“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Janette Roush from Brand USA

Meet Janette Roush, SVP, Innovation and Chief AI officer for Brand USA, where she leads the organization’s AI strategy and innovation initiatives. In her role, Janette advances consumer promotion and trade as well as partner engagement to promote the US as a premier travel destination. 

Outside of her role shaping the future of travel with AI, Janette is a LinkedIn Top Voice, an expert advisor for the European and US cohorts of the “AI Opener for Destinations” program, a two-time Ironman participant, and was named a 2024 Influential #Eventprof by Northstar Meetings Group.

Janette sat down for a conversation with Laura Fernandez, Sales VP, Travel & Tourism, where she discussed how expanding your horizons helps you continue to learn, how settling in the uncomfortability of life can push you to new heights, and the power of positivity in the workplace.

Check out the full interview below, then listen to some highlights from the conversation. 

Be a little uncomfortable.

Highlight: I really dislike the social media trend of quiet quitting or acting your wage, telling people that something is not in your job description. We shouldn't live for our jobs. We need to be full, well-rounded people. But I'm learning in my role working with artificial intelligence, our jobs are going to change so much in the next five years. And I know that I'm going to be prepared for that because I like to say yes. If something is helping a different department or working for a different team, that's an opportunity to learn and grow and stretch and be a little uncomfortable.” - Janette Roush

Expand your horizons.

Highlight: “We're going to need people who can think very broadly about how to bring together all of the different elements or departments of a company in order to figure out how to fix these problems. And you're not going to have the knowledge to do that if you aren't looking to learn and working to expand your horizons. If you're there to do the bare minimum, the bare minimum is exactly what's going to get outsourced to AI. It's people who are looking to learn a little bit more that are going to embrace these tools, and they'll be the ones running the tools, not the ones working for the algorithm.” - Janette Roush

Create your future. 

Highlight: “I realized I never trusted myself enough to say out loud that I love going to conferences and listening to inspiring keynotes and thinking, ‘I wonder if I could ever do that,’ but not having any kind of path to being that person or doing that kind of work. But this was also at the exact time that ChatGPT was coming out, and I was absolutely fascinated with it. So, during this trip, we said, ‘You know what? Every single day I'm going to sit down, I'm going to try a new work task in this tool just to see what happens, and I'm going to write about that on LinkedIn.’ And at the end of January, I had two speaking requests. And it just snowballed. I feel like every career coach who says, the best way to predict the future is to create it. And it's true, it actually works.” - Janette Roush

Stay positive.

Highlight: “You want to be positive, you want to be the kind of person that people want to listen to, and spend time with, and collaborate with. And that's easier said than done sometimes. I struggle a lot with anxiety. I have not, throughout my career, always been the positive person. But the reverse of that is your positive attitude. Your positive spirits have the opportunity to lift everyone up. I want to make sure that I am bringing a really great, positive energy that people want to spend time with wherever I go.” - Janette Roush

Janette’s words inspire us to think of the future and take the reigns in creating our own destinies. For more inspiring content like this, check out the Pass the Mic page.