Fellowship Emissaries

A Chief AI Officer, provided by the firm

You need someone senior accountable for your AI: the decisions, the risk, the strategy. You may not be ready to hire a full-time Chief AI Officer. We provide one, an Emissary, run the function, and build your own people to be self-sufficient.

Fellowship Emissaries, the Knight mark

Fellowship Emissaries gives you a named, certified CAIO from our team, an Emissary, who takes on the full Chief AI Officer function: the governance, the development and rollout, and the people who will run it. Governance is the spine, because it is what keeps every decision defensible and yours. The Emissary directs and is accountable for the whole function; your team and vendors do the building, and authority over your business stays with you.

As we lead that function, we actively identify the people inside your organization with the right AI aptitude and develop them into the leaders that operating AI at scale will require. As your team matures, we step down and hand off. You are never dependent on us longer than you need to be.

Scoped leadership. You stay in charge.

Our CAIO leads and directs your AI governance and holds scoped decision authority over the governance system itself: the policy, the risk method, the escalation thresholds, the cadence. What we are not is a corporate officer of your company, a manager of your staff, or a signatory who can bind you. Every business, personnel, financial, and legal decision stays yours. AI operates. You own the decision, including the decision to govern it.

Two ways to run it

Embedded AI Governance Leadership: Build

Two days a week. Goal: no longer than six months.

Build-phase executive leadership. We run the AI governance function while it is being built, make decisions outside the scope of Governance Build, and develop the people inside your organization who will take it over from us. For a fast stand-up, complex or higher-risk AI, or the Build phase: decision rights, the AI inventory and risk register, oversight and escalation, board reporting, and training your team.

Embedded AI Governance Leadership: Transition

One day a week. Goal: no longer than six months.

Transition to the new team. Your team runs the function day to day, with a senior AI leader still in the room for the decisions that carry weight. The same accountable seat at a lower intensity as we finish training and leadership handoff.

Both tiers step down to the AI Sustainment Program assurance floor as your team matures. You move down the ladder as your people take the function over, and a new system or a new regulation can move you back up it.

How it works

There is no Diagnostic gate. Engagements begin with a written mandate. The goal in each tier is no longer than six months.

1Embedded AI Governance Leadership: Build

We direct the function, stand up the AI inventory, risk register, and oversight cadence, and begin training your internal owners. Six-month goal.

2Embedded AI Governance Leadership: Transition

We finish training, hand over the operating manual, and reverse-shadow while your team runs the cadence, until they own it and sign off. Six-month goal. A maturity review gates the step; a new system or regulation can reset you up a tier.

3AI Sustainment Program floor

You land on the AI Sustainment Program, a scope-set assurance floor: audit, recertification, Standard currency, and escalation, kept live behind your team. The Consigliere is a separate product and is not included in Fellowship Intelligence engagement fees.

Independence

The person who runs your CAIO seat never signs your assurance or certification; that stays independent. We always disclose our role, and where you need legally independent assurance we route it to an outside partner. We build you to own the function, not to depend on us.

When you outgrow us

Ready to hire your own CAIO?

That is the goal, not a loss. When you are ready to bring the role in-house full-time, we help through our partner network, and point you toward qualified candidates who already speak your Standard.

Discuss a CAIO engagement