Bringing AI Literacy to PayPal
The text message started with four simple words: Mandatory AI tool training. Lincoln Holt ’23 MBAi sent that note to his entire family earlier this year, along with instructions to download two AI applications and a custom-made user guide for getting the most out of each tool. Since then, his wife has begun to use AI for meal planning and recipe adjustments based on what food was in the refrigerator, and his dad is using it to model retirement scenarios and understand investment decisions.
“Watching them go from curious to genuinely reliant has been eye-opening” said Holt, a senior AI product manager at PayPal. “The power in these tools is incredible.” Holt first understood that power during his time in Northwestern’s MBAi Program, a joint AI-focused MBA degree offered between the Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering. Today he’s demonstrating its potential to his family and millions of people all over the world.
Holt currently leads PayPal’s orchestrator product that helps businesses integrate and manage multiple payment services. The product is a key component for the company’s shift from a payments company to a broader commerce platform. “I work across engineering, data science, design and business teams to identify where AI can genuinely solve customer pain points,” said Holt, who joined the company in October 2024. “I'm translating between what's technically possible and what's actually valuable.”
He credits the program with teaching him how to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders — an essential skill for any product manager. He also appreciated the program’s bias toward action, emphasizing experimentation over perfection. It was that lesson that taught him it is better to try something and iterate rather than wait to get started until every last detail is known and in place.
Most importantly, the MBAi program reinforced the realities of AI. “AI is not magic, and it's not infallible,” Holt said. “AI is a tool built by humans, trained on human-created data, with all the biases and limitations that implies. It's incredibly powerful for pattern recognition and augmentation, but it requires human oversight, ethical frameworks and constant refinement.”
Holt applies the key lessons to his work at PayPal on a daily basis. The way he evaluates AI use cases — exploring if it solves a real problem, if the right data exists and understanding the ethical implications — comes directly from his time in MBAi. So does his approach to cross-functional collaboration.
“The program taught me that the best AI products emerge when you bring together technical depth, business acumen and genuine empathy for users,” he said. “That’s become my North Star.” Beyond building AI products, Holt finds himself routinely turning to AI for productivity assistance, from helping draft product requirements and stakeholder messaging to analyzing user feedback and testing new ideas.
Being thoughtful about its uses and implications remains critical. “AI is phenomenal for augmenting my thinking, but the judgment calls, stakeholder management and strategic decisions still need the human touch,” Holt said. “I see it as having a really capable research assistant who never sleeps.” That perspective was one he emphasized to his family in the aftermath of that training guide text message. It's great to have access to AI systems, but to get the most out of them requires critical thinking and thoughtfulness.
The MBAi program helped him understand the importance of those ancillary skills. “The people who are getting the most value are those who've developed what I’d call ‘AI literacy’ — knowing how to frame problems, provide context and iterate on outputs,” Holt said. “Preparing good context, systems-thinking and breaking down ambiguous problems — those are all things the MBAi program taught well, and they’ve been genuine difference-makers in my ability to use AI valuably.”
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