I build AI systems and I've run the organizations that have to adopt them.
Fractional AI leader and AI governance consultant, Los Angeles
I work with companies as a fractional AI leader — the fractional Chief AI Officer who comes in when leadership knows AI matters but doesn't yet have someone to own AI strategy, governance, and adoption.
Email meThe technology is the easy part.
Most AI initiatives don't fail on the model. They fail on everything around it: no one owns the decision, the tooling sprawls, the data-handling rules are unwritten, and the people who have to change how they work were never brought along. Pilots pile up. Production never arrives.
I've been on both sides of that problem. For 15+ years I ran the customer-facing organizations that have to adopt new technology — at Eptura, Smartsheet, and PatientPop. Over the past year I've been building the AI systems myself, in production, in a regulated environment where the output has to hold up under legal scrutiny. That's the background I bring to every fractional AI leadership engagement.
Fractional AI leadership services
Three ways to engage. Most clients start with an assessment and move into governance or a build.
AI opportunity assessment
Where AI actually creates value in your business versus where it's noise. A short, direct engagement: I look at your workflows, your data, and your team, and come back with a prioritized set of use cases, what each is worth, and what it would take to ship.
AI governance and risk
The framework that lets teams move fast without creating risk: approved tooling, data-handling and confidentiality policy, an AI systems register, output validation standards, and a clear line for where human judgment stays in the loop. Built for environments where a confident wrong answer is a liability.
AI implementation and adoption
Either I build the first production systems or I direct the team that does — and I run the adoption and change program alongside it, so the technology gets used by people who didn't ask for it. Redesigning how work gets done is the actual project. The software is the deliverable.
Who hires a fractional AI leader
- Leadership teams that know AI matters but don't have an owner for it yet
- Companies in regulated or litigation-exposed environments — healthcare, legal, financial services, compliance
- Support, customer success, and operations organizations under pressure to automate without losing the team
- Growth-stage companies that need an executive's judgment without an executive's headcount
What I've built and run
Building
Co-founder and Head of AI at Scaled Comp, where I architected production AI systems on the Anthropic Claude and OpenAI APIs — document extraction, classification, retrieval, and multi-step agentic workflows applied to California wage-and-hour compliance — along with the governance framework that makes the output defensible.
Running
Global support and customer experience leadership at Eptura (Thoma Bravo), Smartsheet, and PatientPop. 24/7 follow-the-sun operations. Post-acquisition integration of nine separately run teams. Offshore and BPO delivery models.
Common questions
What does a fractional AI leader do?
A fractional AI leader — sometimes called a fractional Chief AI Officer — owns AI strategy, governance, and adoption for a company part-time. That means deciding which use cases are worth pursuing, setting the rules for tooling and data handling, and running the change program so the systems actually get used. You get executive-level judgment without a full-time executive hire.
How is this different from an AI consultant or an agency?
Consultants deliver recommendations; agencies deliver software. A fractional leader is accountable for the outcome: the decision, the governance, the build, and the adoption. I've run the organizations that have to live with these systems, which is the part most AI projects fail on.
Do you build the systems yourself?
Yes, when it makes sense. I work hands-on with the Anthropic Claude and OpenAI APIs, Python, and agentic workflows, and I've shipped production AI in a regulated environment. On larger engagements I direct your engineers or a vendor instead.
What industries do you work in?
Regulated and litigation-exposed environments are where I do my best work: healthcare, legal and compliance, financial services, and SaaS companies serving those markets. Customer support, customer success, and operations are the functions I know deepest.
Where are you based?
Los Angeles. I work with companies across the U.S. remotely and on-site in Southern California.
Start with a conversation
Send a note describing where you are with AI. I'll tell you what I'd do first and whether I'm the right person to do it.
info@advising.la