At the Women Tech Council Holiday Social, Whitney Johnson shared strategies for personal and organizational growth using the S curve, emphasizing human-centered leadership and thriving amid AI-driven change.
Lehi, Utah — December 11, 2025
At the Women Tech Council’s 2025 Holiday Social on Wednesday, December 10, attendees gathered at Adobe's Lehi campus for an evening of connection, celebration, and forward-looking inspiration. The highlight of the program was Whitney Johnson, CEO of Disruption Advisors and bestselling author of Disrupt Yourself and Smart Growth, whose presentation, "Own the AI Shift" provided insights to the audience on how individuals and organizations can grow, adapt, and thrive amid the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Cydni Tetro, Founder and President of the Women Tech Council, introduced Johnson, praising her as a thought leader whose work challenges conventional thinking and encourages bold career and organizational moves. Tetro noted a profound personal conversation she had with Johnson while visiting Cambridge, England. She also highlighted Johnson’s global influence, from Harvard Business Review contributions to over 400 podcasts with leaders worldwide, and highlighted her recent work in AI transformation across education, healthcare, and workforce initiatives in Utah.
The S Curve: Understanding Growth
Johnson’s message is grounded in her extensive writing on growth, innovation, and leadership. Her most recent book, Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company, dives deeply into the S curve framework and how leaders can cultivate cultures of learning and adaptability. Smart Growth was recognized as one of the best new management books, offering practical guidance for organizations facing rapid change.
Johnson also authored Disrupt Yourself: Master Relentless Change and Speed Up Your Learning Curve, which applies disruptive innovation principles to personal development, helping individuals navigate transitions and career pivots.
Other works include Build an A‑Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve, which focuses on using the S curve to develop high‑performing teams, and Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream, an earlier, inspirational call to action on personal and professional growth.
Johnson shared with the audience how her book Dare, Dream, Do originated from a personal blog she began in 2006 to help people, particularly women, recognize and pursue their dreams. She was struck by how many capable women told her they didn’t feel like they had a dream or even the privilege to dream, and she wrote the book to challenge that mindset with a simple “Dare, Dream, Do” framework built on real stories of women taking bold steps in their lives.
This focus on taking deliberate steps through uncertainty naturally led into her discussion of the S curve of growth, which provides a framework for understanding the emotional and practical stages people experience as they pursue new challenges:
Johnson explained that understanding these stages gives leaders and teams a shared language for growth, helps individuals navigate challenges—especially when adopting new technologies like AI—and reinforces that growth is our default setting. Her guidance was both practical and interactive: participants were encouraged to reflect on their own launch points and AI-related challenges, and to engage with those around them during short breaks in her presentation, fostering self-awareness, peer learning, and new connections.
Human-Centered Technology
In her closing comments, Johnson shifted focus from the mechanics of growth to the human dimension of technology. She reminded the audience that while AI and technological solutions can be figured out, it is people who create connection, care, and purpose—the aspects that make technology meaningful. Quoting the theme of Utah’s recent pro-human AI Summit, Johnson highlighted the dual mission of technology: to strengthen human capabilities and to enhance learning, connection, and quality of life.
Johnson framed this as a call to action: those working in tech are not merely navigating the AI revolution—they are the shift itself. They have the power to build systems, deploy solutions at scale, and continuously ask, “Does this serve humanity? Does this improve quality of life?” Her message resonated as both a challenge and an affirmation: AI does not define us—people do. As she put it, “You are the shift. AI does not amplify human beings. You do.”
Julia Tullis is a senior at Karl G Maeser Preparatory Academy in Lindon, Utah. She is interested in history and playing electric bass in her band. She is a SheTech board member and SheTech-TechBuzz media intern.