They said it would take 200 years.
200 years to close the $1.6 trillion gap between the earnings of women and men for the same work, the same credentials, and the same capabilities. 200 years for policy to change and for the world to do the right thing. AI was supposed to accelerate everything. Faster research, faster decisions, compressing time and reducing friction. The promise wasn't just increased productivity though, it was the idea that the technology could help us work smarter, live more, and improve the systems we move through everyday. But the systems we've built are not neutral and accelerating a broken system doesn't fix it.
At the age of 27 Valerie Chapman, founder and CEO of Ruth AI is building what she hopes can be an equitable career platform for women. One designed to help women negotiate salaries, build personal brands and advance their careers in a world increasingly shaped by AI.
If AI can do things like, solve climate change, and, make billions of dollars for these large corporations, then perhaps it could actually be the solution that helps close the wage gap.
Find the Statistic that Makes you Angry
At 25, Valerie faced two layoffs, but instead of retreating, she turned to AI. Within three months she went from unemployed to entrepreneur. However, the turning point for her career wasn’t the layoff itself. It was a number.
She came across a statistic: Gen Z women use AI tools about 25% less than men. And it made her furious.
If you want to figure out what your mission is and you want to reverse engineer it, you have to first find a statistic that makes you very angry. Because when you get that emotional response and it elicits something out of you, that's when you know you really care.
But the skepticism many women have towards AI is warranted. When women start leaning on AI for salary guidance, the tools that exist are informing them to ask for $60 - $70K less than their male counterparts with the same credentials.
AI Is a Mirror, Not the Mind. It reflects the biases, assumptions, and inequalities already present in the people and data shaping it. It’s not inventing inequality, but it is most certainly validating and scaling the patterns that already exist under the guise of objectivity. Scary. It’s no wonder why women are hesitant. And as those tools become more integrated into hiring, salary negotiations, and professional visibility, those biases stop being abstract. They begin shaping real opportunities.
For women, the stakes attached to those inequalities were already enormous long before AI entered the picture. A woman who doesn’t negotiate her salary right out of college can lose out on $500k over her lifetime.
But for Valerie the answer doesn't lie in shrinking away from AI completely. It’s building tools that help women engage in these systems, more intentionally, with more agency and more understanding.
That’s the thinking behind Ruth AI.
What Ruth Actually Does: Three Prongs. One Mission.
Valerie built Ruth around a series of AI agents, each one designed to tackle a specific barrier that stands between a woman and her full economic potential. They operate across three pillars: visibility, opportunity, and equity.
Visibility Agents turn a woman's professional wins into thought leadership content. The idea isn’t that every woman needs to become a LinkedIn personality. It’s that sharing your voice and allowing your work, perspectives, and accomplishments to take up space can lead to more opportunities. Oftentimes the people who share their work and ideas consistently are associated with expertise.
Opportunity Agents focus on negotiation, positioning and compensation guidance with scripts and benchmarks. This can alter the trajectory of a woman's career over time. Giving women the confidence and clarity to articulate their value.
Equity Agents are the business plan generators, pitch deck builders, and networking strategists filling the gap that connect women to the right stakeholders. It pushes beyond career advancement in existing companies and towards ownership.
A salary negotiation, a promotion, a shift in visibility none of them exist in isolation. Over time they compound into significant career growth.
The Future is WIP
The idea of compounding is at the center of how Valerie thinks and what Ruth AI is built on. It’s not about optimization for optimization's sake. It’s less about productivity and more about creating access to visibility, and professional insight many women have been historically excluded from.
Valerie doesn't speak about AI as a flawless solution. Or something women should embrace without question. AI carries bias, environmental impact, and an enormous uncertainty around how it will continue to integrate into our lives. But Valerie feels disengaging or choosing ignorance doesn't protect women and that uncertainty of what the future entails is exactly why she believes women need to be a part of the conversation now, so they can play a role in shaping where that future leads.