About AiAi
Somebody has to keep score and give hands-on help while you figure it out. We do both.
AiAi is an independent institute for mid-market companies that want AI to pay off. We measure what's working, and we stay in the room with you, month after month, while you make it work.
Our mission
AiAi helps companies turn AI experiments into results they can measure, through independent research, small peer circles, and events that move what's working from the companies who solved it to the ones still stuck.
Our vision is simpler still: build confidence, get ahead, and make AI work for you.
Why we exist
Over two years, our founder asked close to two thousand CEOs and business leaders how AI was going. The same three stories kept coming up. The training had been useful for about a quarter, then the tools moved on. The consultants delivered a roadmap and left, and the roadmap aged faster than anyone planned. The pilots worked in the demo and stalled the week someone had to change how they actually did their job.
The leaders who broke through had something else in common: a few peers a step or two ahead, willing to say what worked and what blew up. So we built the thing they were improvising. A room of 10 to 16 peers, a Catalyst who stays with the group month after month, a benchmark that tells you where you stand, and research nobody is paying us to slant. The score tells you where you are. The room gets you somewhere better.
How we work
Three rules we won't bend.
We measure.
Adoption is proven by a documented business result, never by what was deployed or what was spent. ROAI, Return on AI, is how we say it.
We stay independent.
We report what the data says, including when it's unflattering to a member or a sponsor. Sponsors fund how far research travels. They never touch what it says.
We stay in our lane.
Business and professional practice. We leave the politics of AI to everyone else.
These are three of the six principles in the AiAi Code.
The team
An operator who has heard it from two thousand CEOs, and an educator who knows how people actually learn.
Brett Schklar
President · Enterprise Futurist
Brett has spent 25 years helping B2B companies grow, first as the founder of Market Creation Group, a Denver marketing firm he built to 18 people and 230 clients, 23 of which went on to be acquired or go public, before it was itself acquired in 2018. He now leads GROW Powered, a collective of fractional CMOs serving B2B technology companies.
AiAi grew out of his keynote and advisory work with CEO groups. His signature talk, "Who Owns Tomorrow?", has been delivered to boards, leadership summits and Vistage groups across the country, and the questions that came back from those rooms became the founding brief for AiAi.
He is the author of AI Without the BS: The CEO's Playbook for Actually Getting AI Right, a Vistage speaker since 2010, and co-chair of Denver AI, the city's largest community of AI practitioners and business leaders.
Dr. Rebecca "Becky" Nusbaum, EdD, PMP
Head of Research & Education
Becky has spent her career at the point where new technology meets the people who have to learn it. She designed online instruction for more than a decade at CLS by BARBRI, taught computer science at Montana State University for ten years, and built training and change programs for the State of Colorado, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Boeing.
Since 2020 she has been on the faculty at the University of Denver, where she leads courses in computer science and project management. At AiAi she owns the research engine: the ROAI Assessment, the Operational Maturity Scale, the benchmark methodology and the curriculum behind every circle. If a number on this site has a method behind it, it's hers.
She holds a doctorate in education and a Project Management Professional certification, and serves alongside Brett as co-chair of Denver AI.
Catalysts
The people who run the room.
Every circle is led by a Catalyst: a trained, credentialed AiAi facilitator who keeps the conversation candid, the problems real and the follow-through honest. Catalysts are experienced operators first and facilitators second. As AiAi grows, they'll run circles in every city we enter.
Where we are
Five cities first. Then wherever the next circle fills.
AiAi is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Our first in-person circles launch in Denver, New York City, Miami, San Diego and Sacramento. Virtual circles are open to leaders anywhere. Our research is developed with academic partners, beginning with conversations at the University of Denver.
Want to know where your company stands?
Tell us a little about you and we'll be in touch about circles, research and upcoming sessions.