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

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/leman-tech-leadership-podcast-7045357/176-from-phd-to-director-what-academia-never-teaches-you-about-leading-people-w-quentin-reul-director-of-ai-strategy-expert-ai
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Podcast: [Leman Tech Leadership Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/leman-tech-leadership-podcast-7045357)
Published: 2026-07-09T03:30:02+00:00
Episode link: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/176-from-phd-to-director-what-academia-never-teaches-you-about-leading-people-w-quentin-reul-director-of-ai-strategy-expert-ai--72857618
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Duration seconds: 2870

## Resource

▶︎ #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: @unlockdatawithquentin YouTube: Quentin Reul on YouTube ✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎ LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska X: @lemanskills Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp www.lemanskills.com Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

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