MIT xPRO® program sparks AI-driven entrepreneurship for community impact
By Stefanie Koperniak
Currently based in her hometown of Wichita, Kansas, Andrea Amaro found career inspiration in the writings of a famous 20th-century management thinker. Those ideas not only shaped her professional outlook but also led her to the MIT xPRO® Chief Operation Officer (COO) Program.
“Peter Drucker legitimized the practice of looking at other industries and considering ways of borrowing and applying innovations across industries,” says Amaro. “When I was 20 years into my career, although I had been getting an amazing, hands-on education, I also wanted to pursue an experience of colliding ideas.”
Part of MIT Open Learning, MIT xPRO provides professional development opportunities to a global audience via online courses and blended programs. Designed with the evolving role of the Chief Operating Officer in mind, MIT xPRO’s COO program equips participants with the strategic skill set that positions them to excel as operations leaders.
Pursuing entrepreneurship
After completing undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics at Wichita State University, Andrea Amaro began working at Boeing — where she first started her career in operations and technology, spanning a variety of areas of expertise and leadership positions at firms like Koch Industries and Infor. She says she was drawn to the MIT xPRO COO program because of its focus on learning frameworks and methodologies and applying them to real-world problems. She also was attracted to the rigor and depth of the program, as well as the valuable opportunity to interact with leaders from other industries.
“I liked that the program is so comprehensive in scope, and thought that it would be additive to the professional and leadership experience that I already have,” says Amaro, who completed the program in December 2024. “I also wanted the opportunity to network with leaders from other industries.”
Learners select two electives in the second half of the year-long COO program as a way to customize the program to their interests. Amaro chose the courses Designing and Building AI Products and Services and Supply Chain Management: Leading with AI and Digital Transformation. In Designing and Building AI Products and Services, Amaro worked with classmates who are professionals across a variety of disciplines, including architecture, design, healthcare, management, and technology. This collaboration ultimately resulted in the co-founding of the company SuperThinks, which looks broadly at creating and helping companies implement AI solutions.
“This company grew out of Drucker’s idea of taking experiences and knowledge from different industries and putting them together into close proximity, so that there can be a focus on bringing a higher level of outcomes and innovation to the market,” says Amaro. “The xPRO COO program gave me the opportunity to work with professionals across diverse and complementary sectors, a rigorous education in frameworks and skills that I could directly apply to real challenges, and the inspiration to pursue entrepreneurship.”
SuperThinks co-founder Robin Stephani works in architecture in California, where she became acutely aware of the complex problem of rebuilding homes after natural disasters. This became a use case for SuperThinks, and the company is currently working on streamlining the process for people to rebuild homes after a natural disaster.
In particular, the company has developed an AI solution to help people quickly and smoothly gather and bring together disparate pieces of information needed to rebuild a home so that the planning and permitting for a homeowner can be accelerated, within the confines of the current regulatory structure. The goal, ultimately, is to get people into a home at a lower cost in a shorter amount of time. In addition, SuperThinks recognizes that survivors of natural disasters are often bombarded with disparate and confusing pieces of information, and is looking at how AI can help provide curated, contextual, and on-demand support, Amaro says.
“Even with all the help from government agencies and other organizations, anything you could do to incrementally improve the efforts to recover and rebuild after a natural disaster is going to have major positive societal effects,” says Amaro.
Amaro is also founder and CEO of Lucille Group, which identifies use cases for AI in traditionally low-tech service industry businesses with the goal of using technology to disrupt and improve familiar services. Its first use case looks at using image recognition technology to motivate seniors to release clutter, to help them stay safely in their homes for longer, aging in place with any additional care they might be receiving.
“For me, as a person who spent 20 years in business operations, I’m now, along with my team, looking for our investment in time and effort to create a return for the community, right in the organizations that we work with,” says Amaro.
MIT xPRO® program sparks AI-driven entrepreneurship for community impact was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.