Fractional Chief AI Officer
The accountable AI officer your board is asking for.
When AI moves from pilot into production, the decisions it makes begin to carry real consequences, and your regulators, your auditors, and your board converge on one question: who owns the risk. I hold that seat on a fractional basis, as your standing Chief AI Officer, accountable for the outcome. You get the officer without the full-time hire.
Most firms have an AI policy and a committee. Almost none have an owner.
You have an acceptable-use policy. You may have a cross-functional AI committee. What you likely do not have is a single named executive accountable for AI risk, with the authority to stop a deployment and the evidence to defend one.
The NIST AI Risk Management Framework puts accountability at the center of its Govern function. The EU AI Act assigns its obligations to identifiable roles, not to committees. New York City's Local Law 144 requires a bias audit of any automated employment decision tool and names the employer as responsible. Each of these presumes a person in place who is accountable.
When a regulator or plaintiff's counsel asks who owned the decision that AI made, "the committee" is not a defensible answer.
You know you need the accountability, but the roadblock is usually cost. A full-time Chief AI Officer runs from $265,000 to nearly $500,000 in total compensation before any support staff is included. At mid-market scale, with AI just beginning to transition out of pilot, and concentrated in a handful of use cases, that’s difficult to justify. So the seat stays empty, and the gap remains.
What you are putting in the seat.
The seat owns six areas of accountability. Today, in most firms, each belongs to no one:
Strategy and the governance framework. Built to the NIST AI RMF, mapped to the laws that apply to you, and kept current rather than shelved.
Model and use-case inventory. A living record of where AI runs, what it touches, and which decisions it shapes.
Board and committee reporting. A standing report to your audit or risk committee, in the language directors act on.
Regulatory change management. Obligations tracked as they move, so the framework changes before the deadline, not after the finding.
First and second-line coordination. One control set across deployment, compliance, and audit, settled before an incident tests it.
Incident and escalation ownership. A named owner when a model fails, with stop authority established in advance.
These six areas need one owner.
Who holds the seat. The seat calls for someone who has built AI governance inside a global enterprise and answered for it at the board level. I have carried board-level accountability directly, running a multi-billion-dollar P&L as CFO of IBM UK and Ireland and reporting to audit committees at that level. I created IBM's first AI audit program as a voting member of its AI Ethics Board, and spent 21 years at IBM in roles including Worldwide Deputy Chief Auditor. I serve as an SEC-qualified Audit Committee Financial Expert and hold the CFA charter.
Accountability is not a deliverable.
Some needs are bounded. You want a governance framework built, a readiness assessment done, or a control set designed. A consulting project is the right tool for that.
Accountability is different. Someone has to hold it quarter after quarter, answer to the board, and own the decision when a model has to be stopped. That cannot be packaged as a deliverable and handed over when an engagement ends. It has to be held by a person in a standing seat. This seat is a fractional retainer that scales up when a deployment or an examination demands it and holds steady between, and it is built to grow your team's capability over time rather than your dependence on me.
The seat owns the control environment and the evidence, it does not displace your statutory officers. Ultimate accountability for the firm's decisions remains with your CEO, CRO, and General Counsel, and the seat exists to give them the documented basis to defend those decisions.
Structure
Ongoing fractional retainer, held as a standing officer seat
Reporting line
To the CEO, with board reporting to the audit or risk committee
Cadence
Set to your board calendar and regulatory deadlines
Contracting
Through Blackbox Zero LLC
One boundary for this role
The officer who owns your AI program does not also independently attest it. Embedded ownership and independent audit are separate engagements, never delivered on the same controls for the same client.
When you need an independent assessment of a program this seat has built, a different provider performs it, and I can point you to qualified ones so you are not sourcing a second firm on your own. You engage them directly. That arm's length is the same firewall your external auditor operates under, and it is what gives the ownership its weight.
Whether this role is right for you.
The seat is the right structure in one specific situation. It is the wrong structure in two others.
AI matters to your business, you cannot yet define everything it will require, and you want to hand ownership to someone accountable.
→ Fractional CAIO seat
You can define what you need built, and you want it delivered once.
→ Advisory project
AI is not yet material to your business.
→ You do not need this seat
If your need is a bounded deliverable, a governance framework, a readiness assessment, or a model-risk control set, see the firm's advisory services instead.
Start with a conversation.
The first step is a conversation about where AI sits in your business today and whether this seat fits. From there, the role either makes sense for your firm or it does not, and you have the evidence to decide either way. If you would rather begin by email, reach me directly at ccook@blackboxzero.com.