Georgia Technology Summit 2025: Beverly Wright with Wavicle Data Solutions

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Georgia Technology Summit 2025 at the Woodruff Arts Center. This is Business RadioX. And now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Uh, live at the Georgia Technology Summit 2025. So excited to be talking to my next guest, Beverly Wright with Wavicle Data Solutions. Welcome.

Beverly Wright: Hey, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Wavicle Data Solutions.

Beverly Wright: Yeah, we are a consulting company. We do everything services wise between data and AI. We help our clients save more money and make more money.

Lee Kantor: That’s a noble goal. So, um, tell us a little bit about, uh, the Georgia Technology Summit. Why are you here? Like, what are you what are you up to here?

Beverly Wright: Yeah, well, the Georgia Technology Summit is the largest event for Technology Association of Georgia, and my involvement is multifold. Number one, I am the chair for the Tag Data Science and AI society, which is a kind of a special interest group within Tag. And secondly, I’m the co-chair for the um, Georgia Technology Summit itself. And then thirdly, I’m one of the presenters. I’m moderating a panel, which I’m super excited about.

Lee Kantor: So for folks who are maybe not as immersed in the technology world here in Georgia, but maybe they should be. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience working with tag and why tag is so important?

Beverly Wright: Oh my gosh.

Lee Kantor: Atlanta and Georgia as a whole.

Beverly Wright: Yeah yeah yeah. Glad I’m glad you asked. So the reasons to get involved in tag are so many especially. It helps you not just learn about what’s going on through the heavy content that we deliver through some of our events, but really engage, um, by putting hands on activities involved in our initiatives. So as a quick example, the data science and AI society. Um, we help people learn by doing called experiential learning, by, uh, presenting purpose projects over the summer that help nonprofits. So if you’re curious about what is this AI thing that everybody’s talking about, one of the ways you can really get hands on experience with it is, uh, to get involved in some of our nonprofit work where we’re helping others by doing our purpose projects. And then thirdly, um, just the community, such a tight knit community. I have a colleague who works at Google, and he moved to Atlanta to from Atlanta to New York recently. He came back, uh, last week just to visit. And he said, there is no tech community like the Atlanta tech community. So that’s the third reason.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And could you talk a little bit more about that? Because I don’t, uh, we have interviewed a lot of people from all over the country, and I don’t think they, People understand that Atlanta is different when it comes to collaboration and community as compared to other markets. Can you talk about maybe other examples where you’ve seen people from elsewhere come here and say, this is definitely different. It feels different here.

Beverly Wright: Yeah, absolutely. I was talking to some colleagues from Dallas just two days ago, and they said, there is not a community like this, you know, anywhere in our area. Also, I have a second home in South Carolina near the Greenville area. Um, and it’s a similar kind of vibe that we it’s hard to find a community like this in other parts of the world. And thirdly, I had a friend who moved to Orlando recently and he said, I gotta move back. Like, I feel like there’s no it’s he’s trying to build a community like that. And, um, I think that at the core of it, I have to say is, um, I feel like our universities and institutes are at the core of it. Georgia Tech, the especially the Master of Science and Analytics program, they are really producing some heavy duty talent and create helping create this ecosystem. They’re a very important part of it, as are Kennesaw State, Emory, University of Georgia. Even so, the schools, I think, stimulate quite a bit, as well as the many startups that are here, just all tinkering away, trying to build their AI solutions.

Lee Kantor: Right. And it’s so important to have a healthy startup ecosystem because, you know, the ones that don’t work out, you need a place for those founders to bounce to somewhere else. So it’s not like one and done right. Where in some communities there’s not that density. So they they have an idea, they try to make it work, it doesn’t work. And then all of a sudden, you know, they’re doing something else, right? Where? Here. There’s a place for them to go.

Beverly Wright: Absolutely. Yeah. There’s definitely, uh, we embrace I mean, the companies in the area that I know of definitely embrace as much as they can, um, uh, the startup community to help get them engaged and help them get on their way.

Lee Kantor: So how important do you think is kind of the southern hospitality, just as part of the culture of being in the South and in Atlanta. Do you think that that’s also an element that creates kind of that collaboration?

Beverly Wright: For sure. I mean, if you look around, I wish you guys could see what we’re seeing right now. Those that are listening. But if you look around, I’m seeing more people, um, embrace each other with hugs. And you can tell that the smiles on the face, they were familiar faces. There are new people. Just the southern hospitality of the warmth, you know, in the tech community of greeting people. And especially it’s really interesting in data science and AI, where many of us are very heavily left brain. We’re statisticians, we’re computer scientists, we’re kind of nerdy, yet we’re still embracing the social charm.

Lee Kantor: Right? If there’s a level of that, the people make you feel comfortable faster, it’s like almost there’s a higher kind of degree of empathy and EQ, uh, in the group that makes people feel welcome.

Beverly Wright: Yes, absolutely. And you know what? That’s going to become more and more important as AI gets more and more integrated into our lives. The things that make us human are empathy, our caring, our connect, ability to connect with others. Those are the things that make us human. And we’re becoming becoming a much more salient as we move into the age of AI.

Lee Kantor: When it comes to that, can you share a little bit about your take on when it comes to AI that a lot of folks? Ai is new for them and they’re implementing it maybe for the first time at this level. How do they do it in a way where it’s not kind of a blunt instrument where it’s like, oh, I don’t have to have any humans anymore. This is just going to solve that kind of human relationship, uh, challenge that I have.

Beverly Wright: Oh, boy. This is a this is a big question. How much time do we have? No. Um, but let me just give you a quick background on that. So I’m working on a paper right now with two other coauthors. One of them is, um, my dear colleague Shannon Harlowe, and it’s about the convergent and divergent nature of AI. There are people that have worked in data their whole careers, like myself, like I graduated in 91 with decision sciences, so that was very rare. There were six people in my graduating class.

Lee Kantor: Not anymore.

Beverly Wright: Not anymore. And there were only three schools that had a program like that. Um, and now those those kinds of people that grew up from data and analytics and data science and now AI there, converging into AI, they sort of know what’s in the black box. You have a whole nother group of people that’s much larger that are divergent, where they’ve always worked in some other era area, you know, like if you all of a sudden said, I want to start using AI and those are sort of divergent. They’re they’re coming in from the outside, if you will. So those are sort of the immigrants and the native. So if you’re an immigrant, we welcome you. I mean, I don’t know the ins and outs of my vehicle, but I still drive it every day or most days. We welcome you. However, we also caution you as to. My advice would be to connect with those that are the natives like, understand their perspective, get connected with those who are engaging from a standpoint of development and that they know what’s in the black box.

Lee Kantor: Because sometimes I think when a new technology kind of arrives on the scene, you know, it’s that old saying, like when you have a hammer, everything’s a nail.

Beverly Wright: Right now, all of a sudden everybody has a hammer.

Lee Kantor: Right? So now I have an I hammer and I’m going to use it for everything. And I don’t have to think anymore because AI is going to do that for me.

Beverly Wright: Well, there is some concern about that, right? Right. We don’t want to turn our brains off, but the there’s more and more research to talk about how this is impacting us cognitively as well. That means, you know, from a cognitive mental compared to affective, which is your emotional, which is also impacting you there. And then your cognitive, which is the third dimension of a human that has to do with your, um, behavioral aspect. So it’s impacting us from all three dimensions. But I would certainly encourage anyone that’s interested in tinkering and learning more. Number one, definitely don’t turn the brain off. This is a tool. You know, a lot of people thought we were doomed when calculators came out, right? Exactly. That’s what I tell everybody.

Lee Kantor: I’m like, yeah. When I was a kid, they said no calculators. Like they thought that was going to be, that no one could do math anymore.

Beverly Wright: Right? Right, right. Well, we have seen a decline in that, I mean, and number. So don’t let yourself, you know, kind of don’t let the AI lead you. You know, you need to be the one that’s dominating. And um, secondly, be involved, like get involved, learn some things. And, you know, at a minimum, listen to tag data talk which exactly which is our podcast around tag. You know Technology Association of Georgia tag data talk.

Lee Kantor: And when it comes to Wavicle, what is kind of the problem that your prospective clients are having where Wavicle kind of can help?

Beverly Wright: We can solve so many types of problems. It’s a it’s very interesting. The majority of our work is actually around data data engineering, data structure, data architecture, getting data right. But the data science and AI section of our of our work, it can solve all kinds of complex problems. So to give you a quick example for a retailer that sells beverages, um, if they’re interested in knowing like what are people saying about us? How are people talking about us? How do they feel? What’s their sentiment? Um, what are some of the areas of opportunity that we can improve? Because obviously you want to make everything great for everybody, but you got to prioritize. You don’t have unlimited funds. So through data science and AI, you can gather that information just by scraping the web and gathering comments that people have made about you on something like a Google review. And that can be done fairly easily. That would help drive a business decision about how to better serve their customers.

Lee Kantor: So is it industry agnostic? This would work in any industry, yes.

Beverly Wright: Um, Wavicle works with all different kinds of industries. Um, we we don’t do as much in government or nonprofit. We do some still. Um, but the majority are fortune 500 companies. Uh, McDonald’s is a very good client of ours. We’re headquartered in Chicago. And the second one that is, um, I believe in Tennessee is pilot the flying J. Pilot flying J. Yeah. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: They’re all over the place.

Beverly Wright: Yeah, those are our top two clients. So we’re solving all kinds of problems from them for them regularly.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wanted to learn more about Wavicle, uh, what is the best way to connect? What’s a website?

Beverly Wright: Yeah, Wavicle Datacom is our website. You can also always reach out to me. Beverly Wright I’m on LinkedIn. Um, kind of kind of hard to miss me if you put in Beverly Wright data.

Lee Kantor: Well, Beverly, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Beverly Wright: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This Lee Kantor back in a few. A Georgia Technology Summit 2025.