What if showing up for the people you care about didn't require constant stress and last-minute scrambling? In this episode of Lead with AI, with host Dr. Tamara Nall,  Rose Arendarczyk, founder and CEO of GiftEase, combines her background as a consultant leading multimillion-dollar transformations with her lived experience as a working mom struggling to balance career and personal relationships.

Despite her ability to manage complex portfolios and lead transformational projects, Rose consistently struggled with gift giving. Remembering occasions, figuring out appropriate gifts, and getting them delivered became overwhelming. This personal challenge revealed a much larger problem: 88% of moms carry the responsibility for all gift-giving in their households, and Americans receive $10 billion worth of unwanted gifts during the holiday season alone. Rose's solution: an AI-powered platform that transforms gift giving by focusing on relationships rather than products.

 The Hidden Burden of Remembering Everyone and Everything   

Rose spent over a dozen years thinking she wasn't showing up for her people. As someone who could orchestrate enterprise transformations, the inability to remember her brother's jujitsu tournament or her nephew's eighth grade graduation felt like a personal failure. The problem wasn't a lack of care. The issue was execution—finding time and mental space to plan, shop, and deliver gifts while managing a demanding career and motherhood.

Gift giving requires maintaining a running inventory of relationships, tracking significant dates, understanding individual preferences, researching options, managing budgets, and ensuring timely delivery. For the 88% of moms who carry this responsibility, it becomes another invisible task on an already overwhelming list. The pressure compounds during peak seasons when you need to gift multiple people simultaneously while maintaining thoughtfulness.

The consequences affect everyone involved. Givers experience stress, guilt, and the sense of constantly falling short. Receivers end up with items that miss the mark because they were purchased in haste. These gifts create waste when they end up returned or forgotten in closets, financial loss for givers, and disappointment for everyone involved.

 Bringing Relationship Intelligence Into Technology   

Most gift recommendation platforms approach the problem backwards. They start with products and try to match them to people using broad demographic categories. Rose took the opposite approach with GiftEase, building a system that starts with understanding your gift circle—the specific people you care about—and curates ideas based on the unique dynamics of each relationship.

The platform works through what Rose describes as a wizard experience, guiding users through questions designed to capture the essence of each person. The system gathers information about individual preferences, interests, shared memories, and relationship dynamics. Rose uses her own dad as an example: he loves watching sports but not playing them, enjoys number puzzles, and only does jigsaw puzzles when spending time with her specifically. These nuanced details create the foundation for truly personalized recommendations.

The three-way understanding that makes GiftEase different includes the recipient's unique characteristics, the specific relationship dynamics between giver and receiver, and the giver's own values. Do you prefer to support small businesses? Do you want to give experiences rather than things? This comprehensive approach ensures recommendations align with both parties' authentic selves. Unlike one-time solutions like asking ChatGPT for gift ideas, GiftEase builds a continuous relationship with your gift-giving journey, allowing you to add gift notes after conversations and refine recommendations over time.

 Real Stories of Transformation   

The impact of shifting from reactive to proactive gift planning becomes clear through early user experiences. One mom participating in the private beta testing entered basic information about her son and received a recommendation that stopped her in her tracks: a character soccer ball based on his favorite sport and characters. She told Rose she was kicking herself for not thinking of it, explaining how constantly juggling everything else had created blind spots even for obvious solutions.

This illustrates how GiftEase removes the friction that prevents intentional gift giving. The platform remembers context that busy people forget and surfaces ideas at the right moments. When Rose's dad mentions her brother's upcoming jujitsu tournament and her nephew's eighth grade graduation, she can immediately add gift notes to their profiles. GiftEase captures this context, building a living database that grows more useful over time.

The system also addresses the "dad problem" that generic gift guides create. Every Father's Day, countless people receive the same tired suggestions: tools, golf equipment, ties, grills. These recommendations ignore the reality that not every dad golfs or wants another tie. By capturing individual preferences and relationship specifics, GiftEase generates ideas that reflect the actual person rather than demographic stereotypes. This shift from transactional to relational gifting helps people give more meaningful gifts while reducing the stress of planning.

 AI Personal Assistants for Everyday Life   

Rose envisions a future where GiftEase becomes as seamlessly integrated into daily life as Siri. You wake up to a proactive notification: an important occasion is coming up in a week, and you already have three curated gift ideas ready to review. You select your preferred option, and the AI handles the rest while you move forward with your day.

This vision extends beyond convenience to address deeper issues around sustainability and intentionality. By helping people plan proactively rather than scrambling at the last minute, GiftEase aims to reduce the massive waste created by hasty purchases. The platform encourages users to think about what their recipients actually want and how they want to show up as givers.

The future Rose describes includes voice-enabled interactions where adding information becomes as natural as having a conversation. You're driving to work when your dad mentions important life events. You tell GiftEase to add gift notes, and the AI integrates that information into the relevant profiles without requiring you to stop. Most people navigate 10 to 20 gift-giving occasions annually. Having an AI assistant that manages this continuous cycle represents a significant reduction in cognitive load.

Ease of Gifting Reinvented

GiftEase launches publicly in November 2025 with an MVP focused on relationship-based recommendations. Rose deliberately chose to prioritize the people-first approach over product-led features. Rather than pushing immediate purchases, the platform helps users curate gift boards for their entire gift circle.

The platform's key advantages include:

• Removes the stress of remembering occasions and planning gifts

• Curates ideas based on actual relationships, not generic demographics

• Builds a continuous gift planning system rather than one-time searches

• Helps reduce unwanted gift waste through more intentional recommendations

• Integrates your values as a giver (small businesses, experiences, budget)

• Evolves with your relationships through gift notes and ongoing context

• Prepares you for occasions before last-minute scrambling

• Focuses on intention and human connection over transactions

Users can pin ideas they love, dismiss recommendations that don't fit, and provide additional context to train the system. Over time, GiftEase learns patterns, preferences, and relationship dynamics. For Rose, GiftEase represents a personal mission to help people show up for their loved ones without the stress and guilt she carried for over a decade.

Ready to reduce your gift giving stress? Join the waitlist at thegiftease.com and follow @thegiftease on Instagram to be notified when GiftEase launches publicly in November 2025.

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