Stephanie Wiseman - Founder & CEO, 10kR
Stephanie Wiseman, one of the first members of The Helm, my peer community for first-time female CEOs and founders from digital agencies, is co-founder and CEO of 10kR (Ten Thousand Robots). The agency’s name reflects her vision to scale intelligence rather than headcount, deploying thousands of AI agents to amplify a small, expert human team.
She represents the kind of forward thinking that’s essential in this moment of change and uncertainty for agencies. Female founders remain few, and those building new business models from scratch even fewer. Stephanie is doing both — challenging assumptions about how agencies grow and about who leads them. I sat down with her recently to talk about her journey, her philosophy, and how she’s reimagining agency work from the ground up.
From Medicine to Machine Learning
Stephanie’s path to agency leadership began with an early ambition to become a doctor. Growing up outside Boston and inspired by her grandfather’s entrepreneurial spirit, as well as her own experiences as a child facing medical issues and spending long periods in the healthcare system, she studied pre-med at Ohio State. Midway through, though, organic chemistry proved more obstacle than opportunity.
“I couldn’t get past it,” she laughed. “But I could build websites and understand systems.”
Self-taught programming skills soon replaced biology textbooks, and her focus shifted from medicine to digital problem-solving, setting her on the path to agency life.
A New Agency Business Model for the AI Era
After building her agency career in client services and business development in San Francisco and New York, Stephanie began to see a growing disconnect between how agencies operate and what today’s clients need. Traditional models built around large teams and linear processes were no longer a fit for a world where AI can accelerate almost every part of the creative workflow.
Her response was 10kR, a creative digital agency designed with AI at its core. Stephanie founded 10kR with her leadership team from YML, a group of experienced, forward-thinking operators who wanted to build something new. Unlike established firms adapting AI into existing systems, 10kR is natively AI-driven across infrastructure, operations, and creative output. The company operates more like a product business: lean teams, subscription-based engagement models, and AI-powered tools embedded in delivery.
“We're not just layering AI onto old workflows,” she said. “We're designing entirely new ones, built for speed, efficiency, and experimentation.”
This shift isn’t just about operations; it’s about rethinking how work gets done. Stephanie’s focus now is less on building org charts and more on designing workflows where people, AI, and intelligent agents work together seamlessly. It’s an approach that reimagines not just how agencies deliver work, but how they think, collaborate, and create.
The Role of AI in Creativity
Stephanie sees AI as a creative partner rather than a replacement for human insight. “AI can enhance creativity, but it doesn’t replace human judgment,” she explained. At 10kR, her team uses AI to generate synthetic personas, prototype creative directions, and automate repetitive tasks, freeing people to focus on higher-value work.
“The goal isn’t fewer people,” she added. “It’s freeing people to do the work that actually matters.”
That balance between automation and imagination is central to how 10kR operates. It allows the team to spend more time exploring ideas and less time managing process, and attracts the kind of talent modern agencies need most: people who are curious, adaptable, and eager to experiment.
Agency Leadership Today
For Stephanie, becoming a CEO is also about figuring out the role when the company doesn’t have the typical hierarchy or team structure of a traditional agency, and about finding her own style. Her approach is to establish and communicate the vision, provide focus, and make the decisions that keep the business moving forward, while partnering with talented and experienced co-founders and maintaining a clear client orientation.
“It’s a different kind of leadership. I’m building a business that isn’t about scaling through adding more people,” she said. “I’ve always leaned towards clients and business development, so the shift for me in stepping into this CEO role is learning where to focus, when to get involved, and when to step back and let others lead.”
Stephanie is also learning how to manage the pressures, challenges, and occasional insecurities that come with taking on this role while launching a business with an untested model. She’s finding her balance between projecting confidence and being open about uncertainty, knowing when to ask for guidance and when to trust her instincts. It’s a balance that takes both experimentation and courage.
What It Takes
Stephanie has taken on a rare combination: becoming a first-time CEO, founding a company from scratch, and reinventing the agency model during a period of massive technological change.
What sets her apart isn’t just her grasp of what AI can do, but her clarity about what only people can do. She leads with curiosity and conviction, comfortable showing uncertainty as well as confidence.
Stephanie embodies a new kind of founder: intelligent, pragmatic, and ambitious, yet deeply human.