Certified Chief AI Leader

Opens with two minutes on how the course works and what you walk out holding. Then the mandate itself, where the role sits in the org, and your first 90 days.

You build: Your mandate memo: scope, reporting line, decision rights, and this year's one outcome.

1. 1.Before You Start
2. 2.What the Job Actually Is: Portfolio, Governance, Capability
3. 3.Working the Reporting Line You Have
4. 4.Strategy by Friday
5. 5.The First 90 Days Set Precedent
6. 6.Write the Mandate Memo, Then Send It
7. 7.Your Organization: Mandate & Role
8. 8.Checkpoint: The Role

Find the P&L line worth attacking, put one bet each on Now, Next, and Later with a kill number on every one, and cost the whole bill before your CFO does.

You build: Your three-horizon roadmap: a Now, Next, and Later bet, each with a named owner, a kill number, and the objective it serves.

1. 1.A Portfolio, Not a Wishlist
2. 2.Start From a Line on the P&L
3. 3.The Bet in One Sentence
4. 4.The Pilot That Won't Die
5. 5.Sequencing Bets and Goals That Survive a Board Meeting
6. 6.The Costed Business Case
7. 7.From Vague Objective to Three-Horizon Portfolio
8. 8.Your Horizon Plan
9. 9.Checkpoint: The AI Roadmap

The three judgment roles that come before any engineer, the four tells you filled them in the wrong order, hire vs upskill vs partner, and the signal that your operating model has expired.

You build: Your operating model, your first two roles, a dated first hire, and partner exit terms.

1. 1.The Org Chart Is the Strategy
2. 2.When Your Operating Model Expires
3. 3.The Four Tells You Hired in the Wrong Order
4. 4.Two Directors, One Mandate
5. 5.Partner First, Hire Last, Get It Handed Back
6. 6.Your Operating Model Decisions
7. 7.Checkpoint: Operating Model & Team

Responsible AI at company scale: four-part governance with a clock on every part, the guardrails that hold when a team flips a setting, a 20-minute ethics screen, and the EU AI Act read as a filing calendar.

You build: Your governance one-pager: risk tiers, a review owner for each tier, an escalation trigger, and an audit cadence.

1. 1.Governance That Ships
2. 2.Guardrails That Hold Under Pressure
3. 3.The Friday Escalation
4. 4.The EU AI Act on Your Roadmap
5. 5.ISO 42001, NIST, and the Procurement Questionnaire
6. 6.The AI Governance One-Pager
7. 7.Your Organization: Risk Tiers & Escalation
8. 8.Checkpoint: Governance & Risk

Score your data before someone gives the board a date, baseline a pilot so its result survives the CFO, and report AI returns in the four currencies they are paid in.

You build: Your data baseline: one dataset scored, your board metric, and the gap to close.

1. 1.Your AI Roadmap Is a Data Bet
2. 2.Score One Dataset in 15 Minutes
3. 3.Baseline First, or the Pilot Proves Nothing
4. 4.ROI at the Portfolio Level
5. 5.The Peanut Butter Budget
6. 6.Your Data & Measurement Baseline
7. 7.Checkpoint: Data & Decisions

Why rollouts flatline, how to tell the six causes apart inside a week, and what to change on a manager's scorecard so adoption is worth their hours.

You build: Your adoption plan: the team you win first, the scorecard number you change, the metric you read weekly, and the story you want retold.

1. 1.The Adoption Funnel
2. 2.Six Causes, One Question
3. 3.What a No Tells You, by Layer
4. 4.The Sentence and the Scorecard
5. 5.The Flatline
6. 6.Metrics That Predict
7. 7.Your Adoption Plan
8. 8.Checkpoint: Adoption

The question that sorts drafts from deeds, the chain math that turns 95% a step into 60% across ten steps, a failure budget in three lines, and how the second team gets live in thirty days.

You build: Your first agent design: the workflow, the human gate, and the failure that ends the pilot.

1. 1.Drafts vs. Deeds
2. 2.Where Agents Pay and How They Fail
3. 3.Write the Failure Budget Before It Runs
4. 4.Synergy Plays: Making the Second Use Happen
5. 5.Design an Agent With a Human Gate
6. 6.Your First Agent
7. 7.Checkpoint: GenAI & Agents

Where lock-in accumulates, the three clauses a vendor will concede on the day you sign, and the exit you have to test before you need it.

You build: Your vendor strategy: the stance you take across the stack, the vendor relationship that worries you most, and the exit terms you will not sign without.

1. 1.Where Lock-In Lives, and the Question That Finds It
2. 2.The Demo-to-Production Gap
3. 3.The Quarter-End Discount
4. 4.Five Thousand Seats
5. 5.The Contract: Clauses That Move
6. 6.The Negotiation Order, and the Security Ask
7. 7.Vendor Evaluation: The Stop Rules
8. 8.Your Vendor Strategy
9. 9.Checkpoint: Vendor Strategy

Rehearse the board conversation, run the same frameworks in someone else's building, set the rhythm that keeps the portfolio current, measure your draft against a worked Blueprint, then fill the gaps and generate the board-ready PDF. Then sit the exam.

1. 1.Defending the Blueprint: The Board Conversation
2. 2.Advising With the Blueprint: Client Engagements
3. 3.Keeping the Portfolio Current
4. 4.What Board-Ready Looks Like: A Worked Blueprint
5. 5.Assemble your AI Transformation Blueprint