Certificate, no capability
A leadership team collects AI courses and credentials without a strategic filter. The activity feels like progress. The actual decision-making ability underneath it doesn't move.
Make the AI call, don't just receive it.
A half-day session that builds the judgment to evaluate an AI vendor's claims, price the risk in a proposed deployment, and answer the board question that's coming whether you're ready or not. Not a coding class, not a survey of AI history — a working session on the decisions actually in front of you.
Half-day intensive · leadership teams and boards, cohort up to 12
Most executive AI education is built for the wrong audience. It's either a practitioner course retooled with a leadership title, or a beginner's survey of what a large language model is. Neither helps the moment that actually matters: a $2 million AI proposal on your desk, a board member asking what your AI strategy is, or a direct report telling you an initiative is "basically ready" when you have no way to check.
Executive AI fluency isn't about understanding algorithms. It's about making better decisions when algorithms are involved. This session is taught by the same engineers who evaluate these systems inside Skowak's own engagements, so the vendor pitch you bring gets a real answer, not a generic framework pulled off a slide.
Why the usual AI course doesn't help.
Technical depth, wrong role
Executives end up studying model architecture when what they need is a vendor-evaluation framework. The time investment is real; the career or business protection from it is minimal.
Delegated until it can't be
AI learning gets pushed entirely to subordinates while leadership stays strategically unable to engage. That works until a board asks a governance question directly.
Five competencies, not a hundred facts.
Working-to-strategic depth on each, not mastery. Mastery is for the people building the system; your job is deciding whether it should exist, what it should cost, and who's accountable when it's wrong.
Capability assessment
What today's AI can and can't credibly do in your specific domain, so you can tell a genuine opportunity from an expensive one dressed up in a deck.
Use-case evaluation
A working framework for ROI, total cost of ownership, integration complexity, and the questions a vendor is hoping you won't ask.
Risk and governance
The regulatory, ethical, and reputational guardrails that actually apply to your deployment, not a generic compliance checklist.
Human-AI orchestration
How to think about which decisions stay human as agentic systems take on more of the work, and where that line should move over time.
Strategic communication
Translating AI risk and opportunity for a board, a peer executive, and a team, in the specific register each one needs, without oversimplifying or drowning in jargon.
How the day runs.
Morning
Landscape and capability. What current AI systems can and can't do in your sector, worked through against a real proposal or use case you bring into the room, not a hypothetical.
Midday
Evaluation and governance. A working ROI and risk framework, then the regulatory and reputational questions specific to your industry, worked through with the same rigor as the business case.
Afternoon
Orchestration and communication. Where human judgment stays in the loop as agentic systems mature, and a rehearsed version of the answer you'd give your board tomorrow.
What you walk away with.
A live proposal, evaluated
Bring a real vendor pitch or use case. You leave the day with an actual assessment of it, not a hypothetical exercise.
A governance answer you trust
You can hold an informed conversation with your General Counsel about AI liability instead of deferring the whole question to Legal by default.
A board-ready narrative
A rehearsed, specific answer to "what's our AI strategy" that doesn't dissolve the first time someone pushes back on it.
Who this is for.
Good fit
- You have a real AI proposal or vendor pitch you need to evaluate soon
- Your board or investors are starting to ask AI-strategy questions you don't have a rehearsed answer for
- You want judgment and decision frameworks, not hands-on tool training
- Your leadership team needs a shared vocabulary before the next AI investment decision, not after it
Not a fit
- You want to learn to code, prompt, or build AI systems yourself, that's Builder AI Fluency
- You're looking for a certificate or credential rather than a working decision framework
- Nobody with real decision authority will be in the room
More questions?
Questions about scope, format, or how this fits alongside an AI Design & Development engagement live on the Services overview. Building the same fluency into an engineering team instead of a leadership team is Builder AI Fluency.
Bring the proposal that's actually on your desk.
The fastest way to know if this is useful is to work through a real decision, not a hypothetical one. Start with a conversation about what you're evaluating right now.