How Ethan Schwandt helped Jobber turn AI adoption into a building culture
Jobber’s Ethan Schwandt won the 2026 Zappy AI Transformation Leader of the Year by embedding AI and automation into daily workflows rather than treating adoption as a one-off project.
Ethan Schwandt, Senior Manager of Talent Acceleration at Jobber, focused on identifying practical AI and automation opportunities within existing workflows rather than launching isolated pilots. He paired opportunity-spotting with structured enablement, including a leadership hackathon for 55 directors, hands-on sessions with 161 employees, and dedicated office hours for governance and building. The initiative integrated AI tools directly into Jobber’s onboarding process to accelerate adoption and ensure safety. This approach aimed to move employees from curiosity to building functional solutions within a single week.
The collective enablement strategy yielded measurable results within 30 days, with Jobber’s active Zapier builder population growing by 122%. By summer, teams were running hundreds of active workflows across calendars, spreadsheets, communication, CRM, and project-management tools. Employees progressed beyond basic workflows, using Code by Zapier and MCP to write code directly inside Zaps, reflecting deeper technical engagement.
Jobber’s active workflows now connect 28 business-system apps, including Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Slack, HubSpot, Gmail, Salesforce, Intercom, NetSuite, Asana, Ashby, Livestorm, Tableau, Typeform, and Zoom. Teams also utilize Zapier MCP across 20 apps, demonstrating the capability’s expansion beyond isolated use cases. The breadth of integration underscores how automation has become embedded in daily operations rather than remaining a niche tool.
Katy Kowalczuk’s onboarding team exemplifies the practical impact, using automation to connect Livestorm registration data to live sheets, generate presentation materials in Claude, and send outputs to Slack. Separate workflows track attendance and summarize chat feedback, freeing the team to focus on facilitation and coaching. Ethan’s work transformed AI and automation from experimental projects into a company-wide capability, earning him the 2026 Zappy AI Transformation Leader of the Year.