Case study slot 01 · reserved
- Client
- Engagement
- Result
Published when the engagement ships and the numbers are in.
From the service wall
scope, price, finish line
Fractional Chief AI Officer
A Chief AI Officer’s judgment, without the C-suite headcount.
The roster
sound familiar?
Who books this.
The CEO with a board asking about AI
The board wants an AI answer every quarter, and a slide is not a strategy. You want someone senior at the table who has actually shipped this work.
The CIO or CTO who owns everything technical
You already run the estate. You want a partner for the AI-specific calls: build versus buy, vendor triage, model risk, and what to tell the audit committee.
The COO watching pilots multiply
Every department has an AI experiment and nobody has a standard. You want one plan, one owner, and a way to say no with a straight face.
The finish line
what you keep
Done looks like this.
No. 01
A living AI roadmap, reviewed and re-decided every month
No. 02
Written tool and vendor evaluations you can act on
No. 03
An AI use policy your counsel can actually review
No. 04
Executives who make AI calls confidently, without waiting on us
Proof
prints still drying
Proof from this line of work, earned first.
This slot is reserved for a real Fractional Chief AI Officer engagement with real numbers. We publish nothing we didn’t measure. Until this line’s study ships, the results wall shows what our measured proof looks like.
Job ticket
specifics, in writing
The job, on one plate.
Job ticket
- Format
- Monthly advisory retainer
- Commitment
- Quarter by quarter, renewed when it earns it
- Cadence
- One standing leadership session monthly, office hours between
- Delivery
- Based in Chicago, on-site or remote
- Works with
- Your executive team and department leads
- From you
- A decision-maker in the room every session
The cadence
a steady drumbeat
What a month of AI leadership looks like.
Monthly leadership working sessions
Live decisions on the table: the vendor pitch, the stalled pilot, the budget line. We work them together and leave with calls made and owners named.
A living AI roadmap
One document that says what you are doing, what you are not doing, and why. Updated every session so it never rots into shelfware.
Tool and vendor evaluations
We sit through the demos so you don’t have to, then hand you a recommendation in writing. Renewals get the same scrutiny as new deals.
Team office hours
A standing line for your managers and builders between sessions. Small unblocks now beat big rescues later.
Governance guidance
Acceptable-use rules, data boundaries, and review gates for anything that touches customers. Matched to the risk you carry and written so people follow them.
Packages
no mystery pricing
Pick the shape. We fill in the numbers.
No. 01
Advisory Retainer
The core engagement: monthly working sessions, the living roadmap, evaluations, office hours, and governance counsel.
No. 02
Advisory + Build Oversight
Everything in the retainer, plus we direct the automation and agent builds your roadmap approves, from scope through ship.
No. 03
Interim CAIO
A named AI executive inside your org while you search for the permanent one. We’ll help write that job description too.
Numbers on the first call. No discovery-call maze.
After we ship
we answer the phone
We stay until it sticks.
Between sessions you’re not on your own. Send over the vendor pitch or the draft policy and a real person answers within one business day. Everything we produce lives in your tools under your name, so the roadmap, the evaluations, and the policies stay with you no matter what.
Most AI strategy fails as a document and succeeds as a habit. The questions don’t arrive once a year in deck form; they arrive weekly. Which vendor. Which pilot. Which policy. Which risk is real and which is a headline. What leadership teams actually need is senior judgment on a schedule, sitting at the table when those decisions land.
So that’s how we run it. Once a month we sit with your executive team and work the live docket: the renewal that doubled in price, the pilot that stalled, the tool a department adopted before anyone read the terms. Calls get made, owners get named, and the roadmap gets updated before we leave the room. Between sessions, office hours keep your managers unblocked and the momentum honest.
The counsel comes from the workshop, not from a subscription to someone else’s research. The same practice that advises your executives spends the rest of the week building automations and agents, so when a vendor demo bends the truth, we recognize the smell. Advice ages fast in this field. Ours gets rebuilt weekly by the work.
And because we’re human-first to the bone, the exit is designed in from the start. We measure the engagement by how many decisions your team makes without calling us. If the seat should ever be full-time, we’ll say so before you have to ask, and everything we built together stays yours. Good advisors leave a capability, not a dependency.
FAQ
asked at the counter
Asked often. Answered straight.
What is a fractional Chief AI Officer?
A senior AI executive who works with your leadership team on a part-time retainer instead of a full-time hire. You get the judgment, the roadmap, and the vendor instincts without the salary, the search, or the wait.
Do we need a full-time Chief AI Officer?
Most organizations need someone accountable for AI direction before they need a full-time seat. If your scale ever says otherwise, we’ll tell you, help you write the role, and help you hire the person.
What does the monthly retainer actually include?
A standing working session with your leadership team, office hours for your managers between sessions, a living roadmap we keep current, and written evaluations of the tools and vendors on your desk. Governance counsel runs through all of it.
What is the minimum commitment?
One quarter. Strategy work needs a little runway, and after that we re-earn the engagement quarter by quarter. No annual lock-in.
Will you work with our existing CIO and data teams?
That’s the design. We work alongside your CIO, CTO, and data leads, not around them, and we put recommendations in writing so their teams can challenge the reasoning.
Do you build things or just advise?
The retainer is judgment and direction. When you want the building done too, Advisory + Build Oversight puts our automation and agent work under the same roof, so strategy and delivery answer to one standard.
How do you handle AI governance and risk?
We write rules your teams will actually follow: acceptable use, data boundaries, and review gates for anything customer-facing. Practical policy that fits the risk you carry, not a binder nobody opens.
What if we already have an AI strategy?
Good, that’s a head start. We pressure-test it, keep it current, and turn it into monthly decisions with owners. A strategy nobody revisits is a memo.