PeopleReign congratulates second class of 2026 AI Heroes for contributions to human-first employee service
Celebrating the unsung heroes who exercise AI responsibly and take pride in delivering exceptional service that inspires, motivates, and transforms
PeopleReign awards a small number of unsung heroes at work who are responsible for delivering better employee experiences. The real AI heroes are the ones who take responsibility every day for ensuring AI is used responsibly to help employees do more work that matters. They often aren’t recognized for their commitment, passion, and creativity. The awards program is a way to acknowledge their hard work and inspire others to become AI heroes.
Every member of this second class of 2026 PeopleReign AI heroes exemplifies the spirit of the program: they’re the ones evaluating AI use cases, monitoring AI accuracy, configuring integrations, and maintaining guardrails so others can safely enjoy agentic AI.
The selection committee is proud to welcome Milica (“Milly”) Swanepoel from Tucows, Alessandro (“Alex”) D’Errico from Vantage Data Centers, and Rodney Cardenas from Optimum (formerly Altice USA) to an elite group of winners.
Meet the new winners
Milly Swanepoel is the Director of Knowledge Management and Quality Operations at Tucows Domains, the largest wholesale domain registrar in the world. She supports the customer journey by helping team members use AI to automate repetitive tasks so they can focus on complex, human-centered work.
She enjoys being part of the Customer Support team because everyone has a strong, shared commitment to doing the right thing for customers. Milly says “There is a genuine sense of accountability and care in how we support one another and the people we serve.”
Milly is inspired to do great work by team members who “feel genuinely surprised and delighted by the AI tools we develop. Everyone brings their own perspective, curiosity, and expertise to the table. This creates a highly collaborative environment where ideas are openly exchanged, different viewpoints are valued, and innovation happens naturally and meaningfully.”
Rodney Cardenas is a Director of Technology Operations at Optimum, the fourth-largest broadband and cable provider in the United States. Rodney led the company’s implementation of OLII, an agentic AI platform powered by PeopleReign. He helped integrate OLII with key enterprise platforms such as Confluence, the company intranet, ServiceNow, and other systems. He worked closely with other teams to deploy new capabilities, including ticket creation, ticket status retrieval, and broadcast messaging.
Rodney enjoys the opportunity to continuously learn, innovate, and help solve problems. According to Rodney, “there’s a real sense of accomplishment when you can remove friction from someone’s day and allow them to focus on more meaningful work.”
What inspires Rodney most is “knowing the work we do can have a direct impact on thousands of employees. Every improvement we make whether it’s a new AI capability, a streamlined process, or a better user experience helps people become more productive and successful.”
Alex D’Errico is a Senior Technical Project Manager at Vantage Data Centers, a leading global developer and operator of large-scale data center campuses. He leads the global HR program and oversees the use of AI to reduce risk, increase productivity, and improve the employee experience.
Alex leads the implementation of the VDC IntelliAgent, a PeopleReign virtual agent that is integrated with ServiceNow, Workday, and Microsoft Teams to automate processes like contingent worker onboarding. He takes pride in delivering AI that is secure and trustworthy with a human-first approach that turns complex processes into simple, intuitive experiences.
Alex enjoys working closely with teams to understand their challenges, and designing solutions that make work easier, safer, and more productive. He thrives on learning new technologies, experimenting with new ideas, and navigating different cultures.
Alex is inspired by the idea that technology – when delivered responsibly – improves lives. He says “Knowing that what I build can remove friction, reduce risk, and give employees clarity and confidence drives me to do my best work. Every new challenge, every new technology, every new AI capability pushes me to grow. Our journey with PeopleReign has been a perfect example: experimenting, iterating, learning fast, and turning insights into real value.”
Congratulations to Milly, Rodney, Alex – all are deserving and accomplished AI Heroes!
Want to nominate an AI Hero for the next class of inductees? Email heroes@peoplereign.io with the subject “AI Hero nomination”.
ABOUT PEOPLEREIGN
PeopleReign is the multi-agent AI orchestration platform powering work for many of the world’s most sophisticated organizations. PeopleReign AI gives every employee back four to six hours of productive time per week by automating all common IT and HR service requests. It integrates with more than 100 enterprise systems to autonomously resolve requests related to topics like technology support, employee onboarding, payroll, benefits, and security compliance. PeopleReign customers benefit from 65% call volume reduction and 90% lower cost per ticket. The company has received numerous industry awards for exercising AI responsibly and pioneering the use of agentic AI to improve work life.
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