AI Strategy & Advisory Lead

AI Advisory Lead

Midtown Manhattan, 2 days onsite

Long term Contract

About the Role

We’re looking for a senior AI advisor who can sit across the table from the CIO, executive leadership and stakeholders to help them see what’s genuinely possible with AI, and prove it with fast, credible pilots. This is a consultative, influence-driven role, part strategist, part change agent, part governance partner.

This is not a hands-on build role. We are not looking for someone to develop agents, automate the software development lifecycle, or engineer AI systems, our clients internal teams already own that. We need someone who can identify the right opportunities, win executive sponsorship, prove value quickly, and then lead the adoption and change management effort that makes AI stick across a complex organization.

Success in this role looks like: the CIO trusts this person to bring the next big idea forward, and the business trusts them to roll it out safely, thoughtfully, and with measurable impact.

What You’ll Do

Executive Advisory & Vision

• Act as a thought partner to the CIO and executive leadership on where AI creates real, defensible business value
• Translate emerging AI capability into a point of view leadership can act on
• Bring an outside-in perspective: what competitors, peers, and the broader market are doing with AI, and what it means for them
• Facilitate executive workshops and discovery sessions that surface real business pain points, not theoretical use cases

Prove It, Then Scale

• Identify a focused set of high-visibility use cases and run tightly scoped pilots designed to win quickly and credibly
• Partner directly with the CIO as an executive sponsor to generate early wins that build the mandate for broader investment
• Evaluate opportunities based on business value, adoption readiness, complexity, and risk — and know when to say no
• Identify and validate the opportunity ; engineering and technical teams own the build. This role does not develop agents or automate delivery pipelines.

Adoption, Rollout & Change Management

• Own the human side of AI rollout: training, communication, habit-building, and resistance management
• Design the operating model for how AI gets embedded into real business workflows, not just deployed and forgotten
• Build feedback loops and usage reporting that show genuine adoption, not just technical deployment
• Drive measurable operational outcomes: efficiency gains, cost reduction, productivity improvement, error reduction

Governance & Risk as an Enabler

• Partner with InfoSec, Legal, and Privacy to build guardrails that let the business move fast, safely
• Be the person leadership trusts to say “yes, and here’s how we do it responsibly”
• Monitor emerging AI risks including hallucination, bias, data leakage, and third-party model risk
• Support the development of practical, operational AI governance frameworks

Stakeholder Influence

• Build trust and alignment across a matrixed, federated organization, HR, Legal, Operations, Communications, Technology
• Influence senior stakeholders and drive meaningful organizational change without relying on formal authority
• Present recommendations, pilot results, and roadmap updates directly to leadership and governance forums

What We’re Looking For

• A track record advising or partnering directly with C-suite stakeholders on technology strategy, not just delivering roadmaps to them
• Demonstrated ability to build executive trust and drive adoption
• Deep, current fluency in the generative AI landscape and a genuine passion for following the space
• Strong change management and organizational adoption experience
• Excellent facilitation, communication, and executive presence
• Working understanding of data governance, privacy, and cyber security principles as they relate to AI
• Comfort operating in ambiguity, with excellent judgment and risk awareness

Preferred

• Experience with Microsoft AI technologies (Copilot, Azure AI, Power Platform, Purview) and enterprise platforms (Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, Dynamics 365, ServiceNow)
• Experience building AI governance or responsible-AI frameworks
• Experience within nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, or mission-driven organizations

What This Role Is Not

• Not a hands-on AI engineering or prompt-engineering role
• Not an agent-development or SDLC-automation role
• Not a traditional backlog-owning Product Manager role…