Fractional Chief AI Officer
A fractional Chief AIOfficer who has done the thing.
Most AI consultants hand you a roadmap and leave. I join your leadership team, direct the implementation with your people, and stay until it runs without me.
Book a 20-minute callThe problem with most AI initiatives
95% of generative AI pilots fail to generate growth
Not because the technology does not work. Because nobody manages the change.
The typical pattern: a consulting firm runs a maturity assessment, delivers a 60-page deck, and disappears. Your team is left with a strategy document nobody knows how to execute, built by people who have never shipped a product in their lives.
You do not need another deck. You need someone who understands your business, can read a room and evaluate the technology, and will stick around long enough to make it work.
Source: MIT Project NANDA, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025. Of the organizations studied, 95% reported no measurable return from their generative AI pilots.
The real bottleneck
Your team is not the bottleneck. Your processes are.
The right AI does not replace your people. It removes the busywork that buries them.
Fewer meetings. Fewer approvals. Fewer hours lost to things a machine should be handling.
Same team. Different output.
How it works
Embed, build, adopt, hand off
Minimum engagement three months. Most run six to twelve.
Embed
I join your leadership team. I learn your operations, your people, your politics. I work out where AI creates real leverage, not where it makes a good press release.
Build
I direct the implementation alongside your team. Not prototypes in a sandbox. Production systems that solve real problems your people face every day.
Adopt
The part everyone else skips. I manage the change: get people using the systems, address resistance, iterate on what actually happens when humans meet new tools.
Hand off
I transfer knowledge and ownership to your team. The goal is that you do not need me any more. Good consultants make themselves unnecessary.
Not a consultant
Consultants deliver decks. I deliver systems that work on Monday morning.
I sit with your leadership team. I learn the politics. I stay until it sticks.
The goal is to make myself unnecessary. That is how you know it worked.
Who this is for
Organizations that need AI leadership but not a $300K hire
- FAS cooperators and export development organizations serving members across dozens of markets with a small staff
- Mid-market companies of 50 to 500 people who need AI strategy that connects to operations, not just to IT
- Industry associations and trade organizations trying to modernize how they serve members
- Established businesses in traditional industries where the workforce is skeptical and the stakes are real
- Leadership teams that have tried AI pilots that went nowhere and want someone accountable for results
What makes this different
Four things most AI advisors cannot say
I've built and sold companies
Three exits, including Canada's largest independent food marketing agency. When I advise on implementation it is from having done it. Built products, managed teams, made payroll, closed deals.
Technically fluent
I understand the technology well enough to know what is real and what is a sales pitch. I co-founded FishDog, a synthetic research platform running studies across 14 countries. I prototype, I evaluate, and I can tell when an engineering team is blowing smoke.
I teach this at Ivey
I teach AI implementation at the Ivey Business School Accelerator. I can explain what I am doing and why, not just do it. Your team learns rather than watches.
I know skeptical industries
Twenty-five years in technology. Fifteen in food, agriculture and CPG. Industries where people do not trust technology and are not sure they need it. I know how resistant organizations think because I have been inside them.
Fit
When not to call me
- You are not sure any of this is real. I can show you what the technology does. I cannot sell you the premise, and the argument costs more than the work.
- The budget is not there. Retainers start at $10,000 a month. If that number has to be found rather than moved, this is the wrong year to start.
- Nobody senior will own the change. The technology is the easy part. If no one on the leadership team will put their name on this and make people use it, it will be built and then ignored, and the money is better spent elsewhere.
- You want a vendor you can never leave. Ownership transfers to your team at the end. If the goal is to outsource the capability permanently, that is a different purchase.
What this looks like in practice
Then the CEO turned to me in front of the room
I was presenting to about 70 people at a national trade association's annual meeting. Record attendance. These are people who work in agricultural exports, collectively moving close to a billion dollars of product across 120 countries every year.
I showed them how their scattered information, trip reports buried in email, market data in disconnected spreadsheets, member activity tracked in someone's head, could become something you ask a question of instead of sending 50 emails and hoping someone remembers.
Can you help us figure this out?
The discussion was never about the technology. It was about needing to share what they were learning across markets, without adding work to already overstretched teams.
That question turned into an engagement. I now serve as that organization's fractional Chief AI Officer. Since then I have built a weekly market-intelligence pipeline monitoring hundreds of sources in seven languages, made the organization's own data answerable in plain language, and turned years of field reporting into a searchable atlas of its global footprint. All of it built alongside the team that uses it, all of it running with the staff they already had.
Engagement model
Fractional CAIO retainer
- Embedded with your leadership team, typically two to four days a month
- Direct access on Slack or Teams between sessions
- Hands-on implementation. I direct the work alongside your team rather than advising from the side
- Change management and adoption support included
- Monthly progress reports and quarterly strategy reviews
Minimum engagement three months. Most run six to twelve. The goal is a self-sufficient team, not a dependency. Scope and pricing are tailored to your size, complexity and where you are in the work. The number above starts the conversation, it is not a rate card.
Book a 20-minute call to discuss fitWhat people say
Andreas has vast knowledge and experience, combining expertise in CPG, data and AI. He takes a collaborative approach, and in fact, our introductory conversation turned into two engagements in 2024.
Michael KleinVice President of Communications & Strategic Development, USA Rice
Let's talk
It starts with a conversation.
Twenty minutes, no deck, no pitch. We work out whether a fractional CAIO is the right shape for what you need, and whether I am the right person for it.