From IO to AI

How Two MSU Alumni Are Humanizing AI in the Workplace

You’re a company manager who’s uncomfortable with conflict, but it’s time to conduct a performance review with an employee who’s falling behind and who tends to take even light suggestions personally and angrily. An awkward review will have them sulking for days. What to do?

MSU alumni Michael Dolen ’93 and Kevin Meyer ’04 might be able to help.

Dolen and Meyer are co-directors of Humancore, an artificial intelligence-powered platform designed to help managers navigate the complexities of workplace relationships by putting a bit of psychology at the center.

“It feels weird to say we’re an AI company,” Dolen said. “We’re not engineers. We’re not from Silicon Valley. We’re behavioral scientists, trained in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. We take that expertise, and we imbue it into the most useful form of technology. For us, that just happens to be AI.”

Their expertise was developed in the Industrial/Organizational Psychology program at Minnesota State Mankato. I/O Psychology studies how people behave at work and how companies and organizations can improve teamwork, leadership, hiring and employee satisfaction via psychology.

Dolen, a northern Minnesota native who came to MSU as an undergrad with thoughts of professional hockey as a career, credits professors including Dan Sachau with inspiring him to go into  I/O psychology.

“It wasn’t just them being very dynamic, positive professors,” he said. “It lit a fuse and really started a passion.”

Meyer, who came to MSU after serving in the Marine Corps, described his experience in the I/O Psychology master of arts program as transformative. 

“It was an amazing blend of really awesome teaching, challenging assignments, real-world application of theories … and great internship experience,” he said. “I consider it some of the best times that I’ve had in my life.”

Though they didn’t meet at MSU, Dolen and Meyer connected professionally in 2013 and quickly formed a strong working relationship. When an investor approached Dolen with the concept for Humancore, asking him to head it up, his first call was to Meyer. 

“’I think I’m going to do this. Are you with me?’” Dolen recalled asking. “It’s that sort of tight relationship where even before I decided I was all in, it was checking with Kevin and saying are we going to make another run?”

Now two years old, Humancore’s platform starts with everyone filling out a brief and private multiple-choice questionnaire for employees and managers to use upon employment. That questionnaire guides recommendations are then provided to leadership. When it’s time for a manager to meet with an employee to solve a problem together, for instance, Humancore offers the manager an AI-recommended strategy based on both personalities.

“The estimates are that 75 percent of what managers are doing is interpersonal in nature, working through and with other people,” Dolen said. “We’re all different. And that's a lot for [a manager] to be able to try to effectively manage.”

Humancore has already been gaining traction with major clients like W.L. Gore and Advanced Sterilization Products. 

Sachau said he has been watching both Dolen and Meyer’s careers since they left MSU and praises their new venture.

“What these two are trying to do with Humancore is on the leading edge of HR technology and management coaching,” Sachau said. “I would love to take credit for their careers, but these guys would have been successful no matter where they went to school.  We are fortunate they chose MSU.”

As it grows, Humancore will continue to be a reflection of the skills and values Dolen and Meyer honed at the University. 

“We’re helping people in the moments that they really couldn’t or shouldn’t be getting assistance otherwise,” Meyer said. “And that does nothing to take away from the intimacy and the organic nature of them being able to work through with each other. We’re just helping to groom that communication.”