#176 | From PhD to Director: What Academia Never Teaches You About Leading People w/ Quentin Reul (Director of AI Strategy @expert.ai)

▶︎ #176 | From PhD to Director: What Academia Never Teaches You About Leading People w/ Quentin Reul (Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai)In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Quentin Reul: Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai, a Belgian-born computer scientist whose one-year English adventure in the UK quietly turned into a decade - a PhD in symbolic AI, a front-row seat to the academic-to-enterprise transition, and eventually a leadership path built through teams of data scientists, software engineers, knowledge engineers, and QA specialists spread across continents.The conversation opens with one of the most underexplored tensions in tech: what actually breaks when you move from academic research culture into enterprise delivery. Quentin is precise about it - it is not about intelligence or even drive. It is the completion mindset. Academia rewards the idea, the paper, the demonstrable prototype. Enterprise rewards the shipped thing, the SOC-compliant thing, the thing a customer can buy tomorrow. The gap between those two modes is where a lot of technically brilliant people quietly stall - and where Quentin has spent years learning to bridge it.If you came up through a technical or research background and are now leading - or thinking about leading - people for the first time, this one will land.✉︎ FOLLOW QUENTIN ON: ⤵︎LinkedIn: @unlockdatawithquentinYouTube: Quentin Reul on YouTube✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanskaTikTok: @aleksandra_lemanskaX: @lemanskillsStartup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scpwww.lemanskills.comJoin Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/