Cornell Chief AI Officer Program
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Program Overview
AI in 2026 is way more than the ChatGPT of 2025. AI capabilities have rapidly advanced from text and visual generation in 2025, to doing advanced reasoning and autonomous agentic work in 2026. In effect, we already have widely accessible, limitless amounts of advanced intelligence.
These advances have the potential to usher in a business transformation akin to that from the invention of other general-purpose technologies such as the steam engine, electricity, the internet, etc. Organizations and individuals that prudently harness the potential of these technologies will gain a significant advantage, while those that get swept by the hype or fail to upskill and prepare risk obsolescence.
The Cornell Chief AI Officer Program prepares you to lead this AI transformation with clarity, confidence, and credibility. This experiential program with live interactive sessions, including working labs, builds fluency across the full stack of AI Transformation skills. You will select an organization or industry and apply insights from each session to create your AI Strategy Blueprint. In the final session, you’ll share your AI Strategy Blueprint with faculty for feedback and refinement.
Start Date
18 July 2026
Duration
6 Months
Fee
USD 4,800
Program Benefits
- 16 live interactive sessions
- AI Strategy Blueprint final report out and personalized feedback
- Access to exclusive curated AI track from the Cornell library
- Access to Cornell’s library of 2000+ Courses
- Certificate from Cornell University
- Peer coaching and assessments
- Small cohort for learning impact
Program Curriculum
Module Outcomes
Leverage your deep understanding of AI and its underlying technologies and assess future advances.
Abundant Intelligence
The session focuses on tackling the challenges of a diverse workforce. Moving beyond diversity towards equity and belongingness.
- Understand the trajectory of AI advancements and their implications for productivity, business models, and strategic advantage across industries.
- Develop a deep conceptual unbiased understanding of the underlying technologies—machine learning, reinforcement learning, pre-training, post-training, foundation models, large language models, reasoning models, etc.
Not Your Grandpa's AI: From Generative AI to Agentic and Reasoning AI
- Gain an understanding of the cognitive capabilities, limits, operational and economic characteristics of perceptive, generative and agentic AI.
- Use a framework for understanding and assessing any future advances in AI.
What’s behind the curtain?
- Develop a clear understanding of how modern AI systems are built, including the data, models, training processes, and infrastructure that power today’s AI capabilities.
- Examine the technical architecture behind AI applications to better assess their capabilities, limitations, and potential business impact.
Module Outcomes
Leverage your deep understanding of AI and its underlying technologies and assess future advances.
Abundant Intelligence
The session focuses on tackling the challenges of a diverse workforce. Moving beyond diversity towards equity and belongingness.
- Understand the trajectory of AI advancements and their implications for productivity, business models, and strategic advantage across industries.
- Develop a deep conceptual unbiased understanding of the underlying technologies—machine learning, reinforcement learning, pre-training, post-training, foundation models, large language models, reasoning models, etc.
Not Your Grandpa's AI: From Generative AI to Agentic and Reasoning AI
- Gain an understanding of the cognitive capabilities, limits, operational and economic characteristics of perceptive, generative and agentic AI.
- Use a framework for understanding and assessing any future advances in AI.
What’s behind the curtain?
- Develop a clear understanding of how modern AI systems are built, including the data, models, training processes, and infrastructure that power today’s AI capabilities.
- Examine the technical architecture behind AI applications to better assess their capabilities, limitations, and potential business impact.
Module Outcomes
Use your knowledge and hands-on experience with a series of deep, research-based frameworks for identifying transformation opportunities enabled by AI.
Driving AI-Powered Growth with New Products and Business Models
- Identify new business models, redesigning business scope, clock speed and sequencing, employee and value chain engagement, pricing and incentive structures.
- Build a new strategic position, anticipate and react to changes in economic power in an ecosystem.
Defending Your Turf: Responding to AI Challengers, Identifying Chokepoints and Leverage
- Apply a structured framework to test and refine AI initiatives.
- Learn how to manage uncertainty, conduct low-cost experiments, and scale validated solutions.
Rewiring Jobs, Workflows, and Organizations: Automation, Augmentation, and AI First Organizations
- Learn where and how to use AI effectively to boost your productivity. Understand three key AI personas. • Learn where and how to use AI effectively to boost your productivity. Understand three key AI personas.
- Redesign jobs, work, systems and processes in your organization via automation, augmentation and increased value capture.
AI Ethics and Law
- Examine Legal and Ethical issues associated with AI ventures. Explore issues related to fairness, transparency, accountability, and regulatory response.
Module Outcomes
Elevate your ability to make AI transformation happen.
Humans, AI and Society
- Understand how individuals and teams interact with AI. Examine cognitive and behavioral patterns shaping trust, adoption, and collaboration.
Tech Update Panel
- Gain awareness of the latest research and findings on how customers, employees and organizations are collaborating with and reacting to AI — what is working in the wild and what is not.
Designing and delivering an AI Transformation Portfolio
- Design a portfolio of offensive and defensive AI initiatives to protect existing advantages, pursue new opportunities, and guide enterprise AI transformation.
- Analyze the AI value chain to identify commoditized capabilities and sources of competitive advantage in an AI-driven landscape.
Change Management
- Learn how to manage organizational change driven by AI.
- Build skills to navigate resistance, align stakeholders, and lead transformation efforts.
Reflection and Closure
- Reflect on key insights from across the program and integrate lessons on technology, strategy, and leadership in the age of AI.
- Clarify the priorities and actions required to translate learning into meaningful organizational and strategic impact.
Develop a rigorous AI Strategy Blueprint for your organization or selected industry. The blueprint will include:
An assessment of short, medium and long-term productivity, business model innovation, and strategic opportunities and threats.
Recommended short and medium-term transformation initiatives.
A plan to derisk and refine the initiatives via series of escalating experiments.
An architecture of the organizational structures and resources needed to execute this strategy.
Intensive Working Labs
Work with industry experts on your AI Strategy Blueprint through structured labs: 3 group sessions of 30 minutes each.
By the end of the program, you will have created a rigorous, actionable AI Strategy Blueprint.
AI Strategy Blueprint Report Out
- AI Strategy Blueprint Report Out In the final session, you’ll present your AI Strategy Blueprint to peers and faculty for feedback and refinement.
- Your AI Strategy Blueprint will be your deliverable designed to inform executive decision-making or guide entrepreneurial execution.
Cohort Statistics
Work Experience
Work Experience
Industries
Financial Services
Information Technology
Manufacturing
Healthcare
Real Estate
Oil & Gas
Consulting
Hospitality
Edtech
Construction
Telecommunication
Retail
Entertainment
FMCG and Others
Designations
Founder
Partner
Chairman
Managing Director
Executive Director
President
Group CEO
Group CFO & COO
Director of Finance
Director – Communication & Marketing
Chief Planning Officer
Chief Digital Officer
Chief HR Officer
Senior Vice President
AVP, Retail Analytics
Companies
All product and company names are trademarks™ or register® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.
Faculty
Karan Girotra
Professor of Operations Technology and Innovation
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Allan Filipowicz
Clinical Professor of Management and Organisations
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Mor Namaan
Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute
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David Rand
Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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Frank Pasquale
Professor of Law
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Hear from Prof. Karan Girotra
Certificate
Upon successful completion of the program, participants will be awarded a digitally verifiable certificate by Cornell University
Note: Certificate image is for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change at the discretion of Cornell University.
Testimonials
Amazing experience in building an AI Transformation strategy step by step. The ability to look at strategy from different perspectives , like Technology, Innovation Culture, Risk Management and Communicating Change helped me get a 360 view of how to lead change in my organization.
Arjun Basu
Vice President of Engineering, Rakuten
The Cornell CAIO Program has been a transformative leadership experience. It helped me move from being an AI practitioner and builder to thinking like an AI enterprise architect and strategic enabler at scale. What made the greatest impact was the structured approach to AI governance, enterprise adoption frameworks, and the candid discussions around organizational change. The sessions on responsible AI, operating model design, and aligning AI initiatives with measurable business value were particularly powerful. The peer discussions were equally impactful — learning from leaders across industries expanded my perspective beyond technology and into culture, incentives, and execution realities. The program strengthened my conviction that AI leadership is not about models — it is about mindset, systems, and stewardship.
Saptarshi Mukerji
Founder & CTO, SAP Alliance Limited
Overall I am satisfied. It is a great course to immerse in the world of AI. Prof Karen and Prof Mike courses were our openers to me. I learned from them.
Tony E. Saadé
Chief Strategy Officer, Quill Communication
The program was a transformative experience. While I came in with deep technical expertise, it helped me develop a stronger strategic and leadership perspective on how AI drives real business value. The frameworks on work redesign, business models, and AI strategy were immediately applicable, helping me rethink how we deploy AI across my team and approach new initiatives more effectively. Overall, the learning was practical, relevant, and something I’ve been able to apply directly in my day-to-day role.
Vinit Kumar Verma
Vice President, Jade Global, Inc.
Very insightful. Sessions from Dr Karan have been very engaging and informative.
Neha Sharma
Head, Global Quality Solutions, Sandoz
The program was energizing and strategically clarifying. It elevated AI from productivity gains to business model reinvention and long-term value creation.
Radoine Nachdi
Group Director, Business development and Strategy, Dubai World Trade Center
Who Should Apply?
Cornell Chief AI Officer Program is designed for emerging and current CXOs, senior leaders and executives, across geographies and industries, who desire to be agile in thinking and strategic in their approach towards building innovative AI solutions to steer business growth.
10+ years of work experience and proven success in leading high performing teams / impactful projects
A minimum of a Bachelor's degree