Workshops
Most people have opened an AI tool, typed something in, gotten a mediocre answer and quietly decided it was overhyped. That is a reasonable conclusion to draw from a bad first experience. It is also fixable in about an hour.
The difference between a useless answer and a genuinely useful one is almost never the tool. It is how the request was written. That is a teachable skill, and it is what this workshop teaches.
Roughly 39 percent of core workplace skills are projected to change or fall out of use within five years.
Skills turn over faster than most training budgets do. An hour spent teaching your team a method they can reapply is worth more than a subscription to a tool that will look different by next spring.
The Built In Strategist
Signature Workshop
What your team leaves with
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A repeatable framework for writing prompts that return usable work, not filler
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At least one real task from their own job, done in the session, with the prompt saved to reuse
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A take-home toolkit of prompt templates they can adapt
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A clear-eyed sense of what these tools should not be trusted with
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A shared vocabulary, so your team can talk about this work with each other after I leave
What people actually build in the room
Concrete examples across sectors --- this is what makes a retail owner or an office manager see themselves in it.
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A shift handoff summary that takes four minutes instead of 20
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A first draft of the monthly board or funder report, pulled from your own notes
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A vendor email that says no clearly without burning the relationship
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A job posting and interview questions for a role you are struggling to fill
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A troubleshooting script a new hire can follow on their second week
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Product descriptions or a seasonal promotion, in your store's voice rather than generic ad copy
How it runs
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Length: 60 minutes
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Format: in person for Lenawee County and southeast Michigan, or remote if further away.
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Group size: [recommend 8 to 25 so everyone can practice]
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Setup: participants need a laptop and a free AI account. I send a one-page setup guide in advance so no one spends the first 15 minutes on logins.
"Pricing on request"
A menu of workshops, not a single session
Most organizations start with the flagship session above and add others as the team's confidence grows. Every session below is built for people with no technical background and no interest in acquiring one --- and every session ends with something the team actually made, not a slide deck they will forget by Friday.
Write Like You Mean It --- Business Writing in the AI Age
90 Minute Workshop
For teams that write reports, proposals and client emails. Plain, direct writing habits --- short paragraphs, active voice, no buried jargon --- paired with a repeatable way to use AI as an editor rather than a ghostwriter, so the writing stays honest and still sounds like the person who sent it.
Know What Not to Trust --- Building Your AI Use Policy
90 Minute Workshop
What generative AI actually does under the hood, in plain language: why it can sound confident and still be wrong, what a hallucination is, and where the technology has real limits. Grounded in that understanding, the session moves into drafting the outline of your own internal AI use policy --- what tasks AI can touch, what always needs a human check, how AI-assisted work gets disclosed and reviewed, and how to set expectations for staff who are eager alongside staff who are worried. Teams leave with a policy draft in hand, not just a list of rules to remember.
From Inbox to Action --- Gemini for Google Workspace
90 Minute Workshop
Hands-on with Gemini inside Gmail and Sheets: summarizing long threads, drafting replies, cleaning up messy data, building formulas and pivot tables without a spreadsheet background. Built for the office manager or bookkeeper doing six jobs at once.
Your Organization's Memory --- Gemini Notebook and Claude Cowork for Record Keeping
90 Minute Workshop
For the deeper, ongoing side of the work: turning your own documents into something the whole team can query instead of hunting through a shared drive. Hands-on with two specific tools built for depth, not one-off tasks. Gemini Notebook takes your meeting notes, policies and reports and turns them into a searchable knowledge base that summarizes, extracts and answers questions grounded only in what you gave it. Claude Cowork runs alongside a real folder of your files to handle ongoing, multi-step recordkeeping --- the kind of task that used to mean someone spending an afternoon digging.
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Loading your own documents into Gemini Notebook and asking it grounded questions instead of generic ones
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Setting up a Cowork workspace for a real, recurring recordkeeping task from your operation
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Deciding what belongs in a shared organizational memory and what stays private
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Building the habit of updating it, so the notebook stays current instead of going stale after week one
Vibe Coding for Everyone --- Build Your First Agent with GEAR
Half Day Workshop
For teams ready to move past one-off prompts toward something that runs on its own --- no engineering background required. Vibe coding means describing what you want in plain language and letting the tool do the technical work; anyone who can explain a task clearly can learn to build a custom Google Gem, a simple app or a custom Claude Skill. Using the GEAR framework, teams scope and build one of these around a real task from their own workday:
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Goal: name the one task worth automating and what a good outcome looks like
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Enable: connect the agent to the data and tools it actually needs --- your files, your calendar, your records
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Automate: build the workflow so the agent handles the routine steps without a person re-typing them
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Refine: test it against real cases, correct it and hand it to the team that will own it
This session pairs classroom teaching with a working session: your team leaves having scoped, and in most cases built, one working Gem, app or Claude Skill tied to a task they do every week.
Show, Don't Just Tell --- AI Design for Small Teams
90 Minute Workshop
Turn a training manual, a customer FAQ or a project recap into something people will actually watch or read. Teams choose the tool that fits the task: AI video tools for a short training or recap video, or Canva AI for a polished flier, social post or one-page handout --- either way, no design or editing background required. Built for teams that know their audience would rather see it than read a memo.
Why Me
Christy Mesaros-Winckles
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Ph.D. and 15-plus years teaching people at every technical level --- from 19-year-old undergraduates to working professionals --- to communicate clearly in professional settings
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Google AI Professional Certificate
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Anthropic Certifications in Claude, CoWork and AI Fluency, Framework & Foundations
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Google Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Certified
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GEO & SEO Fundamentals
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Google certificate in AI for small and medium-sized businesses, focused on scaling business operations by combining generative AI foundations with Gemini-led automation
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Launched one of the first college-level AI literacy and prompt engineering courses in the country, fall 2023
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Based in Adrian, Michigan
