AI for Executives
AI for Executives
You already make decisions about AI. Our two AI for Executives programs sharpen your decisions and put a working system in your hands. Each program is taught by a practicing Fortune 100 Chief AI Architect and rebuilt for every cohort around the models and tools that are live right now. Choose Strategy & Decisions to leave with a written AI plan for your organization. Choose the Hackathon to leave with a working prototype you built yourself.
Programs
At a Glance
Take either program on its own or complete them both to form the full path.
| Strategy & Decisions | The Executive AI Hackathon | |
|---|---|---|
Overview | Decide what to do about AI. | Build a working AI prototype yourself. |
Best for | Leaders forming an AI point of view, strategy, and risk posture, including CEOs and board directors forming an enterprise AI position and entire leadership teams aligning on AI | Leaders ready to build with their own hands, including CIOs, CTOs, and chief AI officers who own delivery and functional department heads who have a specific problem in mind |
What you do | Work through frameworks, live demos, and peer discussion; build your organization's AI strategy. | Learn five patterns of AI at work, then build and demo a prototype for your own use case. |
| What you leave with | An AI Strategy Canvas, a Readiness Score, and an Opportunity Action Toolkit | A working prototype you build, a live demo, and a 30-day plan to put it to work |
| How to register | Open enrollment | Private cohort (customized for your organization) or open enrollment |
Strategy & Decisions
Strategy & Decisions is for leaders who want to move past the hype and develop the fluency, judgment, and strategic perspective to make confident AI decisions. The program combines expert framing, live demonstrations, hands-on work, and candid peer discussion. You leave with a written AI strategy for your own organization, built progressively across the two days.
Who Should Attend
- C-suite executives and board directors
- VPs and directors leading digital or AI transformation
- Founders and senior leaders at growth-stage companies
- Functional heads evaluating AI for their teams
No technical background required. This is built for leaders who make AI decisions, not for engineers who build AI systems.
What You'll Cover
- Module 1 — AI Foundations: The "Intern" Mindset. What AI does well, where it falls short, and how to think about supervising it.
- Module 2 — AI Strategy, Disruption & Workforce. Where AI creates real value and how to separate the bets worth making from the noise.
- Fireside Chat — AI in the Field. A candid conversation with an enterprise AI practitioner deploying at scale.
- Module 3 — Trust, Risk, Governance & Responsible AI. The risk categories that matter for your organization, the governance gaps to close first, and the questions to bring to your board.
- Module 4 — From Pilot to Production: Scale & Operating Model. Why most pilots stall, what it takes to run AI in production, and the operating model that supports it.
What You'll Walk Out With
- The AI Strategy Canvas, a one-page working document that outlines your AI reality, your highest-value bet, your risk exposure, and your 90-day moves
- Your AI Readiness Score across five dimensions
- The AI Opportunity Action Toolkit, a personalized, deployable document that ties each AI decision to its cost, effort, and expected return
- A post-session digital kit that includes slides, a value calculator, a blank toolkit for your team, and a reading list
- Office hours with the faculty member after the program to pressure-test your plan once you return to work
- A Boston College Certificate of Completion
The Executive AI Hackathon
Every executive AI program ends the same way: with notes, a framework, and good intentions. The Executive AI Hackathon ends with a working system you built.
Over two days, leaders who have never written a line of code build a functioning AI prototype for a real problem in their own business, then demo it live to the room. Day one shows you the five patterns of AI at work, through demonstrations and hands-on exercises on real data. Day two is a build sprint: you scope one idea, build it, and show it.There is no other executive hackathon program like this. Here, the people building are the executives who own the problem. That is the point. When a leader has built the thing themselves, they stop guessing about what AI can do and start deciding what to do with it.
Who Should Attend
- CIOs, CTOs, and Chief AI Officers who own delivery and want to prove what is buildable
- Functional heads with a specific, expensive problem they want to attack
- Founders and operators who learn by building
- Leadership teams that want to build together on their own data
No technical background required. If you can describe your problem in plain language, you can build in this room.
What You'll Cover
Day 1: Five patterns of AI at Work
Each pattern gets a live demo followed by a hands-on exercise on real data:
- Automating repeatable tasks. Turn a slow manual step into a reusable skill.
- Data analysis on live systems. Ask your data a question in plain language and get an answer, no export or script.
- Research, synthesis, and content generation. Turn a stack of documents into a briefing, and one answer into three formats.
- Low-code AI agents for knowledge. Use your content to build an assistant that answers and knows what it does not know.
- Autonomous multi-agent systems. See what happens end to end before anyone opens a laptop.
Day 2: The Build Sprint
You will scope your build on a one-page brief, get it pressure-tested by a peer, then build heads-down while Gary circulates to unblock. Every participant demos in five minutes: the problem, what they built, and what they would do next. You close by committing to a 30-day plan.
What You'll Walk Out With
- A working AI prototype for a real problem in your business, built by you
- A live demo you can show your team on Monday
- A 30-day plan to put it into practice
- The five-pattern playbook and the build brief, to run the same exercise with your team
- Office hours with the faculty member after the program to pressure-test your plan once you return at work
- A Boston College Certificate of Completion
Two Ways to Take It
- Private cohort for your organization (recommended): We build the two days around your data, your systems, and the problems your teams actually argue about. Your leaders leave having built prototypes for your business, aligned on what to do next.
- Open enrollment: Individual leaders register and bring their own dataset and one real problem to build on.
Why This Is Different
Most executive AI programs are taught by researchers describing frameworks they have studied. These are taught by someone who architects and ships AI systems inside Fortune 100 companies.
The case studies are real.
They come from projects Gary has led, pilots he has watched fail, and production systems he has helped scale. Every demo shows both what AI can do and where it breaks.
The material is current.
AI moves faster in one year than most curricula move in five. These programs are rebuilt for every cohort around the models, tools, and failure modes that are live right now.
It's built for the room.
Frameworks are applied to your organization, not a case study company. In the Hackathon, the program is built around your data and your use cases.
Enrollment is capped at 15.
Cohorts are small and set well in advance to ensure each participant gets direct time with the faculty member.
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Faculty
Gary Arora
Chief AI Architect, Deloitte • AI Research Fellow & Part-Time Faculty, Boston College
Gary architects and ships AI systems for Fortune 100 healthcare and financial services organizations, with more than $1B in delivered impact and open-source tools downloaded over 5 million times. He has scaled engineering teams from 10 to more than 100, and speaks at AWS re:Invent, KubeCon, ODSC, and NASDAQ. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and CIO.com.
He teaches the way he works: whiteboard the architecture, tie it to the P&L, and build the first working version himself. The pilot version of this program ran for a group of executives at BC in March 2026. The response was strong enough that it became the two programs offered here.
Contact
Get in touch to bring a program to your organization or to learn more.
