Meet the Innovator: Juliette Denny

Juliette Denny is no stranger to innovation in learning and development. With over two decades of experience, she has built a career around reshaping how people acquire knowledge. As the founder of Iridescent Technology and Growth Engineering, she has consistently pushed the boundaries of engagement, gamification, and personalization in education. Her passion for making learning more impactful has made her a sought-after thought leader in the digital transformation of corporate training and education. Her latest initiative, Zavmo.ai, marks an ambitious step toward leveraging AI to create dynamic, adaptive, and immersive learning experiences, ensuring that education meets learners where they are rather than forcing them into rigid, outdated systems.

Throughout her career, Juliette has worked with some of the world’s biggest corporations—Apple, Cisco, and L’Oréal, to name a few—helping them rethink employee training through gamification and personalized learning. Her expertise in blending human-centered AI with proven instructional methodologies has helped organizations improve engagement, knowledge retention, and real-world application. She understands that learning isn’t just about delivering content; it’s about capturing attention, fostering curiosity, and driving real behavioral change. By integrating neuroscience-backed learning strategies with AI, she has been instrumental in helping businesses navigate the digital transformation of their learning programs.

With Zavmo.ai, Juliette is taking her mission even further. The platform is designed to scale personalized learning, ensuring that employees and students receive training tailored to their unique learning styles, career ambitions, and interests. AI-powered automation, when used thoughtfully, has the potential to make learning more engaging, efficient, and meaningful. But Juliette is clear on one thing: AI should not replace educators—it should empower them. By enhancing human instruction with AI-driven insights, Zavmo.ai is helping organizations move beyond generic, one-size-fits-all training programs and toward learning experiences that truly resonate with individuals.

Juliette’s vision is clear: a future where education adapts to the learner, not the other way around. Through her pioneering work, she is proving that personalization, AI, and human-centered instructional design can transform learning into an engaging, effective, and innovative experience for all.

Challenges in Learning and Development

“If people engage more with their learning, fundamentally the learning will have a bigger impact.”

The world of learning and development (L&D) faces a persistent challenge: engagement. Traditional training programs often struggle to capture learners’ attention, leading to passive participation and low retention rates. In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, simply presenting information isn’t enough—learners need interactive, engaging experiences that make education feel relevant and compelling. Without engagement, even the most well-intentioned training initiatives fall flat, failing to drive real behavioral change.

But engagement is only part of the puzzle. According to Juliette Denny, three critical issues must be addressed to create truly effective learning experiences:

1. Capturing and maintaining attention – In an era of constant distractions, holding a learner’s focus is harder than ever. AI-powered personalization can help by tailoring content to individual preferences, making learning more engaging and immersive.
2. Enabling concentration to drive behavioral change – It’s not enough for learners to passively consume information; they need to actively process and apply what they’ve learned. This requires a learning environment that encourages deep thinking and practical application.
3. Personalizing learning to make it meaningful – When education feels relevant to an individual’s role, goals, and interests, they are more likely to invest their time and effort. Personalization ensures that training resonates, increasing its effectiveness.

By addressing these core issues, organizations can move beyond surface-level engagement and create learning experiences that truly transform behavior. When learners are fully involved and emotionally invested in their education, they retain information more effectively, apply it in meaningful ways, and ultimately drive real innovation within their organizations. With AI and human-centered design, companies can revolutionize their training programs, making learning not just a necessity, but an inspiring and impactful journey.

The Power of Personalization in Education

“Context is everything. Content is almost secondary to the context in which we put that content.”

For Juliette Denny, personalization in learning is not just a buzzword—it’s a game changer. Her passion for context-driven learning stems from personal experience; both she and her children are dyslexic, giving her firsthand insight into the struggles many learners face. She firmly believes that learning should be tailored to individual strengths, interests, and cognitive styles, ensuring that no one is left behind due to rigid, one-size-fits-all education models.

Personalization goes beyond merely adjusting content difficulty levels. It’s about creating context-rich learning experiences that resonate with the learner. Juliette argues that many people are locked out of effective learning early due to structural barriers—whether it’s neurodiversity, socioeconomic challenges, or simply a lack of engagement with traditional instructional models. She envisions an education system that adapts to the learner, rather than forcing individuals to conform to a standardized mold.

A key principle in Juliette’s approach is “context over content.” She believes that anyone can excel if learning is contextualized to their passions and interests. For example, a dyslexic student who struggles with traditional math instruction may thrive if the same concepts are taught through real-world applications related to their hobbies, such as motorbikes, sports, or technology. By linking education to topics that naturally capture a learner’s curiosity, AI-driven personalization can unlock untapped potential, making education not just accessible but deeply engaging.

The implications of this shift are profound. Traditional education models prioritize standardized testing and rote memorization, but AI-powered personalization enables experiential, adaptive learning. Instead of passively absorbing information, learners actively engage with material, applying it in ways that feel relevant to their lives and aspirations. When learning becomes a meaningful, immersive experience, engagement skyrockets, leading to deeper understanding and long-term retention.

Juliette’s mission with Zavmo.ai is to bring this vision of personalized learning to scale, leveraging AI, neuroscience, and psychology to create tailored educational journeys. By embracing personalization, organizations can enhance employee training, boost knowledge retention, and foster true innovation. In this new paradigm, learning is no longer a chore—it’s an adventure, uniquely crafted for every individual.

AI’s Role in Revolutionizing Learning

“AI is a foundational technology, but that AI needs to be taught how humans think and how we learn.”

While AI has already begun to reshape industries, Juliette Denny believes its true impact on education is only just beginning. Large language models and AI-powered tools are foundational, but their real power lies in combining AI with neuroscience and psychology to create transformative learning experiences. By understanding how the human brain processes and retains information, AI can go beyond automating content delivery—it can enhance cognitive engagement and empower learners to think critically and creatively.

Juliette emphasizes that AI should not be seen as a replacement for teachers. Instead, it should act as an augmentative force, allowing educators to scale personalized learning experiences in ways that were previously impossible. AI-driven platforms like Zavmo.ai analyze learner behavior, preferences, and cognitive engagement to tailor content dynamically, ensuring that each individual receives a truly personalized education. By leveraging models like Bloom’s Taxonomy, Zavmo encourages deeper learning by guiding students beyond memorization to application, analysis, and innovation.

The key to AI’s success in education lies in its ability to adapt in real time. By continuously assessing a learner’s engagement levels and comprehension, AI can adjust the difficulty, format, and context of instructional materials to maximize effectiveness. This ensures that learning remains both challenging and rewarding, fostering a culture of continuous growth and intellectual curiosity. Through AI-driven insights, organizations can enhance workforce training, improve skill development, and drive long-term innovation—all while maintaining the human touch that makes learning truly impactful.

Zavmo: Personalized Learning at Scale

“Zavmo can change and pivot in real time in order to maximize the enjoyment that learner is getting.”

Zavmo.ai is more than just another e-learning platform—it’s a revolution in personalized education. Designed to adapt dynamically to each learner, Zavmo creates customized learning pathways based on an individual’s role, aspirations, and real-time engagement levels. Rather than relying on static content, Zavmo continuously analyzes user interactions to refine and optimize the learning experience, ensuring that every session is relevant and effective.

Beyond memorization, Zavmo focuses on real-world application and knowledge retention. Learners are encouraged to demonstrate their understanding through interactive exercises, reflective learning, and hands-on application. This active approach ensures that learners move beyond passive consumption and instead integrate knowledge into their daily work and problem-solving processes.

To maintain the highest level of accuracy and effectiveness, Zavmo is built on curated, approved curricula while leveraging multiple AI models. By doing so, it minimizes AI “hallucinations” and ensures that learning materials remain reliable, structured, and aligned with educational best practices. Neuroscience principles guide Zavmo’s prompts, making learning deeply personal and more engaging than traditional e-learning approaches. In essence, Zavmo is paving the way for a future where learning is not only scalable but truly transformative for individuals and organizations alike.

The Future of AI in Education

“What will definitely remain constant is the way the brain works. As educators, we need to spend more time worrying about instructional design and worrying about teaching methodologies rather than content.”

Juliette Denny sees AI as an enabler, not a disruptor, in the education space. While AI continues to evolve, some core principles remain unchanged—most notably, the human brain’s unparalleled ability to think creatively and make connections. She believes that educators and L&D leaders should not fear AI, but rather experiment with it in small, controlled pilot projects to understand its true potential in enhancing learning.

AI-driven personalization, when built on sound instructional design, allows educators to deliver content in a way that maximizes curiosity and engagement. Instead of focusing solely on automating knowledge transfer, organizations should leverage AI to facilitate deep learning, critical thinking, and innovation. Zavmo’s approach exemplifies this by blending AI-driven adaptability with neuroscience-backed instructional strategies.

Ultimately, Juliette emphasizes that the most effective learning experiences will always center around human creativity. AI’s role should be to support and enhance human-led instruction, providing learners with more contextually relevant and engaging experiences. As organizations move forward with AI-driven learning initiatives, the key will be to harness AI as a facilitator for innovation rather than a replacement for human expertise. By doing so, companies can create more dynamic, meaningful, and effective learning environments that inspire lifelong curiosity and professional growth.

Conclusion

AI is not here to replace educators but to empower them. As Juliette Denny has demonstrated, personalized, AI-driven learning experiences can revolutionize education and corporate training, making them more engaging, meaningful, and effective. By integrating neuroscience, psychology, and adaptive AI, organizations can create learning experiences that drive real behavioral change. The key to success lies in experimentation—embracing AI in small, strategic ways to enhance learning rather than disrupt it. In doing so, businesses and educators alike can harness the power of AI to unlock potential, inspire curiosity, and foster continuous growth.

Explore the future of AI-powered personalized learning and gamification with Juliette and her team: Iridescent Technology on LinkedIn.

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