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Microsoft manager explains how she pivoted from admin to AI — and doesn’t regret her English degree

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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brit Morenus, a 37-year-old senior AI gamification program manager, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been at Microsoft for a total of 13 years, but for five and a half, I was a contract worker.

I graduated from college with a degree focused on English, communications, and marketing. I first landed a job at Microsoft as a contract executive assistant. I stayed in that role for about eight months, then joined the marketing team.

Eventually, I had the opportunity to take a really special position, but it required knowing gamification. Gamification is about integrating game mechanics and motivators, such as storytelling and reward systems, into learning. So I was going to teach people about our products and sell them in a gamified way.

I spent about a year getting certifications that taught me about gamification. I upskilled and learned how to create games, what game mechanics are, and what motivates someone when they’re learning.

That was the position where I was able to prove my impact, and they decided to bring me on full-time. I stayed in that role for another six years, training the frontline and customer service support to develop the right sales skills.

Eventually, I had the opportunity to start gamifying learning about AI. They wanted someone with gamification skills, and my certifications and experience made me the ideal candidate.

I didn’t know much about AI yet, aside from using it for personal reasons, but transitioning to an AI role was actually faster than pivoting to gamification. Since I held the gamification role for about six years, I became really good at it. It only took about three months for me to upskill in AI.

In my first three months on the team, I made myself knowledgeable about AI to the point where I could teach others about it. That’s when I got a certification in Azure AI Fundamentals. It was a certification specific to how Microsoft’s AI works.

I helped my entire team get it, and then I helped my entire organization start working on it. Then I helped the greater customer service support organization work toward getting it as well.

Get outside your comfort zone

My advice to those who want to transition would be: Don’t let fear keep you from stepping outside your comfort zone. There’s so much ambiguity about changing roles or companies, but there’s no time like the present.

With AI specifically, you just need to learn. Everyone already uses it, but you need to understand how it works, because that’s how you can understand what to do with it.

It’s also important to upskill yourself. You have to be willing to constantly move and learn more, because it’s going to keep changing — and faster than you can grasp it. Sometimes AI makes wrong predictions, but it is using words to make that prediction. So I absolutely need to use my English degree in order to figure out keywords and how to prompt it to do the right thing.

I don’t regret my English degree

Up until this Al role, I always joked that I wasn’t using my English degree. But now I use it everywhere, and it truly does help. It helps with things like talking to executives and also with the role itself.

It’s important to know the language of AI and how it operates. So now, more than ever, I am using every bit of my English degree and understanding English, grammar, and how it all functions.

For example, there’s a tagging process that happens behind the scenes with AI, just like on social media. Looking at an image, it might tag it as a woman, or a supermarket, and that gives it a confidence score and tells you if it’s relevant or not, and if it’s what we’re looking for.

A lot of it is more about understanding how to apply the English language than about AI — so, thanks, Mom and Dad, I am using the degree you paid for.

This is part of an ongoing series about workers who transitioned into AI roles. Did you pivot to AI? We want to hear from you. Reach out to the reporter via email at aaltchek@insider.com or secure-messaging platform Signal at aalt.19.




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Bad Bunny didn’t need to sing in English at the Super Bowl to make a statement about America

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When Bad Bunny took the field at the 2026 Super Bowl for a historic, joyful halftime show, he wore a jersey with his Latino heritage stitched into its very fabric.

It’s an apt metaphor for his performance, which eschewed explicit anti-ICE statements (he covered that at the Grammys, anyway) in favor of celebration with a side of symbolism.

Nods to the Puerto Rican singer’s motherland were peppered throughout the set, which was designed to evoke the US territory’s signature aesthetics, from sugar cane fields to a storefront labeled “La Marqueta” (a slang term for market) and various vendors selling tacos and piraguas (shaved ice). While performing “El Apagón,” a song about the frequent blackouts and infrastructure issues affecting Puerto Ricans, Bad Bunny brought this symbolism to the forefront, waving the Puerto Rican flag.

He also proclaimed in English, “God bless America,” and brandished a football printed with the phrase “Together, We Are America.” He added in Spanish, “We’re still here.” (Puerto Rico is a US territory, and Puerto Ricans are American citizens.)

It was a stark and knowing contrast to the Latinophobia and anti-immigrant messaging hawked by the Trump administration. So much so that President Donald Trump complained online about Bad Bunny’s performance and his choice to sing primarily in Spanish.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Bad Bunny left the stage. “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.”

For those who understand visual storytelling, however, Bad Bunny’s performance made perfect sense. He didn’t need to say “ICE out” or declare an explicit political opinion. In keeping with the recent tradition of Super Bowl halftime shows, Bad Bunny used iconography to take a stand instead.

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance is part of a new halftime show tradition

Bad Bunny’s performance shares DNA with Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl appearances, both of which used bold imagery to make strong statements.

Beyoncé’s surprise appearance at Coldplay’s 2016 Super Bowl halftime show became famous — and, to some, infamous — for the iconography present in her performance of her then-new single, “Formation.” In the midst of Trump’s first presidential campaign, Beyoncé and her backup dancers wore outfits that channeled the Black Panther Party, an organization formed amid the ’60s Civil Rights Movement that fought for Black liberation.


Beyoncé performs at the 2016 Super Bowl.

Beyoncé performs at the 2016 Super Bowl.

Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images



The song itself isn’t explicitly political. But as a celebration of identity and legacy that features lyrics about Beyoncé’s parents, her daughter, and her features (“I like my negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils”), Beyoncé performing it — with visual references to the song’s themes in her and her dancers’ costumes, to boot — was innately political.

It’s not that Beyoncé is allergic to making explicit political statements: She famously performed in front of the word “Feminist” at the 2014 VMAs, and sang “Votin’ out 45, don’t get out of line” on her 2022 album “Renaissance,” referring to Trump as the 45th president. But when the NFL hosts musicians for the night, they’ve lately preferred make their statements symbolic rather than overt.

Last year, Kendrick Lamar followed suit during his own Super Bowl halftime show, outfitting himself and his dancers in red, white, and blue. Although Lamar kept the music focused on his own enemies and triumphs, he used audacious visual language to pose broader, poignantly relevant questions: Who’s allowed to claim patriotism? What does it mean to be an American, especially in times of oppression and conflict?

Bad Bunny’s performance raised similar questions, but offered simpler, more optimistic solutions. For the finale, he was surrounded by backup dancers, band members, and other performers holding flags from around the world; when he proclaimed “God bless America,” he listed out all the countries in both North and South America.

Bad Bunny is not a politician, nor can he single-handedly cure the world of hatred and division. Still, for a brief moment, on a small square of American turf, he chose to use the stage to show millions of people what that could look like.




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