Leadership & Advisory Network

Academics, practitioners, and industry leaders building the future of education together.

ZAI programs are shaped by a network of executives, scholars, and practitioners from the world’s leading organizations and universities. They guide curriculum, mentor participants, and connect learning to real-world impact.

We exist to turn intelligence into measurable progress.

“The greatest untapped resource in education is not technology. It is the connection between university leadership and industry leadership.”
ZAI Institute Founding Principle
6,000+
Advisors across university programs, past year
60+
Universities served, past decade
500+
Companies Represented

The Board

The executives and academics who advise the institute.

A board of named senior operators and academics advises the institute itself. They sit above the advisory boards that run across our university partner programs, guiding research direction, curriculum standards, capstone evaluation, and the connection between academic work and the employers who hire graduates.

The Advisory Board meets quarterly and contributes throughout the year through curriculum review, capstone evaluations, panel participation, and informal peer briefings with cohort participants.

The Board does not approve research findings or program syllabi. It informs them. What the institute publishes is aggregated and de-identified. No finding is attributed to a member or their company by name.

Chair

ServiceNow
Alan Paris
Global Head, Financial Services Risk & Compliance · Field CTO

Head of Research

ZAI Institute
Renee Murphy
Former Forrester Principal Analyst in GRC. Global Keynote Speaker.

Members

Meta
Nersa Acosta
Senior Executive
USAF
Joe Chapa
Senior Executive · AI & National Security
PwC
Sherry Comes
Applied AI & Emerging Tech Leader
Meta
Gina Dunham
Business Lead & Chief of Staff
OverSpace
Torrell Funderburk
Global Chief Information Security Officer
ZAI Institute
Eric Greenberg
CEO
Southern Methodist University
Ira Greenberg
Professor and Director, SMU Center for Creative Computation
BlueCross BlueShield MA
Jean Guan
COO, Chief of Staff & Head of Transformation Office
Porchlight Consulting
Callie King
Founder & Principal
World Wide Technology
Bryan Liebert
Field CISO, East & Public Sector
Microsoft
Andre Magni
Cloud & AI Leader, US Retail & CPG
Google
Bovio Pulito
Head of Platform Growth Partnerships
JPMorgan Chase
Cathy Ryan Reneer
Managing Director
Microsoft
Karin Smith
Account Executive & Field CTO, Retail & Consumer Goods
Meta
Valerie Usmanova
Lead, Agentic AI GTM & Monetization Partnerships
Google
Janee Vane
Head of Commerce
Experian
Mariana Venter
SVP, Global Finance Systems & AI Engineering

Join the board

Join the executives helping define what AI education should measure, teach, and prove. Benchmark with peers, shape the research, and see what leaders are actually doing with AI.

Join our research network

Join a community of senior executives. More than 6,000 served on advisory boards across our university partner programs in the past year, at organizations including

Accenture Aetna AIG AT&T Bank of America BlueCross BlueShield Cigna Comcast Deloitte Dow Jones Estée Lauder Forbes Intel Johnson & Johnson Marriott Mastercard Merck Microsoft Morgan Stanley Novartis Prudential Salesforce JPMorgan Chase Oracle IBM Adobe Accenture Aetna AIG AT&T Bank of America BlueCross BlueShield Cigna Comcast Deloitte Dow Jones Estée Lauder Forbes Intel Johnson & Johnson Marriott Mastercard Merck Microsoft Morgan Stanley Novartis Prudential Salesforce JPMorgan Chase Oracle IBM Adobe
UCLA University of Miami Seton Hall University University of Colorado Colorado Springs University of Minnesota Mankato University of Richmond Ohio State University University of San Francisco University of Colorado Boulder UCLA University of Miami Seton Hall University University of Colorado Colorado Springs University of Minnesota Mankato University of Richmond Ohio State University University of San Francisco University of Colorado Boulder

Advisory board members across 60+ university partner programs

Begin the Conversation

The institutions that move with intention now will define what comes next.

Which side of that sentence does your institution want to be on?