By Susan Johnston Taylor

Kate Nowak T’09 first saw how data can inform business decisions while working in operations for the New England Patriots. She used data to make menu decisions for concessions and even went to the 2004 Super Bowl as part of the ground transportation team to help staff and players get around Houston.

Data-driven decision-making has been a focus of her career over the past two decades, across stints in investment banking, renewable energy, startups, and now applied data and science at Microsoft.

Nowak joined Microsoft in 2017, around the time the company acquired VoloMetrix, a startup that used behavioral data from Office such as number of meeting hours to improve knowledge-worker productivity. She helped scale VoloMetrix, now called Viva Insights, and founded the team involved in using product to support generative AI adoption, including Microsoft Copilot, and measure the value of AI for Microsoft customers. Once leaders and customers identify their biggest pain points and apply AI solutions, Viva Insights can show the AI impact on outcomes such as case resolution time and sales close rates.

“I see AI as a really amazing way to unlock human productivity and potential,” Nowak says. “It's been an incredibly impactful experience for me to sit in the heart of the AI transformation and to play a role in this massive technological shift.”

Although she has concerns about this new technology, such as the use of the technology by bad actors and its environmental impact, Nowak calls herself an optimistic skeptic. “AI can accelerate innovation and create new opportunities, but we need to build and implement the technology in an intentional and responsible way that enables everyone to participate in the changing economy,” she explains. She points to past shifts in labor markets due to advances in technology as evidence of the human ability to adapt to new jobs and maintain their value, especially in the physical world.

“AI automation can free up time for people to enter markets where there are currently labor shortages, such as education, health care, and child and elder care, and make existing jobs more attractive for job seekers,” Nowak adds. For instance, automating documentation and other repetitive tasks for health care workers using AI could reduce burnout and allow workers to use more human-centric skills like empathy and complex problem-solving.

In her own work, Nowak uses AI as a thought partner for brainstorming. When her team needed to name a new product they were working on, they described the product to ChatGPT and asked for more words to describe it. ChatGPT generated a list of descriptors that they used as a jumping off point. “When you expose people to more information in a way that is easy to consume and not overwhelming, you spark new ideas,” she says. “That's where the magic happens.”

Nowak is also passionate about applying AI to climate tech, an area she first discovered at Tuck. “At the time I was there,” she says, “people were starting to heavily invest in new technologies to help with climate change.” She remembers classmates like Sydney McConathy T’09, managing director at Goldman Sachs, and Pace Ralli T’09, cofounder and CEO of Clean Marine Energy LLC and SWITCH Maritime LLC, who were also involved in this space. “It is very fun to see what they have accomplished 15 years since,” Nowak says. She is now an advisor to a venture fund focused on planetary health.

One of her most impactful experiences at Tuck came from an unexpected source: Communicating with Presence, taught by Clinical Professor James Goodwin Rice. “It made me think differently about what it means to be a leader, and how important it is to show up as your most authentic self,” Nowak says.

Nowak moved to the west coast after completing her MBA and now lives in Seattle, but Tuck is never far from her mind. “What makes Tuck so special is that you go off into the world after, but you still have that connection to it,” she says. “Wherever you go, whether it’s Seattle or San Francisco or Boston or New York, you can find the Tuck community there, too.”

This story originally appeared in print in the winter 2025 issue of Tuck Today magazine.