In 1997, the day before Greg Hart joined Amazon, he was called into a Sunday meeting with founder Jeff Bezos.
At the time, Bezos was interviewing nearly all of Amazon's roughly 200 employees. Mr. Hart was one of the few people not personally appointed by the technology entrepreneur. For the next 23 years at the online giant, Mr. Hart served as a technical advisor to the CEO, reporting directly to Mr. Bezos and Andy Jassy, Amazon's current CEO.
The lessons Hart learned at one of the world's most famous companies remain with him today as he leads Coursera, a $1.35 billion online learning giant. Hart took it upon himself to lead the company's transformation, conveniently in time for an explosion in demand as job seekers and employees alike rushed to add the all-important AI qualification to their resumes.
Many of the changes Hart has brought to Coursera and its 1,000-plus employees will be familiar to Amazon alumni. Mr. Hart said Mr. Bezos' early habit of interviewing all employees set the tone for Amazon as it grew. “He wanted to make sure that the characteristics of passion, customer focus, high standards, and quick action that those early employees had remained as the company grew in size,” Hart said.
So it “made perfect sense” that Bezos wrote his now-famous letter to shareholders outlining his leadership principles and business priorities. This is because these letters “reflected” daily conversations in the office.
Hart wanted to instill a similar mindset at Coursera. “We wanted to really transform our company, move faster, and better serve our learners. We felt that one thing we wanted to do was make sure we had a really good cultural alignment, so we looked at some of the most successful companies in the world and looked at their values or principles, and we created a unique mindset that we thought was very specific to both our business and our history as a company.”
Speed has become critical as the AI boom changes the skillsets companies seek and leaves employees and job candidates racing to keep up. The platform currently has over 12,000 courses, 1,100 of which are based on generative AI, an increase of 44% year over year. GenAI is the most popular topic on the platform, both by individual learners and employees whose employers have paid for a subscription.
The CEO was also keen to eliminate unfocused company-wide meetings, and instead removed Amazon's strategy of focusing each meeting on a single leadership principle. “One of the things I've found in leading different businesses in different industries is that no matter how clear something is in your mind or your leadership team's head, you can't repeat it often enough to the rest of the organization. They might not be paying attention, they might not understand it, or they might have been in a meeting with a customer at the time. They might have missed it anyway.
“Every month, one of my direct reports sends an email with a video explaining just one of our leadership ideas. We all do the same thing. We choose one and have an example to talk about it, because it makes it real for people and helps people understand better context about it.”
How Hart is using AI at work
A key focus for all CEOs today is how they can leverage AI in the workplace, whether within their business or for personal use. According to KPMG's 2025 U.S. CEO Outlook, 74% of leaders say investing in AI is a top priority despite economic uncertainty, and 79% are confident they are ahead of the curve in terms of adoption and usage.
CEOs have previously said: luck They are using AI for everything from recruitment to management to meeting preparation and document summarization.
Hart, an English major, is familiar with the efficiencies that AI brings, but says one thing he will never use the technology for is writing. “For me, writing is thinking, so trying to outsource it is effectively giving up thinking,” Hart said. “So it's not appealing or effective for me personally.”
Staff across Coursera are encouraged to experiment with AI as they see fit, but currently there are no set goals to achieve. Hart adds that the most beneficial result of this approach is that colleagues are sharing use cases and best practices in an internal forum called “AI Sparks.”
“AI Sparks is a monthly meeting where people from all levels of the company come together to share how they are leveraging AI in their work. It is the most well-attended and popular conference we have,” said Hart.
A final lesson from Amazon prepared Hart for the age of AI. If we get too caught up in the early results of a new technology, we miss the big picture.
“My idea is that we want to get a workforce that uses it in as many ways as possible, in as many ways as possible. Over time, we'll start to focus more on quantifying the impact on all of those things,” Hart said. “I think if we focus on that myopically now, we're going to miss an opportunity to have a much bigger impact in the future.”
