Doug Melville hosts an episode recorded at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect in New York City, featuring an interview with Mark Lobosco, LinkedIn’s chief business officer, about LinkedIn’s newly launched AI recruiting product, Hiring Assistant 2. Mark explains the tools relevance in the recruiting process, and advises job seekers to keep profiles rich and updated since AI systems pick up keywords and activity signals like follows and content engagement. The two discuss how AI is reshaping leadership demands and skills needs, with AI job requirements growing faster than AI skills on profiles, and Lobosco urges employees to build AI fluency, prompt well, and stay adaptable. He also outlines effective organizational AI adoption, and frames the future as a human-plus-AI workforce where tasks shift and new jobs emerge.

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Doug Melville interviews artist, photographer, and director Mark Clennon about pivoting from ad sales into a self-taught photography career. Clennon describes early momentum from a Brooklyn street photo and a major 2020 breakthrough image of protesters outside Trump Tower that went global. This led to use in TIME Magazine, and brought awards, sales, and agency representation amid new opportunities for Black creatives. Mark discusses building a versatile portfolio through high-volume spec work tied to personal interests, and his advice for aspiring artists to maximize time while employed and develop style by making lots of work. Clennon recounts conceptual shoots with Mike Tyson and LeBron James’ TIME “Athlete of the Century” cover, shares views on AI and creator culture, and highlights his ongoing “Father’s Hands” project documenting Black fatherhood.

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Doug Melville welcomes Emmy-nominated journalist Mimi Brown, Front Page News correspondent for The Breakfast Club and host of Front Page with Mimi Brown on the Black Effect Podcast Network, to discuss what it takes to build a career in journalism amid today’s nonstop social media driven news cycle. Brown explains her daily process of curating stories for different audiences in different mediums, distinguishing national policy impact from local relatable news, and emphasizes old-school standards like training, sourcing, and fact-checking versus today's 'race to be first'. They explore why journalists now need a clear personal brand, and how shifting corporate dynamics and DEI pullbacks are pushing more people—especially Black women—toward ownership and content creation. They also touch on the midterm election urgency, civic literacy, and Brown’s advice to know your value, create opportunities, and avoid staying in a narrow lane.

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@MimiBrownTV

Front Page Podcast

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Doug Melville interviews Amman Ahmed, founder of the Youtube channel Music for Pets (Relax My Dog/Relax My Cat). He shares his vision about the confidence needed to believe in your unconventional ideas, and learning through experimentation. Ahmed describes growing up in Armley, Leeds, finding hope through books, studying IT, and realizing corporate life wasn’t for him after reading Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. He started a YouTube-based relaxation music channel with $1000 and later expanded into pet-focused music and “dog TV” visuals, using insights about instruments, BPMs, frequencies, and color grading to help pets with anxiety and stress. After being pushed out of a VC-backed music discovery startup, he recommitted to bootstrapping, scaled a highly profitable business with multiple revenue streams, and sold it for in 2023 for ten figures after turning down earlier offers. He now stays in music, angel invests, and campaigns a new age album, “Ekta,” for Grammy consideration.

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This week, Doug answers a listener question from Jasmine in Washington, D.C. about breaking into the luxury industry. He explains that luxury has distinct culture and philosophy from fashion and operates within an unwritten hierarchy. He shares five tips for getting your foot in the luxury door, including that the hiring process can take up to a year.

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Everyone is talking about AI—but are you actually getting better at using it?

In this mailbag episode of DM Me with Doug Melville, Doug answers a listener who wants to improve their AI skills but doesn’t know where to start. His answer: create your own AI Fingerprint.

An AI Fingerprint is the unique process you develop for using AI to think, research, create and make decisions. Doug breaks down how to build yours—from defining the problem and choosing the right AI platform, to refining prompts, comparing outputs across different models and adding the one ingredient AI can’t replicate: your own judgment, experience and point of view.

You don’t need to become an AI expert. But in a workplace increasingly shaped by AI, you do need to understand how you work with it.

AI literacy may soon matter as much as knowing how to use email, PowerPoint or Google - and the leaders who develop their own process now could have an advantage later.

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Doug answers a mailbag question from Janelle, a New York City professional who lost her corporate job and is struggling to find a new full-time role in this brutal job market. Sharing five practical tips drawn from his Stanford GSB reputation management teaching, Doug emphasizes that reputation precedes you, urging a Google first-page audit, and considering private social media settings. He notes that “ghost jobs” are on the rise, and with them, the rising importance of referrals. Doug advises proactively activating your network and understanding whether you’re in the “tennis” or “golf” phase of a career.

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This week, Doug Melville interviews Nancy Reyes, president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide about creativity in a corporate environment, leadership in an age of AI, and the evolving role of the C-suite. Reyes argues creativity isn’t an output, but a way of thinking and problem-solving that must be “zoned upstream” to address the biggest business problems, not just pushed into transactional work. They discuss the increased visibility of entrepreneurs and influencers, hiring for hustle and curiosity, and defining influence as opinion that carries weight.

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