Start with the future you want. Then ask how AI helps or hinders it.
I help clients build AI strategies that fit their vision of the future, AI policies that fit their values, and the practices that make both real.
Leo Lau & Digit
Leo Lau & Digit / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Your system feels more uncertain than ever.
The people, relationships, and power dynamics you're trying to shift.
You need to see how AI is entangled in your system.
“As a facilitator and strategist, Charley skillfully pulls out diverse perspectives and comfortably navigates areas of strategic divergence. If you want help coalescing around a new future direction or change agenda, he is your guy!”
From knowing where you stand to changing how the work gets done.
AI readiness assessment
I'll guide your team through an honest look at where you stand: your systems, your culture, and where AI would help or hurt.
AI values statement & policy
Together we'll put your values into words, then turn them into a policy people can actually use when they make decisions.
AI strategy
We start from the future you're working toward and ask how AI helps or hinders it. The result is a strategy that adapts as things change.
Workflow redesign
We'll redesign the workflows where AI shows up, so human judgment and accountability are built in from the start.
Take the AI organizational readiness assessment.
Forty statements across nine themes, about 40 minutes. You'll see where your organization stands and get a one-page brief to bring to our first conversation.
Diagnostic
A focused assessment of where you stand, with a clear read on what matters most and where to start.
Sprint
A time-boxed engagement on one priority, such as a values statement and policy or a single workflow, taken from start to finish.
In-depth consulting
An ongoing partnership across strategy, policy, and workflows as your organization learns and changes.
Every engagement is scoped to your organization.
Their technology doesn't determine the future. Your purpose does.
Systems, not "tech solutions"
Hover to read more →Philanthropies and civil society groups feel pressured to develop "AI strategies" — and start with the technology instead of the system they're trying to change.
I help leaders flip that script: focus first on the future you want to create, then map backward to see how AI might help or hinder progress. The real question isn't "What's my AI strategy?" It's "How can I change my system?"
Collective sense-making
Hover to read more →In any system shaped by AI, funders, grantees, policymakers, and technologists bring different values, incentives, and frames of meaning.
I help organizations create spaces for translation across those differences — surface assumptions, build shared understanding, and enable real coordination and collective action.
Strategy as living practice
Hover to read more →Many organizations still treat strategy as a fixed plan — but in complex systems, conditions shift faster than any roadmap can adapt.
I help teams treat strategy as a living practice — adapting toward your future vision and in response to signals in your system, building trust, holding difference, and turning conflict into shared, continuous learning.
Relationships are the lever
Hover to read more →Traditional strategy processes overlook the relational and cultural foundations of systems, treating trust, power, and relationships as abstractions instead of the real levers of change.
I help organizations see how relationships shape behavior and alignment — revealing where systems are stuck and where shifts in culture or connection can unlock new possibilities.
How can I help?
Tell me a little about your system and what you're working through, and I'll be in touch.