AI Communications
From healthcare to sports, and from finance to customer service, a quiet revolution is underway. One that is about helping people and businesses achieve more by elevating human potential through AI. Welcome to RingCentral’s AI Changemakers, celebrating the individuals harnessing agentic AI to transform how we work, serve, and connect.
What makes an AI Changemaker?
AI Changemakers aren’t just early adopters or tech enthusiasts. They’re visionaries who recognize that AI can solve their most pressing operational challenges while preserving what matters most: the human touch. These leaders are deploying RingCentral’s suite of AI tools, including AI Receptionist (AIR), AI Virtual Assistant (AVA), and AI Conversation Expert (ACE), to power breakthroughs across sports and entertainment, healthcare, professional services, and customer experiences.
Each AI Changemaker episode calls attention to the person behind the vision, innovation, and the real-world impact of their advancements.
Paul Rapier: Building the future of sports on an AI foundation
Deloitte’s 2025 sports industry outlook shows that growing investment and competition for fan attention are driving professional sports organizations to become more sophisticated.
As streaming, social media, and immersive formats expand fan engagement beyond the venue, leagues and teams are strengthening operations by expanding data and digital capabilities to adapt their media and fan engagement strategies.
Paul Rapier, Vice President of IT at the Detroit Pistons, described himself as “a fan with a vision.” Rather than rebuilding legacy systems, Paul established a new AI-driven foundation using RingCentral’s Agentic AI Communications Suite, integrated with RingEX and RingCX platforms.
Watch Paul’s episode to learn how he helped the Pistons deploy AI to achieve time savings, actionable insights, and enhance operations.
Liesl Leary-Perez: Scaling compassion in crisis
The mental health industry is confronting a deepening crisis: nearly 1 in 10 U.S. adults reported a mental health crisis in 2025. Yet the workforce itself is under severe strain: burnout affects 21% to 67% of mental health professionals, compassion fatigue reaches up to 85%, and a global shortage of over 5 million providers continues to grow.
When call center volume at Axis Integrated Mental Health quadrupled from 500 to 2,000 calls a week, Liesl Leary-Perez, Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer, faced an existential challenge: how could her team maintain human connection with families seeking help, while addressing the massive increase in call volume?
Her episode shows how Liesl used AI-driven automation, freeing staff to focus on complex cases that require a personal touch.
Eric Brosius: Improving patient experiences with AI
The healthcare staffing crisis is rapidly eroding patient service quality across the U.S. healthcare system. A survey found that 55% of frontline healthcare workers plan to change jobs in 2026, driven by burnout, chronic understaffing, and feeling undervalued—sentiments shared by 84% of respondents.
The situation is especially alarming given projections from the Health Resources and Services Administration that the U.S. will face a shortage of nearly 700,000 healthcare professionals by 2037, just as demand surges from an aging population.
Eric Brosius, Vice President of Technology Services at Sun River Health—New York’s largest federally qualified health center—is strategically embracing AI to future-proof the organization while improving patient and employee experiences across underserved communities.
In this episode, learn how Eric helped Sun River unify 2,000 employees across dozens of locations with AI-powered communications.
The future is agentic
These AI Changemakers agree that agentic AI isn’t about automation for the sake of automation, it’s a strategic lever for delivering more value—handling fast, repeatable, and consistent tasks—so humans can focus on what they do best: providing empathy, exercising judgement, and building trust.
Whether it’s an AI agent answering calls in seconds, AI-powered transcriptions capturing critical insights, or sentiment analysis revealing patterns human teams might miss, these tools are enabling organizations to scale without sacrificing quality. They’re transforming overwhelmed employees into operationally excelling teams, turning data into a competitive advantage, and, most importantly, empowering employees to focus on the work that truly matters.
The AI Changemakers movement is just getting started
Paul Rapier, Liesl Leary-Perez, and Eric Brosius are AI Changemakers pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. The future of work isn’t about choosing between human connection and innovation—it’s about using technology to strengthen both. Watch all the episodes here.
Originally published Jan 21, 2026
