Reskilling In An Age of AI: Why I'm Expanding My Skills Outside of Marketing

After a decade working as a marketer, I now have to learn more outside of my profession

Over the last decade, I’ve built my career in digital marketing. It’s a field that already has tons of specializations like SEO, media buying, and email marketing. But lately, I’ve been thinking about how fragile those specializations have become. We’re living in an age where AI isn’t just changing how we work, it’s changing who does the work and how many people it actually takes to do it.

For a long time, the advice was simple: pick a lane, go deep, and become the go-to expert in that area. That approach worked for years, but I’m not so sure it’s the safest bet anymore (especially if your work is mainly done in front of a computer screen). AI tools are becoming so good that what used to require an entire department can now be done by a few well-rounded generalists who know how to use the right tech. I honestly think we’ll start seeing teams of three or four people doing what used to take fifty.

This doesn’t mean marketing, or any other profession, is going away. It just means the shape of work is changing. What used to be a full-time role might become part of a larger toolkit for one person. The individual who only runs Facebook ads or only writes email campaigns might soon be replaced by someone who can do all of that with the help of AI (heck they may be replaced by a SaaS tool that embeds a stack of AI-agent workflows to do the work). Instead of departments growing, they might actually shrink, not because companies don’t value people, but because those people can now do so much more. The future workplace will be a mix of human and digital teammates, and I want to make sure I can thrive in that mix.

That’s why I’ve decided not to hide from change but to lean into it. Rather than trying to protect the version of myself that existed before AI, I’m focused on building a new one. My goal isn’t just to learn AI tools, but to understand the bigger picture of how work gets done. Lately, I’ve been studying operations and finance so I can better understand how marketing fits into the rest of the business. The more I understand how money moves, how systems work, and how decisions are made, the more valuable I become in any team.

This may not be the best approach, but I’m optimizing as I go. I do know, however, that the worst approach is not to get a broader base of knowledge under my belt.

The labor market is telling us what to do; the signs are there

There’s plenty of evidence that this kind of reskilling matters. A survey from Nexford University found that 29% of hiring managers now only hire candidates who already have AI or AI-adjacent skills. Another 22% said that reskilling in AI might have prevented some of the layoffs that happened this year. A study from Lightcast showed that non-tech roles requiring AI skills pay around $18,000 more per year compared to roles that don’t. And companies like Accenture have started cutting staff who couldn’t be retrained for AI-related positions while investing millions in training programs for those who can.

So this isn’t just a prediction anymore. It’s happening right now. Companies aren’t just cutting jobs, they’re redefining them. And the people who can learn, adapt, and integrate AI into their work are going to be the ones with the most leverage.

For me, reskilling doesn’t mean leaving marketing behind. It means adding more layers to it. I want to think like an operator, not just a strategist. I want to connect marketing performance to business outcomes, revenue, and operational efficiency. I also want to figure out how to automate repetitive work so I can spend more time on things humans still do best, like critical thinking, communication, and creative problem solving.

I won’t pretend it’s easy. Reskilling takes patience and humility. It’s not fun to realize that the skills that once made you valuable might not be enough in the next few years. It’s even harder to find the time to learn something new while still handling your day job. But I’d rather be uncomfortable learning than comfortable falling behind.

For me, that commitment to learning has become more than just talk. I’ve gone all in. I’m currently pursuing a second bachelor’s degree in accounting at Arizona State University to build a stronger foundation in business and finance. Alongside that, I’m studying AI in Finance through the Corporate Finance Institute and completing Bloomberg for Education’s Finance Fundamentals certification. These steps are part of a bigger goal: to stay adaptable in a world that’s changing faster than ever.

If the market shifts and traditional marketing roles become scarce, I want to be able to pivot confidently into finance or operations. I don’t see these fields as separate from marketing, but as extensions of it—different lenses for understanding how businesses grow, spend, and sustain themselves. By learning how money moves and how AI can shape financial decision-making, I’m building a skill set that will remain relevant no matter how the tools evolve.

At the end of the day, I don’t think AI is here to replace us. I think it’s here to push us—to challenge us to keep learning, to stretch outside of what we already know, and to build new combinations of skills that make us harder to replace. For me, that means becoming someone who understands marketing, operations, and finance, not just one of those things.

The people who’ll thrive in this new era won’t necessarily be the ones who know the most, but the ones who can adapt the fastest. And that’s the kind of person I’m working to become.

Sources

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