Season 1 · Episode 56 · June 10, 2026 · 54 min

What's Really Holding Female Founders Back from Using AI? (w/ Nadia Koski and Stefanie Beach)

Show Notes

Women are adopting AI tools at a 25% lower rate than men. 33% of men use AI daily at work versus 27% of women. Men are 23% more likely to be encouraged by their managers to try it, and 27% more likely to be praised when they do.

Most of the conversation about women's lower AI adoption rates focuses on what women need to do differently. Instead, we're looking at the conditions that produced the gap in the first place, and why closing it matters far more than just productivity.

This week on Early Adoptr, Kyle is away so Jess is joined by Nadia Koski, digital growth expert at The Marketeer Group, and Stefanie Beach, founder and CEO of The Marketeer Group, to get into what's actually driving the adoption gap and what women founders and small business owners can do about it. Because when women use AI tools less, that eventually shapes what the tools look like. It costs the economy. And it grows over time.

We'll work through the stats, the barriers, and the guilt that comes with using AI at work. We also get into how to start without the overwhelm, the mental load, and why the caution women tend to bring to AI turns out to be an asset.

The Digital Marketeer podcast

Follow Nadia:

Nadia Koski on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadiakoski
Still Human: Real Talk in the Age of AI Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6xCZdhBOerROCuLatJoNay?si=FeYj2JidTtiA9xsREd9Ftg

Follow Stefanie:

Stefanie Beach on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanieg/
Stefanie@TheMarketeerGroup.com
www.themarketeergroup.com

Use these links for a discount on the tools we recommend (and it supports the pod!)

Wispr Flow - AI-powered voice dictation that works across every app on your desktop - https://ref.wisprflow.ai/early-adoptr

Granola - The best AI meeting notes! New users get 100% off for their first month - https://www.granola.ai?via=early-adoptr

What You'll Learn:

Why women are adopting AI tools at lower rates than men
Why corporate AI training and rollouts tend to work better for men
Why finishing a project faster with AI does not mean charging less for it, and why women are more likely to think it does
What a team leader needs to have in place before running internal AI training, and why protected experimentation time matters
Why more women in their 40s are leaving corporate life for entrepreneurship, and what the AI revolution has to do with it
Why the caution women bring to AI tools is business advantage

Timestamps:

00:00 IIntroduction: Women and the AI Adoption Gap

03:23 Introductions: Nadia & Stefanie

08:19 The Data on Women and AI Adoption

10:55 How Women in Tech Engage with AI Differently

12:02 Why Women Set a Higher Bar Before Using AI

15:36 How to Give Your Team a Safe Space to Try AI

19:00 How to Actually Educate Yourself on AI

21:13 Who Really Has Time to Learn AI

24:31 Why the Founders Furthest Ahead on AI Have a Support Network at Home

25:53 Why the AI Revolution Is Pushing More Women Into Entrepreneurship

28:23 The Unpaid Work Research That Explains the Women's AI Adoption Gap