For 21 years, I was the person executives called when they had a problem they couldn't talk about in a meeting. I created a safe space where leaders could say, “Here's what I'm facing,” and together we'd figure out how to solve it.

That meant building the technology, yes. But it also meant understanding their business well enough that they trusted me to bring them ideas they hadn't considered. I drove innovation across 40+ lines of business not because I had authority over them, but because I earned their trust.

I didn't specialize in one domain and manage the others from a distance. I built every one of them. The person who designed the data architecture is the same person who built the annotation methodology, negotiated the vendor contracts, defended the models to regulators, and coached the team on their resumes.

That's what I'm doing now. The same approach, applied to the hardest AI questions organizations are facing.