For decades, AI replacing humans in the workforce has been a part of a dystopian vision. Now, it is becoming reality. This year alone, AI adoption has driven more than 10,000 job cuts in America. For a culture like ours, which so closely equates value with productivity, this disruption poses an existential threat as much as an economic one. It’s not only the loss of income we fear. It’s the loss of identity.
As AI becomes more capable, many workers will be left wondering: Who are we beyond our work, our titles, our productivity?
I had to confront that question years before AI forced the rest of us to.
In 2018, the company I had spent a decade building was on the verge of collapse. I was the CEO and co-founder of Embrace, a social enterprise that invented a low-cost, portable infant incubator for premature babies in underserved communities. My co-founders and I started the project as graduate students at Stanford. We set an ambitious goal: to save the lives of one million newborns.
After graduating, we moved to India—where nearly 40% of the world’s preterm babies are born—to launch the company. For years, I logged 80 to 100-hour weeks and never took weekends off. I gave everything I had to the mission. It became not just what I did, but who I was.
Over the years, our technology saved thousands of babies. We were recognized by President Barack Obama and funded by Beyoncé. I was named a TED Fellow, a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and profiled in global media. From the outside, my life looked like a success story. But what people didn’t see behind the headlines and accolades was the relentless grind. A grind that was slowly killing me.
A decade in, after insurmountable challenges, the company unraveled—and I did too. What broke me wasn’t just losing the company. It was losing myself. Without my purpose, my work, my title, I no longer knew who I was.
On the verge of a mental breakdown, I bought a one-way ticket to Indonesia and threw myself into a global healing quest with the same intensity I’d brought to building my company. I sat in the Indonesian jungle for days in silence. I tried psychedelics, somatic therapy, and even frog poison (I had no I was capable of vomiting so much). Back home, I signed up for every self-help seminar I could find. I did parts work, or Internal Family Systems, therapy. I worked with leading trauma experts. At one point, I had three therapists at the same time.