Jaime Hazan

I think about technology the way I think about story: its value isn’t in doing the same thing faster; it’s in making entirely new things possible.

My background is in branding, interactive media, and complex institutions. I started in the NBC Page Program, worked on Dateline NBC, On-Air Promotions, and the launch of MSNBC, and later became Lead Graphics Producer for NBC Interactive / NBC Sports online, helping bring properties like Olympic coverage onto the early web. After that, I founded and led New York Interactive, a boutique digital studio that created sites, campaigns, and media for organizations including the United Nations’ Alliance of Civilizations, Goldman Sachs’ Investment Management Division, Disney Channel, the National Hockey League—including NHL-ICE and team sites—NBCUniversal/PGA’s “Two Days in Paradise,” Sysco, Nation’s Restaurant News, the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, and several asset-management firms.

At NYI, my job was to sit between the technology and the people it was meant to serve: to understand what the technology could do, what the brand stood for, and what the audience actually needed—and then build experiences that lined those up. That hasn’t changed; the tools have.

Today, when I look at AI, I don’t see a shortcut for writing emails or automating busywork. I see a pattern engine that, used well, can help us see what we’d never see on our own: subtle signals in histories, emerging behaviors in systems, and scenarios we can safely simulate before real lives, reputations, or money are on the line. Bad technology chases efficiency for its own sake. Good technology raises the bar on quality—of thought, of communication, of decisions. AI doesn’t replace thinking; it raises the standard for how well we think.

My life was knocked off course by 9/11. I served as a self-deployed volunteer responder at Ground Zero, and years later the health consequences of that exposure, compounded by major abdominal surgery, pushed me out of the workforce around 2015–2016. Since then, I’ve lived on the sharp end of large systems as a patient and advocate. I was the named plaintiff in Hazan v. WTC Volunteer Fund, a New York case that helped open workers’ compensation coverage to unaffiliated 9/11 volunteers, and I’ve been involved in efforts to protect and extend 9/11 health benefits. I’ve also written publicly about service dogs, trauma, and long-term illness.

It was an honor to work beside Joe Zadroga, pleading with America to pass legislation that would care for others far beyond ourselves.

These days, I’m rebuilding after catastrophic illness and major surgery. I lost part of my colon and rectum after a burst colon and severe sepsis, and I had to relearn how to walk and how to live in the world. I made a deal with GOD, and it’s a bill I’m happy to pay: if He allowed me to live, I would dedicate the rest of my life to making every action serve the public good, no matter what that may require. I started the moment I survived, writing lyrics from my hospital bed, and I’m now working on the music that goes alongside them.

I’m writing long-form narrative and actively studying the practical applications of AI in business, law, healthcare, and entertainment. I think a lot about how to combine brand, story, and emerging technology in ways that actually improve human lives in high-stakes situations.

I used AI while fighting advanced peritonitis to work with my infectious-disease doctor at UCLA and make sure we were thinking through every option. I had begun saying my goodbyes. I will never know whether we would have made the same decisions without checking massive amounts of data against published medical information.

I’m less interested in “tech for tech’s sake” and more interested in tools that help us illuminate patterns sooner, communicate clearly under pressure, and avoid the kinds of catastrophic misreads that change someone’s life in a single encounter.

If you’re working at the intersection of technology, story, and real human stakes—and you care more about depth and accuracy than hype alone—we’re probably speaking the same language.