A little under a year after sharing the PhoenixTeam origin story, founders Tanya Brennan, Tela Mathias, and Tom Westerlind got back together for a second roundtable. This time the topic was Human Futures, the program PhoenixTeam launched to help kids, young people, and emerging professionals grow, prosper, and live fulfilling professional lives in a world that has been completely reshaped by artificial intelligence. The conversation covers the first cohort of interns, AI Builder Week, the moment the team realized the program was also good for business, and where Human Futures goes from here. Watch the full conversation above, or read the highlights below.
Why Human Futures exists
When Tela runs educational events, she asks the room the same question: what is keeping you up at night? The answer she hears most often is not about models or regulation. It is about the future for kids and young people. Unemployment in younger age ranges is up, entry-level job postings are down, and adults are struggling to figure out their own path, let alone how to guide the next generation.
Human Futures was created to answer that. In Tela's words, it exists to enable kids, young people, and emerging professionals to grow, build, prosper, and live fulfilling, meaningful professional lives in a world reshaped by AI. It is a philanthropic endeavor for the company, and the first summer was, in Tanya's words, amazing.
The first cohort: 23 interns, twelve weeks, real products
The inaugural cohort brought 23 interns into PhoenixTeam, ranging from 17-year-olds still in high school to 24-year-old recent graduates who had been looking for work for six to twelve months. Over twelve weeks they worked in pods alongside PhoenixTeam leaders, and the program ended with an event the team called the Showcase Showdown.
Tom's takeaway was how quickly the interns picked up the technology, and how much fun they had along the way. He was quick to add that the durable lessons were not only technical: curiosity, rolling up your sleeves, experimenting, and failing are traits that carry into any role no matter how the tools change.
Tanya focused on the progress from day one to the final showcase. The teams did not just learn AI; they worked together and built tools PhoenixTeam is now adopting inside the company, including a client health radar the firm had wanted for years and an onboarding tool it badly needed after a season of heavy hiring. Every intern has a home at PhoenixTeam in some capacity, even the ones headed back to finish high school or college.
Tela shared the story of a new employee whose first day happened to be the Showcase Showdown. He had been told that talking about AI is not the same as living, eating, breathing, and failing with it every day. Watching the interns present, he understood exactly what she meant. As Tela put it, the team set out to do good for the world and found out that sometimes doing good for the world is also good for business: incredible talent with so much to learn and so little to unlearn.
AI Builder Week: ages 10 to 14, mostly offline
AI Builder Week started as one of the interns' own projects. The interns designed and ran a one-week program for kids ages 10 to 14, teaching different aspects of using AI through hands-on projects. Tom described a week full of smiles and, unsurprisingly to him, impressive results. Kids that age pick things up fast.
What stood out to all three founders was how much of the week happened away from screens. Roughly 85 percent of it was offline: peanut butter and jelly sandwich exercises in exact instructions, teamwork, designing on big poster paper, and paper prototypes, including one built from index cards you could click through by hand. Only then did the kids take their ideas into Claude to build, and then present their products to a room of adults. As Tanya said, they were naturals up there.
During a round of PhoenixTeam Jeopardy, the final question asked each kid to pick something they care about and name one thing AI could help with, then one thing AI will never be able to replace. Tela has asked that second question in nearly every adult class she teaches. The best answer she has ever received came from a Builder Week participant: AI will never replace cheering at a soccer game, because nothing else gives you the support to win. A week spent mostly offline, she said, made it even clearer how unique humans are.
What comes next
The second cohort kicks off this fall, and the interns from the first cohort all want to stay involved regardless of where they are in school. The team is applying its first-cohort learnings immediately and planning for next summer.
Tom noted that leaders across the company worked directly with the intern pods. It was a full-company effort.
Looking one to three years out, Tela described a nationwide initiative: a Human Futures content center at aifutures.com where any parent, learner, teacher, principal, or employer can pull down free, high-quality, safe programs and learning materials to use at home or in the classroom. The ambition is a program with enough reach that a Human Futures internship on a resume means something to every employer who sees it.
Tanya closed with the reason the team keeps going. Her own children and niece participated, as did Tela's. The program is starting with middle school and high school, with hopes of reaching elementary school one day. If not us, then who? She plans to report back in another year on the progress made.