FRACTIONAL CHIEF AI OFFICER · AUTHOR · USAF PILOT · LEAN SIX SIGMA MASTER BLACK BELT
From the cockpit
to the C-suite —
the discipline that makes AI pay.
The Physics of Business. The Science of People.
I’m Frank — I help enterprises fly through the fog of AI. Three decades of pattern recognition, from IBM’s award circle to the J&J GenAI portfolio, with a discipline forged at the Air Force Academy. I show up as your fractional Chief AI Officer when “do AI” isn’t a plan.
OAKLAND · USAFA · THE COCKPIT · THE C-SUITE · THE AGE OF AI
The Throughline
There’s one idea that connects the cockpit, the C-suite, and the age of AI: pattern recognition turning noise into signal.
— RIO
I grew up in Oakland raised by a single mother. A Presidential appointment took me to the Air Force Academy, where I captained the gymnastics team and learned to fly. I spent the next three decades practicing the same craft in different cockpits — IBM’s Golden Circle, Pilgrim Software’s founding team, VP at CCS Medical, the J&J GenAI advisory, Risepoint, the ADB Databricks platform.
Every one of those jobs was the same job: find the signal in the noise, build the discipline around it, then lead people through the change. That’s The Physics of Business — process-based problem-solving powered by AI. That’s The Science of People — the org change leadership that makes the physics stick.
I write about it because I believe AI is a generational literacy technology, not a productivity hack. And I write in the first person because the only thing I learned from Deming, Mikel Harry, and a dozen flight instructors is this: don’t pretend to be the system. Be the human who knows how to fly it.
THE FLIGHT PLAN · A CAREER ARC
Waypoints, not a résumé.
A trajectory line is the same shape whether you read it as a flight path, a regression line, or a life. Here are the waypoints along mine — coordinates that explain why I do the work I do.
WAYPT 01 · OAKLAND, CA
Raised in the underserved East Bay
Single mother, four sisters, a Stroud-family legacy of pioneering African, Creek, and Tawakoni Nation ancestors who refused to stay small.
WAYPT 02 · USAFA · COLORADO SPRINGS
Presidential appointment to the Air Force Academy
BS in Management. Flew sail planes and Cessna T-41. NCAA Division I gymnastics captain, training with Olympic athletes. Commissioned by Dr. Kevin Davis.
WAYPT 03 · USAF · STUDENT PILOT
Jet flight training & avionics
Captain, USAF. Avionics communications & computer systems. The first place I learned that discipline is what keeps you alive in low visibility.
WAYPT 04 · RIO DE JANEIRO · LISBON · SYDNEY
The years abroad — and the nickname
Lived in Brazil, Portugal’s Azores, Australia, and Europe. Studied under Dr. Carlinhos Pinto Alveres. Got the name “Rio” — and a Portuguese voice I still think in.
WAYPT 05 · IBM GLOBAL BUSINESS SERVICES
IBM Principal — built the SF/McKesson practice from $0 to $100M+
Twice IBM Golden Circle. Trained at Motorola University by Dr. Mikel J. Harry, co-creator of Six Sigma. Mentored by Forrest Breyfogle and John Thompson.
WAYPT 06 · PILGRIM · ABBOTT · J&J · PFIZER
Founding team at Pilgrim Software — 6× revenue
Pharma directorships across Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer. The decade I learned that compliance is a design problem, not a paperwork problem.
WAYPT 07 · CCS MEDICAL · EXPRESS SCRIPTS
VP, CCS Medical · Director of Continuous Improvement, Accredo
Operating leadership. Shop floor to executive suite. Where applied statistics earned its keep against P&L.
WAYPT 08 · JOHNSON & JOHNSON · GENAI ADVISORY
GenAI Advisor on a $500M portfolio
Roughly 20–25% of the portfolio, via Turnberry. The vantage point that taught me what enterprise AI actually fails at — and why.
WAYPT 09 · RISEPOINT · ADB · ANALYTICS AIML
Fractional CAIO & Founder, Analytics AIML
Risepoint (125+ university partners). ADB/OTSI Azure Databricks modern data platform. The Discipline Layer for AI: AIMSolve · AIMContext · AIMGrowth.
· · ·
CURRENT HEADING · OPEN TRAJECTORY
What I Do
I am the discipline layer between your ambition for AI and the result it has to deliver.
Most enterprise AI fails the same way a bad flight plan fails: missing waypoints, no instruments, no one in the seat who’s flown weather before. I work as a fractional Chief AI Officer through my firm, Analytics AIML, on a three-pillar framework called AIM-IT.
01 · AIMSOLVE
Find the right problem.
Most AI projects fail before a model is trained because the problem was never the right one. AIMSolve forces the assessment: where is the signal worth chasing, what’s the baseline, what’s the actual ROI math? Lean Six Sigma rigor, applied to AI scoping.
02 · AIMCONTEXT
Build the data & governance spine.
I architect on Databricks — Bronze / Silver / Gold medallion, Unity Catalog governance, contracts on every ingest. Because the day a model goes into production is the day you discover whether your data has a backbone or just held a pose.
03 · AIMGROWTH
Lead the people through the change.
Adoption is where AI actually lives or dies. The Denison Culture model, change-management craft, and twenty-five years of leading consulting teams. The Science of People, after the Physics of Business.
BOOKS
Four published. Two on the way.
I’ve written about AI literacy, careers in the digital economy, identity and leadership through crisis, and the controller’s function for John Wiley & Sons. The throughline: turning the math of business into a human story.
2025 · ANALYTICS AIML, LLC
AI or Die: The Caveman’s Visual Guide to AI for Everyone
Co-authored with Umer Qureshi
A visual guide that makes AI accessible without diluting the substance. From cave paintings to ChatGPT — and why mastering AI is the new literacy.
2020 · SELF-PUBLISHED
Let in But Left Out
Leadership, Faith & Knowledge in the Age of AI, Coronavirus & Fake News
A memoir-meets-systems-critique written during lockdown. Tech disruption let in, people transition left out. Diversity let in, inclusion left out.
2007The New Science of Success
2007 · NEW SCIENCE OF SUCCESS
The New Science of Success
How to Outsource-Proof Your Job & Prosper in a Web 2.0 Economy
Written at the dawn of Web 2.0 and mobile — a career guide for the disruption that was just starting. Most of it has aged into the present tense.
2000The Controller’s Function
2000 · JOHN WILEY & SONS
The Controller’s Function
Performance Measurement Section · 2nd Edition
Contributed to the canonical Wiley reference for managerial accounting performance measurement — the technical foundation under everything that followed.
ForthcomingAI or Die · Enterprise Playbook · Slave House to White House
IDEAS & WRITING
The thinking I keep coming back to.
Three things I write about in the open, on LinkedIn and in long form: the failure modes of enterprise AI, AI as generational literacy, and what we can do about a country that’s losing its superpower of cooperating flexibly in large numbers.
TOOL · BETA
Biz Problem-Solver GPT
A custom GPT that walks teams through structured Lean Six Sigma problem framing before they touch a model. Free to try.
TOOL · BETA
QualityCoPilot
An AI assistant for Quality Management Systems, in active development at Analytics AIML.
TOOL · BUILT
StroudFamilyCoPilot
A retrieval-augmented assistant that knows the Stroud family history — used as the front door to the heritage site.
FEATURED ESSAY
The Five Hostage Situations of Enterprise AI
Most enterprises don’t notice they’ve been taken hostage by their own AI stack until the renewal letter shows up. I break down where the leverage gets quietly transferred — and the discipline layer that takes it back.
01 Token Costs
02 Vendor Lock-In
03 Data Lock-In
04 Governance Gaps
05 Model & Skill Atrophy
SPEAKING & MEDIA
Talks I give — to boards, to summits, to the next generation.
I keynote, I teach, and I write the workshop that comes after. The four topics I bring to a stage:
01
AI or Die — AI literacy for non-technical leaders
Based on the 2025 book. From cave paintings to ChatGPT, and why your team doesn’t need to learn to code — they need to learn to think with AI.
02
The Five Hostage Situations of Enterprise AI
For boards and C-suites: how to spot the leverage transfer in your AI stack, and what governance actually has to do to take it back.
03
Statistical Storytelling — pattern recognition for humans
How to teach probability distributions to people who don’t read math. Built from twenty-five years of teaching it to executives.
04
Leading Change in the Age of AI
Deming, Denison, and the five-step transformation playbook I’ve used from IBM to J&J to Risepoint. The Science of People, in practice.
2,000+
ANGOLA INNOVATION SUMMIT · 2022
Keynote on business and technology to an international audience, alongside the Guetto Institute of Brazil.
Forbes
ENTERPRISE TECH · SEPT 2022
The Stroud Leadership Academy profiled for partnering with the Guetto Institute to bring business and tech mentorship to underrepresented founders in Brazil.
CC ’31
COLORADO COLLEGE · ROBSON ARENA
The Kelley Dolphus Stroud ’31 Club Level dedicated on the 4th floor — a family legacy enshrined in the institution that almost wouldn’t admit him.
LINEAGE OF THOUGHT
Trained in the discipline by the people who built it.
A craft has a lineage, and pretending it doesn’t is one of the things wrong with the AI industry right now. Here’s mine.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming
Quality · Statistical Thinking
I spoke with Dr. Deming three months before his death in 1993. He’s the reason I went into performance improvement and applied stats — and the reason I still believe the system, not the worker, is the variable.
Dr. Mikel J. Harry
Co-Creator of Six Sigma
Trained me personally at Motorola University. I beta-tested ~1,200 MindPro videos at his Arizona ranch. His aim was to make the discipline accessible to the masses without diluting the material — that’s still mine.
Forrest Breyfogle
Crosby Medal · Smarter Solutions
Long-time mentor and friend, ex-IBM. I’ve written introductions and forewords for four of his books on Integrated Enterprise Excellence and Lean Six Sigma.
John Thompson
IBM · Symantec · Microsoft
One of America’s great tech thought leaders, and my first model for what executive presence looks like under fire. The IBM Golden Circle weeks in Hawaii were a graduate seminar in his leadership.
Dr. Daniel Denison
Org Culture
The Denison Culture model is the most practical thing I’ve ever used for tying culture to top- and bottom-line results. Twenty-five years of evidence that culture is a measurable variable.
Dr. Kevin Davis
USAFA · Academic Advisor
USAFA grad, Harvard MBA and PhD, now a professor at the Academy. My academic advisor and commissioning officer. The first person who told me discipline beats talent — every time, in every weather.
THE THREE WORLDS
One life, three projects. The gold thread runs through.
The firm. The legacy. The give-back. Different audiences, the same person.
THE FIRM
Analytics AIML
The Discipline Layer for AI. Fractional CAIO advisory, the AIM-IT framework, the Databricks practice.
THE LEGACY
Stroud Family Colorado
The pioneering African, Creek & Tawakoni Stroud family — the “Remarkable Eleven” — preserved and told properly.
THE GIVE-BACK
RACE the Opera · SLA
The Stroud Leadership Academy (Forbes, 2022) and RACE the Opera — coaching underserved founders across the US, Africa, and Brazil.
CONNECT · WORK WITH RIO
Pick a heading. I’ll fly you there.
I take a small number of fractional CAIO engagements, a handful of keynote dates, and as much creative and give-back work as the calendar allows. Tell me which one — I read every note.
01 · CAIO
Fractional Chief AI Officer inquiry
Quarterly engagements; advisory through Analytics AIML.
02 · SPEAK
Book Rio to speak
Keynotes, board sessions, executive workshops.
03 · BOOKS
The book table
AI or Die · Let in But Left Out · the forthcoming Enterprise Playbook.
04 · FOLLOW
Follow the thinking
LinkedIn for long-form, X for the daily signal.
A NOTE FROM RIO
If you’ve read this far, you already know what I’d say in a 30-minute call.
Discipline is the gift Six Sigma gave me; storytelling is the gift Brazil gave me; pattern recognition is the family business. If you’re trying to fly through the fog of AI and want a co-pilot who’s done it before — I’m here for that.
fpshines@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/frankshines
@frankshines