The Workroom is a small cohort for early-career professionals who want to develop their taste, presence, and professional judgment — and leave with their own selfware: a working system, built with AI, that goes where they go.
Something is happening to professional work, and most of us aren’t prepared yet.
The things that used to make a career (writing a good email, having one great idea, explaining a concept) are being done by AI in seconds. The skills early-career people were told to build are being priced to zero while they’re still building them. And nobody is teaching what actually matters now.
What matters now is the part AI can’t touch, neither now nor in the foreseeable future. Even with AI, you will need to read a room, carry an idea through an organization, hold a point of view, persuade others of your strategic perspective, judge if a concept is weak, if a visual story is tacky — and do so without being interrupted by the HIPPO in the room.
What is at stake is the development of your professional self. The Workroom is a program for building that. Deliberately, seriously, with people who are doing the same.
Each territory is about something AI is making more important, not less.
— Full curriculum shared with accepted participants. Some cards we keep face-down on purpose.
I’m Sérgio Tavares. I’m a consultant, researcher and strategic designer working on AI transformation. I have a PhD, I’ve written a book, I’ve spent the last two decades watching early-career professionals succeed and fail in rooms they should have owned. I’ve coached dozens of them privately; this is the first time I’m doing it as a program.
I’m Brazilian, I live in Helsinki. Big change. I’ve spent my career working with international companies and stakeholders (USA, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Germany, France, Sweden, the UAE...). We’ve faced 2008, COVID and AI.
Turns out these were the best possible preparation for preparing new professionals.
I’m not a millionaire and I haven’t sold a startup. What I am is someone who’s paid close attention, for a long time, to how professional trust is actually built — and who uses AI seriously enough to know what it’s changing and what it isn’t.
I don’t do motivational. I do precise.
Most L&D budgets sit untouched. This isn’t a workshop on “AI tools” — it’s development for early-career professionals whose judgment will carry the next five years of their career. That’s a reasonable ask.
This is a preview of the actual application. Written responses only — the register of your answers signals the register of the program.
Fill this in. I’ll generate a short, personalized proposal you can send to your manager or L&D team — with your name and company on it.
Good. That instinct — the one that pokes at a thing until it reveals itself — is roughly 40% of what we’re teaching. The other 60% is learning when not to poke.
If you got here by accident, close this and keep scrolling. If you got here on purpose: apply. Mention the scheme in Q.04. It won’t help you get in, but I’ll know you read carefully.