What a Year Can Teach a Woman About Beginning Again By Jayshree Mallaya

To the women of World Pulse,

A year ago, I could not have imagined the woman who would be writing this letter today.

I had not yet begun working with artificial intelligence.

I had never imagined that within a year I would be building in AI, exploring questions of human intelligence, dignity and governance, and discovering an entirely new direction for my work.

I certainly never imagined that I would build my first working prototype, onboard my first client, begin taking my ideas from concept into a real-world operating environment, and be nominated in three categories at Sentech Africa Tech Week.

Less than a year earlier, I had opened ChatGPT knowing almost nothing about artificial intelligence.

That contrast still amazes me.

Not because I suddenly became an AI expert overnight, but because I discovered how much knowledge I was already carrying with me — and what could become possible when I combined that lived experience with curiosity, continuous learning and the courage to build something I had never built before.

And I certainly could not have imagined that, before that first year was over, I would hear three words that would place me at the beginning of another unfamiliar journey:

Breast cancer.

Two completely different worlds entered my life within the space of a year.

One I entered through curiosity.

The other I entered because life gave me no choice.

Yet strangely, both have been teaching me something about what it means to begin again.

When we encounter something unfamiliar, it is easy to focus on everything we do not know.

The terminology we don’t understand.

The questions we don’t yet know how to ask.

The path we cannot yet see.

But this year has taught me to look at beginnings differently.

Because when a woman begins again, she does not arrive empty-handed.

She brings every life she has already lived.

Every lesson.

Every mistake.

Every relationship.

Every difficult season she has survived.

Every question she has learned to ask.

Every piece of intuition she has learned to trust.

And every version of herself she has already had to become.

Perhaps that is what I most want to say to another woman this Women’s Day:

A new chapter may make you a beginner.

It does not erase the woman you already are.

Almost One Year Ago, I Opened ChatGPT

In August 2025, I opened ChatGPT for the first time.

I knew very little about artificial intelligence. I wasn’t a technologist or an AI engineer. I didn’t understand prompting, models or many of the terms that have now become part of my everyday vocabulary.

I was simply curious.

So I started a conversation.

What I brought to that first conversation wasn’t technical expertise.

I brought decades of experience.

I brought entrepreneurship, intuition and judgement. I brought mistakes I had made and lessons I had learned. I brought an unfinished journey with law, an interest in governance and a lifetime of working with people.

Most importantly, I brought questions.

I have always been someone who asks questions. When something doesn’t make sense to me, I keep asking until I understand it or find a way to solve it.

AI gave me a new way to do that.

One question became another. One idea connected with another. I could challenge an assumption, explore a problem from several directions, find patterns and turn thoughts that existed in my head into something I could interrogate.

Over time, ChatGPT became more than a tool I occasionally opened. It became a thinking partner I could question, challenge and use to accelerate my own thinking.

But there was an important distinction.

The thinking did not begin with AI.

I was bringing my own Human Intelligence into that relationship.

AI brought another form of intelligence.

Discovering what could happen when the two worked together changed the direction of my life.

That first conversation eventually led me into AI governance and research, to building Third Vision AI, and to increasingly difficult questions about human authority, dignity and accountability as artificial intelligence becomes more capable.

None of this was part of a plan I had made for myself a year earlier.

It began with curiosity, questions and a willingness to learn.

Then Life Introduced Me to Another Unfamiliar World

Recently, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Suddenly, I was a beginner again.

This time, however, I hadn’t chosen the subject I needed to learn.

I found myself entering a new world, learning a new language and trying to understand information I had never expected would become personally relevant.

Once again, I started asking questions.

But I also started listening differently.

I began paying closer attention to my body and learning what support it needs.

I am learning how to work differently.

How to rest differently.

How to accept care while still caring for the people around me.

That last part has made me think a great deal about women.

For many of us, caring for others becomes so natural that we hardly recognise it as work.

We care for children, partners, parents, siblings, colleagues, employees, friends and communities. We solve problems. We remember what needs to be done. We keep things moving.

And sometimes we become so accustomed to being the person who carries things that learning to respond to our own needs requires a different kind of strength.

I have started thinking of it as finding my right gear.

There are days when I can move quickly and days when I need to slow down.

There are things that need my direct attention and others that can wait.

There are things I can do myself and things I can allow someone else to carry.

And I am learning that the pace that worked yesterday may not be the pace my body needs today.

I am still the same woman.

I haven’t stopped being an entrepreneur, a wife, a sister, a friend, a problem solver or the woman who asks too many questions and then usually asks one more. 😊

I am simply learning how to move through this chapter differently.

I Am Not Starting From Zero

Somewhere in this new journey, I recognised the lesson my first year with AI had already taught me.

I am not starting from zero.

When I entered AI, I initially thought I was arriving without the right background.

I wasn’t.

I was arriving with decades of Human Intelligence.

And now, facing a medical challenge I did not anticipate, I am not arriving empty-handed here either.

I bring the woman I have already become.

My experience.

My resilience.

My ability to learn.

My questions.

My relationships.

My judgement.

My ability to ask for help.

And my ability to begin again.

That is the message I want to share with another woman today.

Whatever unfamiliar chapter you are entering, you bring every version of yourself that came before this one with you.

You may be starting a business.

Changing careers.

Learning technology for the first time.

Returning to education.

Becoming a mother.

Watching your children leave home.

Starting again after a relationship ends.

Caring for someone you love.

Navigating a health challenge.

Entering a leadership role.

Or simply waking up one morning knowing that something in your life needs to change.

You may not know what comes next.

But you are not empty-handed.

Your lived experience matters.

Your intuition matters.

Your judgement matters.

Your mistakes have taught you something.

Your questions matter.

And your voice matters.

Women’s Day Is Also About Agency

Today, 9 August, has particular meaning for South African women.

Seventy years ago, in 1956, thousands of women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria in protest against pass laws.

When I think about those women today, I think about courage and solidarity.

But I also think about agency.

Women refusing to remain silent while decisions affecting their lives were made for them.

Seventy years later, the circumstances are profoundly different, but the principle of women’s agency remains important.

We need agency in our homes.

In our workplaces.

In healthcare.

In entrepreneurship.

In our communities.

And increasingly, in the technological future being built around us.

Women should not simply inherit a world designed by others.

And we should not simply inherit an AI future designed by others either.

We should participate in shaping it.

Not every woman needs to become a software engineer to contribute to the AI era.

A teacher brings intelligence about how children learn.

A nurse brings intelligence about care.

An entrepreneur understands customers, uncertainty and survival.

A mother understands competing priorities.

A community leader understands realities that may never appear in a dataset.

A woman who has spent thirty years working in an industry carries knowledge that no AI model can manufacture simply by generating an answer.

Our lived experience is not something we have to discard before entering the technological future.

It is part of the intelligence that future needs.

Bring Another Woman With You

My journey over this past year has also stopped being only about me.

I have had opportunities to mentor women, learn alongside women and build alongside women.

And that has reinforced something I believe deeply.

We do not have to reach some imaginary finish line before we can help another woman begin.

Sometimes we are still climbing ourselves when we reach back and offer another woman a hand.

That is one of the things I value about communities such as World Pulse.

Our stories are different.

Our countries are different.

Our opportunities and challenges may be very different.

But when women share what they have learned, another woman somewhere in the world may recognise something of herself in that story.

She may think:

Perhaps I can begin too.

That matters.

To the Woman Reading This

So, on this Women’s Day, this is my letter to you.

If you are standing at the beginning of something unfamiliar, please don’t mistake unfamiliarity for inability.

You do not need to know everything before taking your first step.

You do not have to abandon what you already know because the world around you is changing.

Bring your experience.

Bring your intuition.

Bring your questions.

Bring the lessons nobody else can reproduce because they came from living your life.

Learn what you need to learn.

Ask for help when you need it.

Find your right gear.

And give yourself permission to move at the pace this chapter requires.

Almost one year ago, I opened ChatGPT knowing very little about AI.

So I started a conversation.

Today, I am building in a field I never imagined I would enter.

And now life has handed me another journey I never expected to take.

I will approach it differently, because it is different.

But I will carry the same lesson with me:

I am not starting from zero.

Neither are you.

Somewhere ahead may be a woman you haven’t met yet.

A stronger woman.

A wiser woman.

Perhaps a woman doing something the woman you are today cannot yet imagine.

Give her the opportunity to surprise you.

And as you find your way, reach back and bring another woman with you.

Happy Women’s Day from South Africa. 🇿🇦❤️

To the women who came before us.

To the women walking beside us.

And to the women we are still becoming.

With love,

Jayshree