CA, UNITED STATES, October 28, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The FellowHero co-founder and CEO is building an AI workforce that lets trades businesses take on more work than their headcount allows.
San Francisco, California – Most people expect AI to take jobs. Maya Aharon expects it to create them.
“AI is not software. It’s a hire,” says Maya, co-founder and CEO of FellowHero. “For generations, a business could only grow as fast as it could hire. AI breaks that equation. In the skilled trades, where there aren’t enough people to do the work, that doesn’t replace anyone. It makes room for more.”
It is a conviction rooted in experience. Throughout a career building technology for buildings, HVAC, and energy, Maya kept running into the same problem: customer demand was there, but the businesses that install and service the equipment could not find enough skilled people to keep up. When she acquired and ran a commercial HVAC business, she saw that problem from the inside.
To Maya, the built environment is the bedrock of modern life. Hospitals, schools, homes, and workplaces all depend on systems that need careful maintenance, and demand for that work keeps rising. Yet the trades are squeezed from two directions: a shrinking field workforce, and a service model that does not let the people still in the field do more. For an industry that cannot hire fast enough, she argues, AI is not a threat. It removes the constraint holding the industry back.
She is candid that AI will take on more and more of the work done entirely on a screen. The physical world is different. “No building is the same as another, very much like people,” she says. “Every job is a different key and a different lock.” Someone still has to show up, open the equipment, and do the job. That is why Maya expects AI to open more field jobs than it removes, and to make the trades easier to enter by helping newcomers ramp up faster and perform more consistently.
FellowHero is how she is putting that vision to work. The company first connects a service business’s scattered records into the account and equipment history it needs. Then SAM, FellowHero’s AI workforce, joins the team as a hire, taking on full roles and delivering finished work: service reports, renewal packages, replacement proposals, and sales campaigns. Businesses gain capacity and capabilities they cannot hire for, and become more profitable in the process.
Maya’s path to FellowHero began long before AI was part of everyday conversation. She served six years in the Israeli Defense Forces, in special forces and cyber-intelligence units, an experience that shaped her resilience and mission-oriented leadership. She has worked in AI since 2014 and co-founded Servicefriend, an AI company acquired early in its life by Facebook. She went on to build technology for the built environment as General Manager and Vice President of Product at Turntide Technologies and as Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Redaptive, and founded Proper Formation, a consulting firm specializing in go-to-market, product-market fit, and value proposition definition and branding. FellowHero brings those threads together: more than a decade in AI, years in the built environment, and an operator’s understanding of what it takes to run a trades business.
She credits her success to being purpose-driven: pursuing her goals with passion and staying committed to her vision until it becomes reality. The best career advice she has received is to keep improving every day, because not growing is a sign of being on the wrong path. She has also learned not to take setbacks personally. Her advice for young women entering technology follows the same principles: pursue what you believe in, study it deeply, and work to master it. “Rejection says nothing about your worth,” she says. “It’s a normal part of the path to growth and success.”
Authenticity, transparency, and empathy guide how Maya leads: showing up as her true self, communicating openly, and leading with understanding and respect. She acknowledges that this moment in AI is unsettling. The playbook for how businesses grow is being rewritten, and leaders and workers alike face real uncertainty. She sees that uncertainty as an opening, and as a responsibility. “Leaders have to be deliberate about the future AI builds,” she says. “I want it to be one where the industries that keep the world running can grow, and more people can build careers in them.”
Maya holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Management, with a focus on Marketing, from Reichman University, and is fluent in English and Hebrew.
Learn More about Maya Aharon:
Through her Influential Women profile: https://influentialwomen.com/connect/maya-aharon or through FellowHero, https://fellowhero.ai/
Influential Women
Influential Women provides a platform where women from all backgrounds can connect, share their perspectives, and create content that empowers themselves and others. Through storytelling, thought leadership, and creative expression, Influential Women amplifies voices that inspire change.
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