In this episode of Catalyst, Tammy is joined by Tucker Burhans, Data Engineering Supervisor at Corning Optical Communications. Tucker was a competitive swimmer at UNC Chapel Hill who qualified for the 2021 Olympic Trials, and he brings that same discipline to his work building data pipelines and scalable architectures at one of the world's leading material science companies. Tammy and Tucker talk about what it means to think before you prompt, servant leadership and how to mentor the next generation of engineers who never knew data work without AI.

Highlights from the episode include:

• Don't outsource the thinking. Tucker warns against the instinct to let AI do your thinking for you. Getting good results from AI starts with understanding the process you’re trying to improve.
• Lead like a servant. Tucker's leadership style is about knowing people well enough to serve them well. Whether that's a power user who wants to go deeper on GenAI or a skeptic who needs their concerns heard first. Tucker believes leaders need to understand where people are coming from, meet them there and be willing to admit when they don’t have all the answers.
• Code generation has changed the job. AI assistants have dramatically cut the time it takes to build pipelines. But that time savings doesn't mean less work; it means more time for reviewing, validating and thinking through whether the output is right.

Check out the full episode to learn more about how growing up as a competitive athlete shaped the way he leads, and how he’s using AI outside of work to tackle saving his new garden.

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Please note that the views expressed in this episode may not necessarily be those of NTT DATA.