With over 14 years of experience in the data and AI field, Léa EL Samarji, France Ambassador, Women in AI NGO, and Global Data and AI Sales and Services Innovation Lead at Avanade (a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft) is a passionate leader driving innovation, growth, and value for clients and humans through cutting-edge technologies and solutions. With her AI execution and roadmap, Léa, a driven pioneer of generative AI, is making waves in businesses and regions.
At Avanade, Léa set the go-to-market strategy, developed internal capabilities and tools, and defined multiple operating models for a cost-effective and high-quality service delivery covering advisory, system integration, and managed services.
Léa always supports clients across industries and geographies. She collaborates with Microsoft, Accenture, Databricks, Genesys, and other IoT partners to deliver innovative and impactful solutions.
Additionally, Léa is the France Ambassador for Women in AI, a non-profit organization that promotes diversity and inclusion in the data and AI world, and a lecturer at Sciences Po, where she teaches ‘AI foundations for business.’ She holds a PhD in cybersecurity and AI, a Master’s degree in IT security and cryptography, and multiple certifications and awards.
Léa’s mission is to create an influential impact
“When I started my mission at Avanade as an AI and IOT offering lead, I had a mission to grow our AI offering and solutions from incubation to industrialization. We had so many assets and solutions when I started. I decided to pick up with the team’s main offerings, where we were strong and advanced, and we tried to shape them correctly and develop them further internally as well as with our partners In order to gain more market share in those offerings. And this strategy had worked! Focusing on our key strengths and developing them further to match and sometimes overcome our client expectations was a successful strategy to grow and then build additional offerings,” says Léa.
Success begins with overcoming the starting hurdles
At the beginning of her career, the biggest hurdle was related to people accepting AI technology and adopting it. Indeed, it was not easy to explain and convince people of a new AI solution. There is always the fear of something new—the fear of having their job replaced or completely transformed. So, adopting a real strategy for change management was key to success.
Pivotal moment
Léa’s pivotal moment was joining the Women in AI NGO as the France ambassador. She really understood how the human factor is key and why diversity in a team is important to building responsible and inclusive technology.
Avanade: A joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft
Established in Seattle, Washington, and formed in 2000, Avanade is the leading global provider of digital, cloud, AI, advisory services, industry solutions, and design-led experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem.
With Accenture, Avanade has been recognized as Microsoft’s Global SI Partner of the Year more than any other company. With the most Microsoft Most Valued Professionals, certifications (60,000+), and 18 (out of 18) Gold-level Microsoft competencies, Avanade is uniquely positioned to help businesses grow and solve their toughest challenges.
Avanade is a responsible business committed to building a sustainable world through the power of people and Microsoft. The company holds itself accountable to environmental, social, and governance targets, ensuring its business is sustainable for the long term.
Avanade’s flagship initiatives set it apart from others
Avanade was named Best AI Consulting Service Provider | Avanade. This award recognizes Avanade’s Disrupt Avanade program, one of the flagship initiatives established following the appointment of Florin Rotar as the company’s first-ever Chief AI Officer. The program is part of Avanade’s Global Center for AI which oversees the company’s AI strategy, the upskilling of 60,000 employees, and responsible AI practices. It helps Avanade explore, build, and adopt AI across all business functions, with a ‘people first’ mindset that prioritizes culture, upskilling, and change management.
AI Pioneer and Innovators of Generative AI Solutions
Avanade has been at the forefront of developing AI solutions in collaboration with Microsoft for over a decade, most recently pioneering with generative AI applications. As early adopters of Copilot, they have also played a critical role in previewing, developing, and deploying the full suite of Microsoft Copilots, enabling them to have market-leading offerings available on day one of general availability. Avanade and Accenture have continued this momentum with the rollout of industry-specific Copilots and Microsoft Agents for Copilot, showcased at Microsoft Build in May 2024.
Delivering a diverse and inclusive workplace
“At Avanade, our people are our greatest strength. Every day, our 60,000 professionals in 26 countries harness the power of their diverse backgrounds to make a genuine human impact for our clients, their employees, and their customers,” asserts Léa.
“We strive to offer a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone can achieve the full scope of their potential, whether that means taking advantage of flexible working hours and arrangements, furthering their skills through learning development or joining an employee network to help elevate the voices of underrepresented communities,” she continues.
“Doing the work of a responsible business starts from within. Because when you invest in your people, they’re equally prepared to invest in the world around them,” Léa added.
“Avanade has pursued a deliberate and purpose-driven strategy around inclusion, diversity, and well-being since its founding in 2000. We know that if our inclusive culture doesn’t consider all races, gender identities, sexual orientations, disabilities, ages, religions—all people and all phases of life—it falls short,” asserts Léa.
Léa’s opinions: Will AI replace jobs or is it a human-centered system?
Every critical AI solution should have a human-in-the-loop approach, especially if it needs to learn continually on data that changes constantly. The beauty of AI is that it’s able to incorporate large sets of data to predict or respond to an ask. As the world is changing, and data is being produced massively every day, either internally within enterprises or externally on the internet, AI results should be checked constantly.
I am not very concerned about AI replacing jobs. As any new technology comes into our lives, we will see jobs getting transformed with AI and sometimes completely disrupted (e.g.; call centers). I see this as an opportunity for people to learn, to transform their way of working and their way of thinking, and to focus more on high-value actions. However, I believe that companies should take the action of training people whose jobs will be transformed. It’s also the responsibility of governments to take actions and create awareness around AI.
According toLéa, reading and learning continuously is the best way to stay up to date with AI.
A future goal of a noble soul
“My goal is to work together with the subject matter experts on developing sustainable and responsible AI solutions. We need to use AI in a way to reduce bias that exists already in the society, and to create services that are good to the planet as well as to human beings,” says Léa.
