Management Consulting | Professional Development Training
The AI Foundations for Leadership℠ certificate is a practical leadership development program that helps leaders confidently integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into how their organizations think, decide, and operate. Unlike tool‑centric or purely technical courses, this certification emphasizes six strategic priority areas to strengthen real‑world application, governance, and decision quality, ensuring AI investments translate into measurable business outcomes.
Grounded in AMS’s REAL, KPS℠, and our proprietary AI Leadership Body of Knowledge℠ (AILBoK), the certificate equips leaders to move from experimentation to disciplined execution. Participants learn how AI reshapes workflows, leadership behavior, risk, innovation, and enterprise architecture while maintaining accountability, ethics, and control. The result is stronger organizational capability, aligning AI with strategy, embedding it into daily operations, and reinforcing decision‑making across the enterprise.
Built on AMS’s progressive Learning Track design, this 10‑week (not including orientation or capstone sessions), curriculum blends application labs, action planning, and scenario‑based learning to accelerate real‑world adoption. Participants commit roughly 4-6 hours per week, including a once weekly 3.5‑hour expert‑guided session that builds engagement, strengthens performance, and aligns AI usage to their organization’s maturity level. Offered periodically throughout the year for individuals (contact us for scheduling details if not published), or as a customized journey supported by our ALF℠, for intact teams, the AI Foundations for Leadership℠ certificate creates a shared language, a common operating model, and a clear roadmap for responsible, scalable AI adoption.
Intact Teams
Intact teams can benefit from a fully customized experience powered by our ALF℠, ensuring your company’s leadership moves in harmony with its AI integration while building shared capability, consistent behaviors, and confident execution across the enterprise. Contact Us for more information and to discuss your unique AI learning needs.
Open Enrollment
Individuals can benefit from our open enrollment sessions, where cross‑industry peers share ideas, best practices, and real‑world experiences. Tuition is $2,999.00 and includes all electronic participant guides, toolbox resources, and application lab exercises. Our next session is enrolling now with limited seats available for April 2026. Classes begin on April 7th and continue weekly on Tuesdays for 12 weeks, running from 1:00pm - 4:30pm ET. Contact Us for more information or click below to enroll now.
Our courses are flexibly designed, with each 90‑minute module being stackable and adaptable to your needs. Guided by our ALFSM and AMS expert facilitators, modules can be customized or combined across the catalog to address your priorities. This collaborative approach ensures impactful, actionable learning aligned to skill levels, availability, scale, and styles. The framework enables hybrid solutions and dynamic scalability, allowing you to select the most relevant topics, and then augment them thematically. Once framed, we deliver engaging programs on‑site, virtually, or in blended tracks that meet learners where they are and foster progressive cohort development. Select courses can provide certifications and accreditations, and they can also be used to build certificate‑based curricula.
ALFSM Components
Why Choose the AI Foundations for Business℠ Certificate
Leaders and organizations benefit from AMS’s deep experience in integrating Artificial Intelligence with core principles of Organizational Development across critical areas of strategic priority and operational discipline. This course creates a dynamic environment where leaders engage directly with peers and practitioners who have walked in their shoes, offering a grounded, real‑world perspective on how AI functions within complex enterprise scenarios.
Participants gain immediately applicable skills through an engaging and collaborative learning model designed to make exchanges meaningful, lasting, and central to the learning experience. Unlike academic programs, the AMS AI Foundations for Business℠ Certificate is built for real‑world application, long‑term sustainability, and the evolving needs of future‑focused organizations.
Facilitated by World‑Class Practitioners
Joseph focuses on integrating AI to improve organizational performance, leadership, team effectiveness, and executive transformation.
David is a seasoned CIO/CTO/COO, providing hands-on leadership in strategic technology, AI integration, and enterprise transformation.
Orientation sets the foundation for your learning journey by creating space to build relationships, understand the certificate structure, and become familiar with the syllabus, expectations, and exercises. As part of this kickoff, participants are introduced to the foundational strategic priority area, Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Technology, which establishes the core concepts, tools, and mindsets that underpin the rest of the program. This early grounding ensures that learners begin with a shared understanding of AI’s role in modern work and how it connects to each subsequent priority area. Participants will also complete a Foundational Skills Benchmark assessment against our AILBoK℠, to gauge current AI knowledge levels, ensuring meaningful and measurable progress throughout the certification experience. This 3.5‑hour virtual session is designed to be highly informative and fully interactive, setting the tone for an engaging and impactful program.
AILBoK℠ Domain Aligned Foundational Content
Develop AI Change Leadership to guide transformation, adoption, and organizational readiness across dynamic global enterprises.
Build AI Enterprise Foundations to strengthen core literacy, responsible use, and organizational confidence.
Develop AI Driven Innovation to accelerate creativity, experimentation, and value creation across teams, industries, and your organization.
Develop AI for Leaders to strengthen foresight, clarity, and strategic execution across high performance teams.
Build AI Productivity Systems to streamline tasks, structure work, and enhance daily effectiveness across diverse organizational teams.
Use AI Workflow Collaboration to streamline teamwork, strengthen communication, and improve operational clarity.
Strengthen AI Enhanced Communication to improve clarity, consistency, and message effectiveness, resulting in productive exchanges.
Use AI Decision Intelligence to improve clarity, accelerate insight, and strengthen leadership decision-making.
Build AI Risk Management to strengthen safeguards, oversight, and organizational protection against evolving digital threats globally.
Build AI Enterprise Foundations to strengthen core literacy, responsible use, and organizational confidence.
Learning Community
The program is built around a vibrant learning community where participants share practical insights, exchange real experiences, and engage in meaningful dialogue that deepens understanding. In‑class exercises and application labs are intentionally designed to complement one another, creating structured opportunities to learn through interaction, co‑create understanding, and build collective knowledge.
This integrated approach strengthens collaboration across the cohort and ensures that learning is both socially reinforced and immediately applicable to real‑world challenges.
Weeks 1 and 2 are delivered virtually in one 3.5‑hour session each week, providing a structured and interactive start to the certificate. Organizational Strategy & Culture serve as the second strategic priority area, building on the foundation for effective AI adoption across the enterprise. These sessions explore how clear strategic alignment, shared values, and an adaptive culture enable organizations to integrate AI responsibly, build trust, and prepare their workforce with the skills needed to thrive. By grounding AI initiatives in purpose, culture, and organizational readiness, participants gain a deeper understanding of how to drive sustainable transformation and support continuous learning throughout the journey.
Why AI change fails when it’s treated as a technology rollout instead of a leadership redesign, and how leaders must re-shape decision authority, trust, and adoption dynamics to make AI stick.
Enterprise AI success depends on architecture, integration, and clarity, not experimentation alone. Without a foundation, AI scales confusion faster than value.
Core Focus: Leading organizational adaptation in AI-enabled environments
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to lead AI adoption as an enterprise change effort, not a technology rollout.
Core Focus: Enterprise architecture and integration
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to understand and manage AI as part of a complex enterprise technology landscape.
Applied Learning Resources
Unlock the potential of your enterprise with REAL–KPS℠ AI-Operating Framework, a unified approach to transform data, decisions & organization.
Discover the impact of AI and Change Management for organizations. Explore how AI can provide real-time insights and enhance engagement.
Explore how Unlocking AI and The Compliance can build trust, transparency, and ethical human oversight in this insightful article.
Explore the transformative collaboration between AI and Organizational Development. Discover how the confluence empowers transformation.
We led a Change Management Process Design effort for a global investment manager to help them achieve better efficiency in workflows.
Discover the benefits our client saw from the deployment of an Organizational Transformation Model to help secure sustainable growth.
Application Lab Exercise
This Application Lab is designed to seamlessly connect the learning modules by giving participants a structured, practical assignment that begins during the cohort session and continues as individual work between modules. The exercise reinforces two core principles of successful enterprise AI adoption:
1. AI initiatives succeed when leaders reshape decision authority, trust, and adoption behaviors, not when AI is treated as a technology rollout; and
2. AI delivers value only when supported by clear architecture, integration, and defined decision logic.
The lab is intentionally designed to require no more than 30 minutes of in‑class time, with the remaining work completed self‑directed before the next session. This ensures continuity across modules while enabling participants to apply concepts directly to their own workflows.
Weeks 3 and 4 are delivered virtually in one 3.5‑hour session each week, continuing the certificate's structured and interactive learning experience. Leadership & People Management serve as the third strategic priority area, focusing on the human capabilities required to guide teams through AI‑enabled transformation. These sessions explore how effective leaders communicate change, foster psychological safety, and model responsible AI use to build confidence and alignment across their teams. By strengthening core leadership behaviors, such as coaching, decision‑making, and adaptive people management, participants learn how to support their workforce, accelerate adoption, and cultivate a culture of continuous learning and high performance.
AI accelerates innovation only when organizations redesign how ideas are tested, funded, and scaled, otherwise it simply automates existing bottlenecks.
Leadership in the AI era is not about technical fluency, it’s about decision quality, judgment under uncertainty, and knowing when not to delegate thinking to machines.
Core Focus: Executive-level AI literacy
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to lead with AI literacy without becoming a technologist.
Core Focus: Executive-level AI literacy
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to lead with AI literacy without becoming a technologist.
Applied Learning Resources
Navigating AI Pitfalls in Innovation should be every organization’s mantra of growth, adaptation, and long-term success.
The AI Executive Playbook is transforming industries and will help you reach your business outcomes with structure, awareness & governance.
Learn how we guided the development of a Leadership Development Framework Design to help a National Laboratory optimize performance.
Application Lab Exercise
This Application Lab is designed to bridge the learning modules by giving participants a structured assignment that begins in the cohort session and continues as individual work between modules. The exercise reinforces two essential principles for leading in the AI era:
1. AI accelerates innovation only when organizations redesign how ideas are tested, funded, and scaled, otherwise it simply automates existing bottlenecks; and
2. Effective AI‑era leadership is defined not by technical fluency, but by decision quality, judgment under uncertainty, and the discipline to know when not to delegate thinking to machines.
The lab is intentionally structured to require no more than 30 minutes of in‑class time, with the remaining work completed self‑directed before the next session. This ensures continuity across modules while enabling participants to apply the concepts directly to their own innovation processes and leadership behaviors.
Weeks 5 and 6 are delivered virtually in one 3.5‑hour session each week, continuing the certificate's structured and interactive progression. Operational Optimization & Execution serve as the fourth strategic priority area, focusing on how AI can streamline processes, enhance decision‑making, and strengthen day‑to‑day performance across the enterprise. These sessions examine how to identify high‑value workflows, integrate AI into operational routines, and apply data‑driven insights to improve accuracy, speed, and consistency. By learning how to optimize execution through intelligent tools and disciplined operational practices, participants gain the skills to drive measurable efficiency gains, reduce friction, and support scalable, sustainable transformation.
Redesigning work through sustainable AI‑driven productivity systems that enhance outcomes without diminishing human judgment, enabling leaders to build smarter workflows and more resilient performance.
AI reshapes collaboration by changing who initiates work, who approves decisions, and how teams coordinate, often breaking informal norms before formal structures catch up.
Core Focus: Redesigning work using AI
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to redesign workflows so AI improves outcomes without degrading human judgment.
Core Focus: AI in team and cross-functional work
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to integrate AI into collaborative workflows without fragmenting ownership.
Applied Learning Resources
AI & Business Process Improvement have emerged together as tools to re-architect how we think about processes altogether.
Explore the power of Collaboration in the Age of AI. Discover how human ingenuity and machine intelligence can work together for gains.
Explore the transformative collaboration between AI and Organizational Development. Discover how the confluence empowers transformation.
Learn how we helped our client design Process Improvement Best Practice to ensure continuous improvement was a norm in the culture.
Application Lab Exercise
This Application Lab is designed to connect the learning modules by giving participants a structured assignment that begins during the cohort session and continues as individual work between modules. The exercise reinforces two essential principles for modern work redesign:
1. Sustainable AI‑driven productivity systems enhance outcomes only when they strengthen, rather than diminish, human judgment, enabling leaders to build smarter workflows and more resilient performance; and
2. AI fundamentally reshapes collaboration by altering who initiates work, who approves decisions, and how teams coordinate, often disrupting informal norms before formal structures adapt.
The lab is intentionally designed to require no more than 30 minutes of in‑class time, with the remaining work completed self‑directed before the next session. This ensures continuity across modules while enabling participants to apply the concepts directly to their own workflows and team dynamics.
Weeks 7 and 8 are delivered virtually in one 3.5‑hour session each week, continuing the certificate's structured and interactive progression. Interpersonal & Communication Skills serve as the fifth strategic priority area, focusing on the human capabilities required to collaborate effectively and lead with clarity in an AI‑enabled workplace. These sessions explore how to strengthen active listening, build trust, navigate difficult conversations, and communicate complex ideas with precision and empathy. By developing stronger interpersonal awareness and communication discipline, participants learn how to foster alignment, enhance team cohesion, and support a culture of transparency and continuous learning, critical enablers of successful AI adoption and organizational transformation.
Strengthening communication through responsible AI‑assisted messaging that preserves authenticity, mitigates risk, and enhances influence without compromising trust or credibility.
Decision intelligence fails when AI predicts outcomes, but leaders don’t redesign the system that produces them. True intelligence requires shaping conditions, not just forecasting results.
Core Focus: AI’s impact on messaging, trust, and influence
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to use AI to enhance communication without eroding credibility or trust.
Core Focus: Decision quality in AI-enabled systems
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to improve decision quality using AI while retaining human accountability.
Applied Learning Resources
Learn how we partnered with a globally distributed, mission-driven organization to build the skills needed to influence without authority.
AI - From Buzzword to Business Value will help you reach your business outcomes with structure, awareness & governance.
Discover the impact of Leveraging AI in Decision Making. Explore the ethical questions surrounding the integration of AI and humans.
Learn how our Strategic Planning Facilitation boosted a technology client's growth, efficiency, and innovation, leading to great benefits.
Application Lab Exercise
This Application Lab is designed to connect the learning modules by giving participants a structured assignment that begins during the cohort session and continues as individual work between modules. The exercise reinforces two essential principles for modern communication and decision‑making in the AI era:
1. Effective communication requires responsible AI‑assisted messaging that preserves authenticity, mitigates risk, and enhances influence without compromising trust or credibility; and
2. Decision intelligence fails when AI predicts outcomes, but leaders do not redesign the underlying system that produces them, true intelligence requires shaping conditions, not just forecasting results.
The lab is intentionally designed to require no more than 30 minutes of in‑class time, with the remaining work completed self‑directed before the next session. This ensures continuity across modules while enabling participants to apply the concepts directly to their own communication practices and decision‑making environments.
Weeks 9 and 10 are delivered virtually in one 3.5‑hour session each week, continuing the certificate's structured and interactive progression. Business Continuity & Resilience serve as the sixth strategic priority area, focusing on the systems, mindsets, and capabilities required to sustain performance in an AI‑enabled environment. These sessions explore how organizations anticipate disruption, protect critical operations, and build adaptive practices that maintain stability during change. Participants will examine continuity planning, risk mitigation, and resilience‑building strategies that strengthen organizational readiness and support long‑term transformation. By developing these competencies, learners gain the confidence and discipline to navigate uncertainty, safeguard essential functions, and ensure sustained momentum across their AI initiatives.
AI risk is not just regulatory, it’s operational, behavioral, and reputational. Leaders must manage invisible risks created by speed, automation, and misplaced confidence in machine outputs.
Responsible AI is not a policy exercise, it’s an operating discipline that aligns governance, incentives, and leadership behavior with ethical intent in real time.
Core Focus: Identifying, managing, and governing AI risk
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to assess AI risk exposure and design mitigation frameworks aligned with enterprise governance.
Core Focus: Enterprise architecture and integration
Knowledge Areas:
Competency Outcome:
Ability to understand and manage AI as part of a complex enterprise technology landscape.
Applied Learning Resources
Learn how we helped this DoD tech manufacturer & National Laboratory implement Engineering R&D Risk Management frameworks.
Delve into the world of AI Privacy Concerns. Explore how artificial intelligence impacts our fundamental rights and societal structures.
Risk Management: What’s the Big Deal. Learn why effective risk management practices can lead to successful project outcomes.
Application Lab Exercise
This Application Lab is designed to connect the learning modules by giving participants a structured assignment that begins during the cohort session and continues as individual work between modules. The exercise reinforces two essential principles for leading AI responsibly at scale:
1. AI risk is not merely regulatory, it is operational, behavioral, and reputational, requiring leaders to manage invisible risks created by speed, automation, and misplaced confidence in machine outputs; and
2. Responsible AI is not a policy document but an operating discipline that aligns governance, incentives, and leadership behavior with ethical intent in real time.
The lab is intentionally designed to require no more than 30 minutes of in‑class time, with the remaining work completed self‑directed before the next session. This ensures continuity across modules while enabling participants to apply the concepts directly to their own workflows, risk environments, and leadership practices
The Capstone Personal Action Planning & Certification experience brings the full learning journey together through a structured, collaborative session designed to reinforce continuous development. Participants will engage in a guided group exercise that helps translate program insights into clear, personalized developmental objectives, ensuring the momentum of learning extends well beyond the final session. This capstone also includes the proctored post‑program exam, where participants must demonstrate an 80% mastery level against the AILBoK℠, to earn certification within their learning track. By combining reflection, application, and assessment, the capstone solidifies key takeaways and supports each learner in charting a confident path forward. This 3.5-hour session is the gateway to your AI future.
Additional Related Resources
Unlock the potential of your enterprise with REAL–KPS℠ AI-Operating Framework, a unified approach to transform data, decisions & organization.
Discover the impact of AI and Change Management for organizations. Explore how AI can provide real-time insights and enhance engagement.
Explore how Unlocking AI and The Compliance can build trust, transparency, and ethical human oversight in this insightful article.
Design scalable and forward-looking Transformative Change Strategies to help your organization thrive in a changing business landscape.
Unlock the potential of your talent and business with Organizational Culture Development and build a strong employee value proposition.
A client leveraged technology to create a backdrop for growth, embedding predictive analytics, algorithmic data processing, and datasets.
Certification Integrity
Our testing model is intentionally structured to uphold the integrity, consistency, and rigor of the certification process. Drawing on the AIBok℠ and set against the learning objectives of AI Foundations for Business℠ curriculum, the approach ensures that every assessment is anchored in validated criteria and enterprise‑relevant expectations.
Testing emphasizes scenario‑based evaluation, applied reasoning, and judgment‑driven decision‑making, rather than rote recall, creating a fair and disciplined environment for demonstrating real‑world capability. This structured framework evolves as AI advances, preserving the relevance, accountability, and credibility of the certification over time.
Certification Exam
The Certification Exam serves as the final demonstration of mastery within the learning track, assessing how effectively participants can apply the program’s concepts, skills, and practices in real‑world scenarios.
Anchored in the AILBoK℠ and the core standards of the AI Foundations for Leadership℠ curriculum, the exam evaluates applied reasoning, judgment, and decision quality across all six strategic priority areas. To earn certification, participants must achieve an 80% mastery level, demonstrating their readiness to use these capabilities with confidence and accountability in their professional roles.
Join the ranks of leading organizations that have partnered with AMS to drive innovation, improve performance, and achieve sustainable success. Let’s transform together, your journey to excellence starts here.