How the idea for the AI4BetterLife Institute came about
I founded AI4BetterLife as an initiative in the summer of 2025, after several months of hearing the same conversation in different variations. Small business owners, professionals navigating career transitions, immigrants, women returning to work after a break – all of them could see that artificial intelligence was rewriting the rules of the game, and none of them knew where to begin.
I had something most of them didn’t. A legal and management background in the energy sector – an industry that is heavily regulated, technologically complex, and unforgiving of mistakes. An immigrant experience that makes it very clear how knowledge actually «lives» inside language, networks, and access. And a relationship with education that, for me, has never been just a career tool, but a way of being in the world. That combination gave me a rare ability to translate: between big technology and the real-world entrepreneur, between the regulatory landscape and a specific business case, between Silicon Valley and an immigrant woman.
At first, I shared all of this privately – with friends, acquaintances, clients. It became clear very quickly that you can’t close this gap through a private channel.
The first conference: Fort Lauderdale, September 2025
I held my first public event on September 13, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The conference was called «AI for Business: A New Era of Opportunities» and was hosted with the support of UA Florida and within the framework of the Ukrainian American Business and Innovation Network, which I co-founded.
The logic behind the choice was deliberate: start where there is already a community ready to listen, and test the hypothesis – is the demand for accessible, practical AI education really as large as it seemed to me?
I had planned an intimate format, but I had to expand registration capacity three times. The people who came weren’t a random crowd – they were owners of real businesses: restaurants, clinics, consulting and logistics companies. They brought with them questions you can’t answer without hands-on AI experience: how to implement AI without violating client privacy; whether it makes sense to pay for tools when you have a five-person team; how to redesign processes without losing what is already working.
I walked away from that conference with a clear understanding – and with a feeling you only get once or twice in a lifetime: you are exactly on the right trajectory. And that trajectory is bigger than any single event.
The second conference: Irvine, April 2026
I held the second conference on April 25, 2026, in Irvine, California – one of the most business-active regions on the West Coast. Our partners were local organizations, including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, one of the most influential immigrant organizations in the state, EvoNexus, a nonprofit startup incubator, and others.
And once again, twice as many people showed up as I had expected. This was no longer «a strong first event.» This was a pattern. And when a pattern repeats itself in two such different regions of the country, turning an initiative into an institution is no longer ambition – it becomes a responsibility.
That is how AI4BetterLife grew from an initiative intoan Institute. I chose the name deliberately: AI for Better Life – artificial intelligence for a better life. Not for «optimization,» not for «disruption,» but for life in the sense real people understand it: work, family, business, time, dignity.
My talk at the conference was on Responsible AI: Risk and Governance. I spoke about how an entrepreneur can adopt artificial intelligence without breaking the new rules of the game and without leaving themselves defenseless against future risks. That is exactly my role within my own institute: translating the regulatory landscape into the language of a specific business.
Launching the AI4BetterLife program for women
It took me six months to develop a program for women that helps them adapt more quickly to the new realities of artificial intelligence. And on May 14, 2026, in Anaheim, California, the first dedicated AI4BetterLife workshop will take place in partnership with Access California Services.
This was a deliberate move. That organization has spent nearly thirty years working with immigrant communities in Southern California – both legally and culturally. Pairing the trust they have built within the community with my expertise in AI gives the program something that neither large online courses nor corporate trainings can offer: an immigrant woman who doesn’t live inside a LinkedIn feed gets to receive AI as a tool for her own life – from people she trusts.
Why a separate program specifically for women? Recent publications from Harvard Business Review and the United Nations confirm what I saw at my own conferences: women use generative AI significantly less often than men, receive less support in adopting it at work, and are more likely to opt out of new technologies at the start of a career transition. If nothing changes, this gap will be locked into the structure of the future economy. I am not willing to leave that dynamic unanswered.
The third conference: Sacramento, May 30, 2026
On May 30, 2026, the AI4BetterLife Institute is holding its next conference in Sacramento, at the invitation of Ukrainian American House. The location is no accident: Sacramento has one of the largest Ukrainian diasporas in California, and it is the state capital.
California today is the flagship of American AI regulation: this is where laws are passed that often become a model at the federal level. I want to bring entrepreneurs together in the place where decisions are made. Not to scare them with change, but to give them a map and confidence. Sacramento is the place where their voice can actually be heard – if they show up at the right moment and properly prepared. I am working to make those moments systematic rather than accidental.
Plans for Chicago, and what it all adds up to
The next major region of the Ukrainian diaspora is Chicago. I am currently in the process of selecting a partner there for the «AI for Better Life: A New Era of Opportunities» conference.
Chicago fits into my strategy as more than just a location. I have successfully completed the pre-LLM program, and this summer I will continue my education in the Master of Laws in A.I., Legal Innovation and Technology program at Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech.
At my conferences, I keep repeating a line that has become AI4BetterLife’s unofficial motto: AI is moving forward — with you or without you. You choose: get in, or stay out.
I have made my choice – to build an institution that gives people a chance to grow. I am building the AI4BetterLife Institute with a confidence rooted not in enthusiasm, but in the calm math of the moment: education is humanity’s most democratic instrument, artificial intelligence is the largest wave of our generation, and the translator between the two is, today, a scarce resource.
Contact:
www.linkedin.com/in/liubov-maniuk-bb3ba71b8
