Scaling AI Across 700 Employees: Zapier’s Brandon Sammut on Driving Real Adoption

Brandon Sammut is the Chief People Officer at Zapier, one of the earliest and most successful no-code automation companies.

With over 800 fully remote employees, Zapier has been at the forefront of workflow automation for more than a decade. Brandon’s role sits at the intersection of people, culture, and technology — giving him a unique vantage point on how to drive company-wide AI adoption at scale.

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Brought to you by Autoskills (https://autoskills.ai) – Helping teams go from AI-curious to AI-ready with tailored workshops and hands-on adoption.

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(00:00) Introduction — Brandon's role at Zapier and how AI entered the conversation

(04:12) Why top-down AI mandates rarely work (and what Zapier does instead)

(08:45) Building AI fluency across a remote, global team

(12:30) Zapier's "center of excellence" approach — balancing guidance with experimentation

(17:55) Early wins: how AI started showing up in recruiting, customer support, and marketing

(22:40) The challenge of scale: making AI adoption sustainable vs. shiny

(27:15) Rethinking skills and roles in the AI era — how HR is adapting

(32:02) The cultural playbook: celebrating use cases, sharing learnings, keeping momentum

(38:16) What incumbents get wrong about AI adoption

(42:50) Zapier's bets on where automation + AI converge next

(47:30) Lightning round + closing reflections

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Where to Find Brandon:

• -LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-sammut-8147b76/ 
• Zapier: zapier.com

Where to find Haroon Choudery:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haroonchoudery/
• X: https://x.com/haroonchoudery