transformation. One in which is kind of an overarching theme of managing change. So in your career, I think you will find or I have found that every year or two, you're going to be thrown a curveball. It could be another change in technology, another trend, another customer demographic you need to manage. How you choose to manage change and how you choose to adopt change is incredibly important. 

The pace of change is frequent and it's fast. It takes time to learn new trends and new elements of technology. I think it's important to take time to learn them, to identify and recognize how they can help or harm you and decide how you want to engage. But the trend will continue and the digital disruption will certainly continue. So, it's important that you try to keep pace with the new technology and innovation along the way and then make sure you identify the risks and how to make the best practice. Make it ethical and make it human. That is the best role that I think an individual can play in that space overall. 

I use AI for productivity tools and for collaboration. I'm sure if I was looking for a new job, I would probably use AI to help me with that. But more than anything, I think it helps you accelerate the volume of work and manage the volume of work that you have on a day-to-day basis, which just keeps growing. And so the question is, how do you continue to be a relevant candidate and employee both through learning and adopting the technology and tools, communicating the viability of them, and making sure that you're keeping pace with how quickly business is running today?