Gravi AI Leadership
Who We Are
Tara Cruz
Co-Founder
A leader at the intersection of operations, marketing, and revenue, Tara has led operations as VP of Marketing Ops at unicorn AppFolio and demand generation as SVP of Marketing at Centerbase. With nearly 20 years of marketing and operations experience and professional training in agentic AI, Tara creates efficient pathways to success through strong, clean databases and AI innovation. She excels at architecting the digital backbone that supports strong growth for businesses, having built these systems from the ground up.
Julie Scotland
Co-Founder
Julie is an AI advisor, educator, keynote speaker, and co-founder of Gravi AI. She helps organizations operationalize enterprise AI through practical training, governance, and workflows across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Claude Code, and Codex. Her guidance draws on firsthand experience building, testing, and maintaining business tools. She has trained thousands of professionals and co-teaches WorldatWork’s AI Foundations for HR program. Previously, she co-founded Y Combinator-backed Pasito and led marketing at MyCase (AppFolio).
SENIOR INSTRUCTORS
Expert AI Instruction.
Enterprise Depth.
Curated practitioners matched to the complexity and scale your engagement demands.
Gravi AI works with a carefully selected group of Senior Instructors, experienced practitioners who bring real-world enterprise delivery, domain-specific knowledge, and hands-on technical depth to every engagement. Each is selected for their track record. These are people who have built AI systems, led organizational transitions, and advised executive teams. Instructors are matched by industry, technical focus, and context.
Sebastian Chedal
25-YEARS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Sebastian Chedal has spent 25 years guiding companies through digital transformation, with the last several focused specifically on AI. As founder and CEO of Fountain City, he's led global engagements for Heineken, Intuit, SonyEricsson, and OPI, working with executive-level stakeholders on complex, large-scale rollouts. He advises senior leaders on structuring AI initiatives that succeed. His focus areas include designing and deploying multi-agent systems that learn and improve over time, and agentic software development: building and shipping software through fully autonomous agent-driven processes. Sebastian brings technical rigor and an educator's clarity to every engagement, making complex AI systems practical for the enterprise teams responsible for running them.
AGENTIC WORKFLOWS
ENTERPRISE ROLLOUTS
AI SYSTEMS
EXECUTIVE ADVISORY
Vanessa Chang
FORMER VP OF STRATEGY & OPERATIONS
Vanessa Chang brings an operator's instinct to AI education - grounding her work in how people actually think, decide, and collaborate, not just how they prompt. A former VP of Strategy & Operations, she founded Mosaek LLC and educates through her platforms on Think with V, a hub on intelligence and work in the AI era. Vanessa works directly with C-suite leaders, founders, and VPs across communications, CPG, and tech, focusing on AI literacy, workforce readiness, and human-AI collaboration protocols. Her approach, thinking with AI, not like AI, is rooted in cognitive science and built for organizations ready to move past surface-level adoption into lasting fluency.
AI LITERACY
WORKFORCE READINESS
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
C-SUITE ADVISORY
Waziri Garuba
AI SYSTEMS ARCHITECT | GOLDMAN SACHS · MERRILL LYNCH · MORGAN STANLEY
Waziri Garuba is an AI Systems Architect and founder of Harlem Labs Advisory Inc., where Waziri designs scalable AI systems, automation workflows, and executive operating systems that turn complex business needs into practical AI-enabled solutions. Over 15+ years, Waziri’s work has spanned systems thinking and deal structuring across financial services and advisory environments, including roles at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Evolution Markets, and renewable energy project development at Reznick Capital Markets. Waziri leads leadership sessions, strategy workshops, and broader team trainings to drive AI adoption, workflow redesign, and executive alignment.
AI SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE
FINANCIAL SERVICES
AI AUTOMATION
EXECUTIVE ALIGNMENT
Megan Notarte
PMP-CERTIFIED OPERATIONS LEADER | CO-FOUNDER, AI PORTLAND
Megan Notarte is an operations leader and AI educator with 18 years of experience running complex organizations and helping people navigate change. As co-founder of AI Portland, one of the Pacific Northwest’s most active AI literacy communities, she has spent over two years translating AI concepts into practical, actionable guidance for working professionals across industries. Her background spans engineering team leadership, organizational design, hiring, and financial management as a partner and co-owner of Cloud Four, a web development agency serving Fortune 500 clients. She is a PMP-certified project manager and a speaker on AI literacy and responsible adoption at regional and national conferences.
AI LITERACY
RESPONSIBLE ADOPTION
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Sam Keen
AI RESEARCHER, SOFTWARE ARCHITECT, & DEVELOPER | PREV. AWS, NIKE
Sam Keen has spent 26 years architecting and shipping production software, now focused on applied generative AI. At AWS, he led enterprise AI deployments on Bedrock and custom RAG systems within AWS Training & Certification, and has supported large-scale architecture and transformation work across organizations including Lululemon and Nike. Now the founder of Altered Craft, Sam focuses full-time on AI research, writing, and developer education. He authors the weekly “Altered Craft” newsletter and wrote Clean Architecture with Python (Packt, 2025). Sam brings an architect’s rigor and an educator’s clarity, translating fast-moving AI capabilities into practical patterns engineering organizations can adopt.
AGENTIC WORKFLOWS
CONTEXT ENGINEERING (RAG)
ENTERPRISE AI
DEVELOPER EDUCATION
Ali Maaxa, Ph.D.
CO-FOUNDER, AI GOVERNANCE GROUP | PREV. AWS, ANAPLAN, NEW RELIC
Ali Maaxa has spent 15+ years helping organizations turn ambiguous strategy into working practice, the last decade focused on how enterprise teams adopt AI safely and effectively. As founder of ProductTheory.io, Ali built SAiAF, an AI governance framework now standard across client engagements, and co-founded the AI Governance Group to help leadership set guardrails without slowing teams down. Ali spent eight-plus years building AI-era products inside AWS, Anaplan, and New Relic before going independent, standing up AI-augmented workflows for organizations from early-stage SaaS startups to $3M public-sector programs. A Ph.D. anthropologist and 18-year university professor, Ali brings a researcher's rigor and an educator's clarity to enterprise AI adoption, hosting the Culture of Cloud podcast and keynoting for Women in Product and CXAI-PDX.
AI GOVERNANCE
ENTERPRISE AI ADOPTION
WORKFORCE READINESS
EXECUTIVE ADVISORY
Bryan Iversen
AI SYSTEMS BUILDER & EDUCATOR | CYBERSECURITY · ENTERPRISE ADOPTION
Bryan has spent 15+ years in international K–12 education, moving from the classroom to technology integration and then to Director of Technology, where he led technology, cybersecurity, and change initiatives. He now helps organizations adopt AI securely and effectively. As founder of Rumo Global, he builds agent-native workflows, AI automations, and privacy-first vendor vetting tools that move teams from ad hoc experimentation toward sanctioned, measurable adoption. His enterprise experience includes acquisition integration, identity and access initiatives, and security projects for a global international schools group operating in more than 30 countries. Bryan works hands-on with Claude Code, MCP, and the Microsoft enterprise security stack, including Entra ID. Fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, he brings a practitioner's perspective to AI adoption in data-sensitive environments, particularly education and EdTech.
AGENTIC WORKFLOWS
ENTERPRISE AI ADOPTION
CYBERSECURITY
AI GOVERNANCE & VENDOR RISK
Strategic AI Leadership & Workforce Education
Bridging the gap between executive strategy and practical workforce adoption. We are frequent speakers and workshop hosts for leading organizations committed to safe, effective AI integration.
“Julie and Tara delivered an incredible workshop. They have a real gift for making something that feels complex suddenly feel simple. Their communication is clear, their slides are sharp, and their live demos made the session incredibly practical and packed with value. They work brilliantly as a duo—bouncing off each other in a way that keeps the session fast-paced, engaging, and full of energy. They’re deeply knowledgeable, generous with their insights, and I’d absolutely trust them to guide me on applying AI in my own work."
Clair Du Preez, Founder of Maiden Community
Industry Perspectives
Sharing actionable frameworks and future-focused strategy with the wider business community.
WOMEN IN REVENUE
Turn AI Governance Into a Competitive Advantage
Transforming necessary guardrails into a growth engine that accelerates your revenue strategy without compromising safety.
PORTLAND BUSINESS JOURNAL
Portland’s AI Moment is Now or Never​
A call to action for regional leaders to prioritize rapid workforce training as the primary driver of future economic resilience.​
GRAVI AI
Your Brand Is Being Hijacked By AI​
The essential playbook for marketing leaders to protect brand equity in an age of automated content.