"To build a marketing chatbot for Instagram, you first assign a persona to the artificial intelligence (AI), attach company information and other materials as files, and then enter a prompt asking it to respond professionally."
On Tuesday afternoon, about 80 women chief executives gathered at a classroom of the Korea Federation of Women's Economic Associations (KFWEA) in Gangnam, Seoul, making time in their busy schedules to attend a basic AI course. As Kim Da-sol, CEO of PresentLab and the day's instructor, explained tips on writing prompts she had used in actual work, about a dozen of the women CEOs recorded the lecture on their phones. Some CEOs immediately tried it out on their laptops.
The lecture was one of the AI digital transformation (ADX) basic courses under the "Women CEO Jump-Up Class," a program newly established by the KFWEA this year. The Women CEO Jump-Up Class is run by the KFWEA with support from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and consists of intensive training courses for women entrepreneurs covering reboot, management and finance, sales channels, ADX basic and advanced, and exports. While last year's offline education was held as a one-time event, this year it was newly created as a class-type program so that women CEOs can choose courses themselves and fill in the areas their companies lack.
According to the KFWEA, the ADX basic course, which began last month, is highly popular because it covers AI applications that can be immediately applied to actual business operations. The competition rate for enrollment in the course reached 7 to 1. During the day's lecture, as methods for building customer service bots and product detail page creation bots using generative AI models were introduced, a considerable number of the women CEOs could not take their eyes off the lecture slides. "Since AI and AX have been hot topics lately, there tend to be a lot of questions every time I lecture," Kim said. "For a company's AX to succeed, it is important for leaders to use AI themselves and get a real sense of how far adopting AI is efficient."
The KFWEA is also focusing on networking centered on CEOs who have completed the Women CEO Jump-Up Class. It also provides support measures such as various management consulting and the production of company introduction videos for CEOs who complete the courses. Satisfaction with the lectures is high, as women CEOs can also receive various business benefits through their attendance. Ryu Seung-sook, CEO of S&K Collection who is taking the ADX basic course, said, "The content is practical, which is good, but the enrollment limit is almost a shame." She added, "It's good that I can network with other CEOs taking the course together and look for collaboration opportunities."
A KFWEA official said, "We aim to strengthen the education needed from the perspective of women CEOs and to form a community that can grow together through networking programs among them." The official added, "Through this, our goal is to expand the women's ecosystem."
