Lucia Oderiz: How to Un-Automate the New Corporate Landscape
Lucia Oderiz, a seasoned veteran of corporate and startup work, has set out to create a “corporate conscious transformation.”
edited by Entrepreneur UK
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Apr 27, 2026
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Artificial intelligence is doing what it was created for: boosting corporate efficiency and crunching data faster than ever before. But all of that has come at a certain human cost. Companies are beginning to face historic levels of burnout and a growing sense of disconnection among their teams. The world is slowly living up to an old science fiction trope: If we have AI, do we really need humans? And what’s next?
Lucia Oderiz is attempting to fix the growing divide based on her own work experience. She spent a decade leading digital strategy for L’Oreal across three continents: the US, Spain, and Latin America. Afterward, she jumped into the startup scene and worked for Samy Alliance and the HR technology firm BlueQuo. And what she witnessed firsthand, particularly in such fast-moving environments, was a dangerous pattern of companies obsessing over scaling up their tech, but often at the expense of the people and the culture that made them successful.
Bridging the Past and the Present
But the challenges weren’t just professional in nature. They were also personal. Oderiz was navigating a demanding executive career while raising three small children. And her modern-day balancing act illustrated a core truth about today’s world: The corporate world’s relentless expectations of high performance output have a tendency to overlook personal well-being. She came to realize that the corporate obsession with always doing something or producing something was actually stripping away meaning from her and others’ lives.
To find a solution to bridge the past and present, Oderiz didn’t look to yet another tech trend. She spent years diving into unexpected disciplines that blended modern neuroscience with ancient practices, such as breathwork, energy activation, and even astrology. It was her mission not to escape the modern business world but to bring a deeper and more ancient meaning to it. This led to the creation of AJNA, a platform that organizes and delivers deeper experiences for corporate leaders. AJNA uses modular programs and a carefully selected, vetted network of facilitators to make corporate work human again.
The Human Core that AI Can’t Automate
Oderiz’s message is that as machine intelligence grows, the greatest competitive advantage a leader can bring is inner awareness. AI can analyze, automate, and optimize, but it can’t be truly conscious, and because it never has that human core, it can’t heal the digital stress that so many leaders carry. So, by combining the corporate world with a deeper personal meaning, she argues that the human element itself becomes a necessary part of technology.
Lucia Oderiz predicts a profound shift in how companies invest in new talent. She believes that consciousness-supporting work offered by platforms like AJNA will eventually be as important and valued as having a traditional MBA. In the future that Oderiz envisions, investing in a retreat or a program focused on inner awareness and lasting peace isn’t some corporate perk or a luxury. It is a strategic necessity for sustaining high-level performance. AI can handle the analysis, Oderiz feels, but the focus must inevitably shift back to the most important asset: the human heart and mind.
Artificial intelligence is doing what it was created for: boosting corporate efficiency and crunching data faster than ever before. But all of that has come at a certain human cost. Companies are beginning to face historic levels of burnout and a growing sense of disconnection among their teams. The world is slowly living up to an old science fiction trope: If we have AI, do we really need humans? And what’s next?
Lucia Oderiz is attempting to fix the growing divide based on her own work experience. She spent a decade leading digital strategy for L’Oreal across three continents: the US, Spain, and Latin America. Afterward, she jumped into the startup scene and worked for Samy Alliance and the HR technology firm BlueQuo. And what she witnessed firsthand, particularly in such fast-moving environments, was a dangerous pattern of companies obsessing over scaling up their tech, but often at the expense of the people and the culture that made them successful.
Bridging the Past and the Present
But the challenges weren’t just professional in nature. They were also personal. Oderiz was navigating a demanding executive career while raising three small children. And her modern-day balancing act illustrated a core truth about today’s world: The corporate world’s relentless expectations of high performance output have a tendency to overlook personal well-being. She came to realize that the corporate obsession with always doing something or producing something was actually stripping away meaning from her and others’ lives.
