About the Role
We are seeking an exceptional leader to serve as the Head of AI Strategy and Portfolio, overseeing the strategy and portfolio for all AI-driven products and platforms across our enterprise. Reporting directly to the Chief AI Officer, this role is pivotal in developing and harmonizing AI strategies, optimizing portfolios, evangelizing best practices, and enabling large transformational programs. The Head of AI strategy and Portfolio engages with business line leadership to ensure the organization leverages AI for innovation, operational excellence, and sustainable growth.
This role will own the future of how one of America’s largest banks leverages AI to serve customers, manage risk, and transform operations—delivering scalable, reusable, and extraordinary digital experiences at unprecedented scale.
The Head of AI Strategy and Portfolio will have overall responsibility of enterprise-wide AI portfolio across all business lines and will define, lead, and scale strategies for all AI-powered products across the bank. It will be central to the organization’s ambitions to transform through AI. By driving a unified strategy, fostering responsible innovation, and tracking effectiveness, this leader ensures AI delivers maximum value and prepares teams for radical new ways of working and creating value at scale, all while maintaining the highest standards of security, compliance, and operational excellence.
Essential Functions
AI Product Strategy & Vision
- Develop, operationalize, and harmonize a comprehensive AI strategy that supports the enterprise mission and business objectives, ensuring a unified approach across all business units.
- Facilitate organizational alignment and consistency in AI adoption, standards, and execution, while supporting tailored solutions for specific needs.
- Collaborate with partners to define strategies for AI evangelization & Ways of Thinking.
- Lead knowledge-sharing efforts to build enthusiasm and capability organization-wide.
Portfolio Optimization & Outreach
- Manage and optimize the enterprise AI portfolio; proactively identify, evaluate, and champion high-value AI transformation opportunities.
- Drive organizational engagement through outreach, workshops, and collaborative forums to instill an AI-first mindset and best practices.
Synthetic Data & Experimentation
- Build and oversee frameworks for synthetic data that enable responsible and accelerated AI experimentation while maintaining compliance and security.
Tracking AI Effectiveness, Governance, Risk & Compliance
- Align AI initiatives with governance, risk, and compliance frameworks, championing responsible AI use and ethical standards.
- Implement robust performance measurement frameworks to evaluate the impact, efficiency, and ROI of all AI deployments.
- Continuously inform strategy and solution improvements based on measurable outcomes and data-driven insights.
- Partner with Risk and Compliance organizations to influence and adopt standards to emergent AI landscape and promote internally to all teams engaged in building AI solutions for the Bank.
Strategic Initiatives Enablement
- Identify and support breakthrough technology initiatives e.g., workforce transformation through advanced automation, accelerating experimentation and readiness across the organization.
- Partner with business unit leadership to translate organizational needs into actionable AI solutions, fostering collaboration across domains.
Qualifications
- Senior executive experience in AI, digital transformation, or strategic technology leadership at enterprise scale.
- Deep expertise in AI technologies, synthetic data, automation, advanced analytics.
- Thorough understanding of governance, risk management, compliance, and ethical AI principles.
- Proven success in portfolio management, cross-functional collaboration, and change management.
- Outstanding communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with demonstrated capacity to educate, inspire, and influence at all levels.
- Strategic thinker and results-driven operator, skilled in driving transformation from ideation through full-scale implementation.
- Willingness, desire and ability to travel 20% domestically.
- The role offers a hybrid/flexible schedule, which means there's an in-office expectation of 3 or more days per week in our St. Louis, Chicago or Minneapolis office.
Preferred Skills And Experiences
- Proven track record delivering enterprise-scale AI product portfolios (preferably in top-tier financial services), including successful AI transformations in highly regulated environments.
- Deep understanding of banking, operations, risk, and compliance—pairing technical fluency with business and regulatory acumen.