Your CEO and your board ask when AI will deliver on the investment. Your regulator, your auditor, and plaintiff’s counsel ask who owns the risk when it goes wrong. The answer to both questions is a single named owner, working controls, and evidence that stands up under scrutiny. That is what Blackbox Zero builds for regulated mid-market enterprises. You work directly with me. No junior staff, no leverage pyramid, no separate software to buy.
Two questions decide every AI program. Most firms can answer neither.
Former Deputy Chief Auditor, IBM · Voting Member, IBM AI Ethics Board · Published in Corporate Board Member · CFA · MBA, Yale · MA & BA, Computer Science
START WHERE YOU SIT
Make AI defensible.
You are the CCO, CRO, CAE, or General Counsel. Your examiner, your external auditor, or your audit committee has started asking AI questions your current inventory cannot answer. The AI Exposure Diagnostic answers them in three weeks, at a fixed fee, with about ten hours of your team’s time.
Accelerate AI value.
You are the CEO, a business unit leader, or the private equity sponsor behind one. The pilots multiply, production promotion is too slow, and the board keeps asking when the investment will return value. The fractional Chief AI Officer seat puts one accountable owner over driving those outcomes.
Two offerings, two buyers. Choose the question on your desk.
THE PROBLEM
1 in 3
Only about one in three risk and finance professionals reports data quality high enough to trust for AI use. The rest are generating AI output from inputs nobody has validated.
(Workiva Global Practitioner Survey, 2,300 respondents)
Already law
If you operate in financial services or healthcare, your AI is already governed by the SEC, FINRA, HIPAA, and your examiners. No new AI statutes are required for a regulator exam finding to reach your desk.
$250K–$460K
What companies between $1B and $5B in revenue pay a full-time AI officer in cash, before equity, incentives, or any support staff - which is why the ownership gap remains.
(Heidrick & Struggles, 2025 compensation survey)
Most firms have an AI policy and a committee. Almost none have an owner.
Your policy only governs use cases it knows about. Your committee only reviews what reaches it. Your board only oversees what is reported to it. Meanwhile, AI is already embedded in the platforms your teams use every day. When a regulator or plaintiff’s counsel asks who owned the AI decision that failed, “the committee” is not a defensible answer. And when your board asks when the AI investment will deliver business value, a committee can’t answer that question either.
AI governance done right is defined by a named owner, working controls, and evidence that stands up under scrutiny. When built that way, it becomes the reason your AI ships faster, not slower.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Regulated enterprises, $100M to $2B in revenue.
Blackbox Zero serves mid-market banks, insurers, asset managers, private equity, and healthcare companies: large enough that an AI failure carries regulatory and legal consequence, small enough that a Big 4 army and a $400,000 officer hire are off the table. When AI defensibility is the priority, buyers are the CCO, CRO, CAE, or General Counsel. When AI value acceleration is the priority, the CEO, business unit leader, or PE sponsor lead the way. Companies that want the benefit of Fortune 50 AI governance expertise with high responsiveness will get the most value from Blackbox Zero. The practice is built for firms where AI is already in the business, not firms still deciding whether it will be.
HOW ENGAGEMENT WORKS
Three rungs. Every engagement starts on the first one.
1
AI Exposure Diagnostic
Three weeks, fixed fee. A validated inventory of every place AI operates in your business, a gap assessment against your policy, and a board-ready summary. About ten hours of your team’s time.
Fixed fee, published on the AI Governance page.
2
12-Week Governance Sprint
Build what the diagnostic surfaced: a governance framework mapped to the NIST AI RMF and the laws that apply to you, working controls, board reporting, and escalation paths with named owners. Fixed fee, scoped from the diagnostic.
3
Fractional Chief AI Officer
A standing officer seat that owns getting AI shipped, returning value, and defending it. Reports to the CEO, with board cadence. The full-time officer, without the full-time cost.
WHY BLACKBOX ZERO
Practitioner rigor, not policy theater.
OPERATOR
CFO of IBM UK & Ireland, a $5B P&L, executed the Kyndryl separation
AUDITOR
IBM's Worldwide Deputy Chief Auditor; created IBM's first AI audit program
DECISION AUTHORITY
Voting member, IBM AI Ethics Board, ruling on which client AI use cases went forward
TECHNOLOGIST
MA and BA in Computer Science, put to work across a 21-year IBM Career
You have alternatives. With the largest firms you pay for the pyramid structure and a framework built by the junior people - never the partner. A technology consultancy ships models but cannot sit in front of your audit committee. A policy shop writes documents and guides, but those are not controls.
Blackbox Zero was built for the gap between them: the senior practitioner who has shipped, governed, and audited AI inside IBM, working directly with you for fixed fees. Every deliverable is built to the evidence standard an auditor would hold it to, because I spent years holding auditors to that standard.
Start with one conversation.
Thirty minutes on where AI actually operates in your business, and what your AI need actually is. You leave with either the governance question your examiner will ask first, or the named blocker holding up your deployment.