Most AI training rollouts start with the tool: which platform, which prompts, which use cases. Kim Merritt, founder of The URL dr, argues that’s backwards. After two decades building custom training for enterprise clients — including AICPA, Ethicon and Denny’s — Merritt has seen the same pattern: employees who communicate clearly, think critically about what they’re given, and know how to ask for what they actually need are the ones who get real value out of any AI tool. Everyone else just gets faster at doing the wrong thing.

In this session, Merritt shares a practical framework for auditing and building the human skills — communication, critical evaluation, feedback and iteration, and adaptability — that determine whether an AI training rollout actually sticks. She’ll also share where AI genuinely earns a place in her own production work, and where it deliberately doesn’t, as a real example of pairing human judgment with AI assistance rather than replacing it. Attendees will leave with a simple audit they can run before investing further in AI tool training.

Attendees Will Learn How To: 

• Identify the specific soft skills — communication, critical evaluation, feedback/iteration and adaptability — that most directly affect how well employees use AI tools
• Run a quick readiness audit on their own team before, or alongside, rolling out new AI training
• Recognize the difference between AI training that changes behavior and AI training that just adds a tool nobody uses well
• Apply a human-first framework for deciding where AI genuinely helps a workflow, and where it should stay out of it

View full agenda.

Speaker

Kim Merritt, Founder and President, The URL dr Kim Merritt is the founder and president of The URL dr, a woman-owned, EDWOSB-certified e-learning agency that has built custom training for clients ranging from small business startups to enterprise organizations like AICPA, Ethicon (Johnson & Johnson), Denny’s, AT&T and Kimley-Horn. Kim is passionate about the human side of learning. Her team brings what she calls “The Hollywood Advantage” to every project — professional storytelling craft borrowed from the entertainment industry — while staying focused on the communication, critical thinking and human judgment skills that determine whether any program, AI-assisted or not, actually changes behavior. Kim and her team are currently building the “AI + Human Skills” program – a complete learning curriculum where AI proficiency and human soft skills are developed together, because neither works at full power without the other. When Kim is not working, she can be found driving her BMW track car at Virginia International Raceway, losing more of her hearing at a rock concert, or combing the beach for treasure coins and sea glass.