Harvey Schaefer, Senior Program Manager, Machine Learning & AI, MillerKnoll
From Barriers to Entry by SANDOW Design Group, digby, and SURROUND
May 6, 2026 · 43 min · Season 4 · Episode 4
About this episode
Andrew Lane talks with Harvey Schaefer about the role of AI in organizations and the importance of human judgment.
Testing the Fences This week Andrew welcomes Harvey Schaefer of MillerKnoll for a conversation that starts with a sore throat, a quick detour into Severance , and lands in a surprisingly human place: change management. As a leader in MillerKnoll’s growing internal machine learning and AI team, Harvey isn’t building flashy tools for the sake of it—he’s helping people across a complex organization understand where AI can genuinely reduce friction and where human judgment still matters most. Andrew and Harvey dig into AI literacy, internal roadshows, “easy agents,” and the quiet reality that many people are already using AI at work without telling anyone. Along the way they make sure to hit a significant pop culture reference quote and, ultimately, explore a bigger question facing every company right now: if AI can do almost anything, what are the things we still want to do ourselves? Connect with our host, Andrew Lane, on LinkedIn Follow Harvey Schaefer on LinkedIn References and resources MillerKnoll Microsoft Copilot Get in touch with us at bte@sandowdesign.com Discover more shows from SURROUND at surroundpodcasts.com This episode of Barriers to Entry was produced by Rob…
People in this episode
Host: Andrew Lane
Guest: Harvey Schaefer
Topics covered
- machine learning
- AI
- change management
- AI literacy
- pop culture
- workplace technology
Keywords
- AI
- machine learning
- change management
- workplace
- technology
- MillerKnoll
- Severance
Sponsors
Arktura
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: MillerKnoll, Microsoft
Products: Copilot
Books & works: Severance
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