Latest news with #Wilkey
Tahawul Tech
11-03-2025
- Business
- Tahawul Tech
'Our Hybrid AI Advantage empowers enterprises to validate use-cases within 90 days' – Patricia Wilkey, Lenovo
CNME Editor Mark Forker spoke to Patricia Wilkey, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Lenovo Solutions and Services Group, in a bid to learn more on their Hybrid AI Advantage offering, the need to validate AI use-cases – and the rise of Agentic AI. Patricia Wilkey has enjoyed a thoroughly impressive career in IT. She began her career as a financial analyst, and was the Chief Financial Officer at EDS Personal Communications Corp, before pivoting into strategy and sales at EDS Corporation. Wilkey has worked for global technology players such as HP and DXC Technology, prior to joining Lenovo in 2024. She is regarded by many of her peers to be one of the best sales leaders in the industry. During LEAP 2025 in Riyadh, CNME were afforded the opportunity to sit down with Wilkey, to try and better understand how Lenovo is helping their customers leverage the most from AI. GAIN AN 'ADVANTAGE' Lenovo's Hybrid AI Advantage portfolio is empowering organisations to turn data and intelligence into business outcomes much quicker. Wilkey outlined how Lenovo's adopts a consultative approach in order to understand customer pain points, and select the AI use-case that is really going to have the impact they desire. She acknowledged business leaders are under pressure to adopt AI, and stressed the need to validate AI use-cases. 'Over the last few months, we have spent a lot of time with our customers in terms of how we can help them transition from pocket-to-cloud. We want to determine how do we help them take advantage of AI by deploying the right model. We are taking that technology piece into play, but we're also incorporating the human factor, which is essential. Our strategy straddles a lot of different elements, such as, speed, having the right execution, and having that ease of use. Ultimately, we want to ensure that we can take these solutions, and use-cases, and validate them for our customers. We have designed a model that within 90 days allows our customers to test, validate, and see a proof of value on that use-case that we are bringing forward. We are sitting down with our customers, and we're asking them what is the concept, where do you think we can have the best impact, and then we design that, and we look to validate that use-case within 90 days. We want them to get to a validation point, so they don't have to re-design everything for production,' said Wilkey. Wilkey added that Lenovo is also intensely focused on simplifying AI for their customers. 'A very important component in this AI development, is the need to validate the security framework, we bring the security, whether it is built into our device, or we use a Microsoft tool, but that is key. It is also very important for us to introduce our partner ecosystem, to determine what are they going to need to have for the compute environment. Data is the killer area for applications. We want to make sure that the general population, or the designer know that this is what it is all about. How does the application manipulate the data, and now with AI and agents the question becomes how do you make it simpler,' said Wilkey. THE LIBRARY Wilkey stated that educating customer on AI is a huge priority for them, but conceded that in the AI race, patience is not a virtue you tend to see first-hand. However, Lenovo's creation of an AI library has enabled people to have conversations much quicker, as they have leveraged AI to fast-track the traditionally protracted process of creating an NDA. 'A big focus for us in this first phase of AI is the education of our customers – and to help us with that, we have created what we call the AI Library. Many of our customers have their own IP, but they need another tool, or framework to really gain traction. When you go and speak to a customer one of the first things that your legal team will say is that we need a NDA, you can't have this conversation without one. However, this takes time, so what we did was have all our experts in AI work closely with our legal team to determine how we can have a framework around the best elements that is needed in an NDA agreement. It has all been approved now, and if anyone of our thousands of sellers globally need to have that conversation then they just need to go into the AI library, submit the details, and they'll get the approved documentation that they need to go forward with that conversation. It saves weeks, initially it was reduced from a fortnight to around 3-4 days, but now you can get the approved document within an hour. We've taken our AI library to our customers, and they can now leverage the capabilities provided by this use-case. We also have an incubation model with different ISVs, and service providers in terms of what they are creating and how we can link that into our incubation AI team,' said Wilkey. TAKE IT ON 'BOARD' Wilkey conceded that many business leaders are under pressure to come back to their board with a clear AI strategy, and likened the current AI climate to the cloud era. 'Lenovo is in 180 different markets in the world, and each one of them is at a different level when it comes to AI, some of them are more educated on the technology than others, and that's just the state of play. When we speak to our customers we always look at the industry, what industry does this customer operate in. For example, I recently was with an insurance CIO, who admitted there were cautious about adopting AI because of fears over compliance. We spoke, and we looked at where they were having the most pain, and then we looked at developing solutions that are going to address that very specific problem in the most effective and efficient way possible. The first thing that some of these business leaders say to us is 'it's kind of like the cloud era'. Boards are now asking them what is this AI thing, what is our strategy and plan. They are asking us for help. It can be hard to stay on top of AI because it is changing so quickly, but it's our job to educate them, then advise them based on the industry they operate in what the best course of action is. If we don't have that industry expertise, then that's when we leverage our channel and partner to bring that knowledge to the industry,' said Wilkey. AGENTS OF CHANGE A big feature and theme at LEAP, was the role of Agentic AI. Many analysts are predicting that the year of 2025, will be remembered as the year of Agentic AI. 'Agentic AI is taking the data, understanding it, and create process improvement around the AI play. These agentic models are learning from themselves and cutting out some of the complex processes that used to hinder coders and developers. As you pull these units together then it's already recognising what people might have had to pull together manually. There is still a lot of compute power needed to make this all happen. We're working closely with NVIDIA, and others in relation to what it all means, and we're looking at how we bring these solutions to fruition, what is the compute power required to validate, test, and go into a production load with these agentic AI models? However, it is expensive, so we're looking at how we can adopt a consumption strategy around the design of these agentic AI models. We want to make it easier for our customers to embrace Agentic AI, and there is a lot of tools out there, but how do you simplify all of that, and use these Agentic AI models to enable what the piece of the process is in order to reduce the time, and make the whole process easier for the non-developer to be able to experiment and use,' said Wilkey. STAY 'TRU' Wilkey concluded a superb exchange, by highlighted the role and impact played by Lenovo's TruScale platform. 'We help our customers get access to the environment that they need. Many of our customers are concerned about their security and their intellectual capital, how they maintain, and manage that in their environment. TruScale is designed in a way that addresses these concerns. In some cases, they want to use a public cloud, but in other cases they want to keep it on-prem, whether they are a public sector organisation, or a financial institution, or healthcare provide, it doesn't matter the data is key, and their IP is core to them. They want to have the same experience as if they are in a public cloud. In many instances customers don't have all the capital to be able to put upfront, and that's an impact on their ROI. Lenovo helps them financially to have the right compute, the design of what they need in that environment, but have it in a financial model that makes sense to them, and enable them to turn it up and turn it down, the flexibility is critical,' concluded Wilkey.
The Guardian
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Actor Temi Wilkey: ‘No one saw me as a Blanche DuBois or a Juliet'
The seed of actor and writer Temi Wilkey's new one-woman show was planted when she saw a photo of herself dancing at an east London party. As she recreates it for me, she throws her arm up and adopts a model-esque expression, personifying, as a friend described it, 'main character energy'. 'I felt very empowered by her saying that, like: Is this how people could see me? Is this who I actually am?' Main Character Energy became her show's title, long before it was written. 'Not to compare myself to Charli xcx,' she laughs, 'but it makes me think about Brat, because she didn't write any of the music until she'd come up with a name. It was a guiding principle, like: is that brat?' Wilkey is channelling main character energy when we meet, sweeping through Soho theatre in a floor-length furry coat and animal-print hat, telling me about a recent tarot reading that predicted an incredibly busy, but very fulfilling 2025. To Wilkey, the phrase at the centre of her show 'means believing that you're worthy to be seen and celebrated. It means that your story is important. Main characters are allowed to be flawed and messy.' It's something, she says, that hasn't always been afforded to Black women and something she struggled to feel in years past. The title became 'a north star' as she decided where to put her creative energy. She realised: 'No one's going to put me in the limelight. You have to do it yourself. In some ways it's annoying, but in others, it's empowering.' The resulting show is effervescent, blending cabaret, comedy and theatre, and dissecting both the tropes of a one-woman show and the insidious reaches of racism. In it, Wilkey plays a version of herself, one who is super-serious about acting, determined to show us that she's a star, but doesn't realise she's starring in a comedy. 'I was really interested to explore self-indulgence, what it means to play yourself,' she says. 'I've always been obsessed with self-portraiture, what an artist presents of themselves and what that says about them.' She had already built an eclectic CV – she'd trained with the National Youth Theatre repertory company, co-founded drag king company Pecs in 2013, won the Stage Debut award for best writer in 2020 with her first play The High Table, and had written for the screen, including an acclaimed episode of Sex Education. Yet while writing opportunities rolled in, acting work didn't. Even when she wrote a TV part she knew she'd be perfect for, when she auditioned, she never heard back: 'I only found out when I visited the set and saw someone else's picture on the wall.' It was demoralising, and started to percolate with past experiences. Wilkey was a shy but imaginative child. She grew up in north London, the eldest daughter to two British-Nigerian doctors who valued academic excellence and sent little Temi to a theatre group 'to come out of my shell'. It worked, she 'flourished', and even picked up jobs on TV shows, including as an EastEnders extra. 'I love it when people are looking at me, I love surrendering to a moment and sharing something with people,' Wilkey says. 'I secretly harboured the dream to act.' She found an outlet in religion, too, especially as a teenager. 'I grew up in a Pentecostal church: speaking in tongues and fainting, there's so much theatricality to that, which I think I loved. I led worship once – it was incredible having a captive audience.' Wilkey stopped being religious 'very sharply' during her first year of university in what felt like 'a big existential breakdown' but also helped her realise she was queer. She still harbours curiosity about higher powers, exploring 'pre-colonial spirituality' in The High Table, where her character's ancestors decide whether to bless her marriage to a woman, and gravitating towards tarot and astrology as ways to contemplate big questions. When Wilkey went to study English literature at the University of Cambridge, she got involved with student theatre, joining a production of Macbeth at the Edinburgh festival fringe (she cringes after realising she's said the play's name inside Soho theatre). Even though she had a tiny part, was sharing a flat with too many people, and flyering daily in the rain, she thought: 'I have to pursue this, regardless of the circumstances, I'm so happy.' Wilkey had been to private school and was from a middle-class family but, as a young Black woman without pre-existing connections there, felt the layers of exclusivity at Cambridge. She thought talent would be spotted and rewarded with roles, but says the students calling the shots 'didn't see me as Blanche DuBois or Juliet, or even a supporting part. I was a servant or an ensemble character.' Later, the same was true at the National Youth Theatre: 'I was cast as a doctor in every single thing, just these tiny, tiny parts.' She had seen people create shows for themselves and, thinking it wasn't for people like her, almost resented it. 'I hadn't seen a Black woman do that,' she says. As she started creating Main Character Energy, which premiered at Edinburgh last summer, her perspective shifted. 'I was like: what does it mean to be unapologetically taking up space as a Black woman?' She wanted the show to be funny and so began doing spots at comedy nights. She'd dabbled in comedy at university as part of all-woman sketch group Rookie and found it 'fulfilling … thrilling and live' but also egalitarian, the funniest ideas winning out. When Rookie came to a sudden end, it felt as fi comedy was yet another role that wasn't meant for her, and it took Wilkey a long time to acknowledge the chasm that left. She realised during the pandemic, while watching comedies such as The Good Place and People Just Do Nothing, how much she missed writing and performing comedy. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Returning to it, 'I was saying I was just doing it to get better at writing jokes, but I had quiet dreams and ambitions.' She is inspired by comedian friends Sophie Duker and Kemah Bob, is dabbling with improv and burlesque, and has been enraptured by clowning while watching acts such as Julia Masli. She feels like 'a little sideways crab', approaching comedy from an odd direction, but increasingly excited about folding it into her work. Standup also helped her find the fictional Temi, whom Wilkey describes as 'the most camp version of myself'. In Main Character Energy, her time as drag alter ego Drag King Cole ('He was a bit of a crooner but would also rap and dance') is evident, too, as she dances, sings, lip-syncs and plays with the audience. The show is performed in the round which, as her director Ragevan Vasan noted, makes Wilkey the centre of attention. She's thrilled by shows where the audience 'have no idea what's going to happen', where 'the boundaries are elastic'. The show is sexy and silly, but doesn't shy away from darkness. While Wilkey was writing the show, Black British actor Francesca Amewudah-Rivers was in the West End playing Juliet, and facing a disturbing racist backlash. 'Juliet is a part I've always wanted to play,' says Wilkey. 'There's this beautiful line: 'My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep,' this feeling of a huge uncontainable emotion that I really relate to.' Wilkey turns that urge into a dark joke: despite the torrent of racism, her character covets the role. 'It's the psychosis of racism, the monster it makes of you,' she says. 'Here, in this country, it's worse to be called a racist than to be racist, which is incredibly smart, because it means you can never call it out. It's like Schrödinger's racism.' Instead, she decided to show its effects in the show, where a hard-working, ambitious, highly educated Black woman tries over and over to fit in but is consistently overlooked. The conclusion is clear: it's not a level playing field. 'You can say that racism doesn't exist, but I'm here telling you how I experienced it.' Main Character Energy has drawn together the threads of Wilkey's past endeavours. She feels focused on building work that is 'queer in content … and in form' and is channelling that into new screen and stage projects. She laments the loss of many theatre scratch nights, those spaces for performers to experiment, and dreams of setting up an artist-development programme, a place where people can 'demystify' the industry for one another. 'I'm powered by joy, connection,' she says. 'Before I started writing the show, I knew I wanted people to feel empowered, like they had permission to be their fullest, most authentic selves. Everyone wants main character energy: come and get it!' Main Character Energy is at Soho theatre, London, 25 February to 15 March.
