OKLAHOMA CITY, OK - June 26, 2026 - Every week brings another headline about artificial intelligence reshaping the workplace — new tools, new layoffs, new predictions about which jobs survive. Dr. Daryl D. Green has spent the last several months asking a different question.

“Everyone is racing to answer what AI can do,” said Green, a leadership researcher and author who studies organizational change and the future of work. “Almost no one is asking what people still need, no matter how advanced the technology gets.”

Green’s answer, increasingly, is one word: belonging.

Dr. Green and his college mates came to support Raymond Cotton during the passing of Raymond’s father.

A FUNERAL, NOT A FORECAST

Green did not arrive at this idea in a boardroom or a conference panel. He arrived at it this spring, at a funeral in Shreveport, Louisiana, for Raymond Cotton — his college roommate and friend of more than forty years.

“The church was full,” Green said. “Not because of a title, a position, or an accomplishment. It was full because of relationships. Watching that, I kept thinking about every conversation I have with leaders about AI and the future of work — and how rarely anyone talks about this.”

Seven of Green’s old college roommates and classmates traveled from across the country to be there, decades after they had last shared a campus. For Green, the moment crystallized something he has come to believe is true of every organization, not just personal friendships: the things that hold up under pressure are rarely the things measured on a quarterly report.

WHY BELONGING, WHY NOW

Green’s argument is not that technology is the enemy. It is that technology has gotten so good at solving efficiency problems that it has quietly exposed a different one — a belonging problem that most organizations were never built to measure.

“Technology can improve performance,” Green said. “But relationships build loyalty. Trust builds culture. Belonging builds communities. Organizations spending all their energy on the first and none on the last three are going to be surprised by what breaks.”

It is a theme Green has been developing in his writing, including an emerging body of work he calls The Nehemiah Blueprint in the Age of AI — drawing on the biblical leader who rebuilt a city’s walls, but understood that the real work was rebuilding the people inside them. Green sees a parallel for today’s leaders: institutions are being asked to modernize quickly, but the ones that endure will be the ones that modernize without losing their people in the process.

“AI is the backdrop right now. It is forcing the question,” Green said. “But the question itself is old. Do the people around you know they matter? That has always been the real test of leadership, in any age.”

A VOICE DRAWING NATIONAL ATTENTION

Green’s perspective on leadership and belonging has begun reaching audiences well beyond any single institution. He has been invited to speak at an upcoming national AI leadership forum — a stage that has featured technologists, policy leaders, and corporate executives, but rarely a voice making the case for human connection as seriously as it makes the case for innovation.

“I am not there to talk about algorithms,” Green said of the invitation. “I am there to talk about what happens to people while everyone else is talking about algorithms.”

Green plans to continue writing about these ideas in the months ahead, exploring how leaders across business, ministry, and education can navigate disruption without losing the human relationships that make institutions worth leading in the first place.

ABOUT DR. DARYL D. GREEN

Dr. Daryl D. Green is a leadership researcher, author, and speaker whose work explores organizational change, workforce development, and the human dimensions of leadership during disruption. He is the author of The Dean’s Devotional: 21 Proverbs for Academic Leadership and writes regularly on leadership, belonging, and the future of work. He currently serves as Dean of the School of Business at Langston University, Oklahoma’s only public HBCU, and spent 27 years as a senior engineering manager with the U.S. Department of Energy before entering higher education.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Estraletta A. Green

Email: advice@darylgreen.org

Website: www.darylgreen.org

LinkedIn: Dr. Daryl Green LinkedIn Profile

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