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Fulkerson Advisors
Engagement · Fractional

A Chief AI Officer, on the cadence you actually need.

Most organizations don't need a full-time Chief AI Officer. They need a senior practitioner who has done the work, who shows up on a defined cadence, and who is accountable for the four or five decisions that actually matter this year. We do that work, under your reporting line, at a fraction of the cost of a permanent hire.

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When you need one

When a fractional CAIO is the right answer

A fractional engagement makes sense when the board has asked for an AI strategy and the answer needs to land in a quarter, not in a search committee. It makes sense when you have AI initiatives in flight under three different VPs and no one accountable for the portfolio. It makes sense when the CFO is asking what the spend has produced, and the answer cannot defensibly come from the people who proposed the spend. It makes sense when a full-time Chief AI Officer hire is on the roadmap but you need senior judgment in place now to scope the role properly and avoid hiring the wrong profile.

  • Board has issued a mandate; the answer is needed in 60 to 90 days
  • Three or more AI initiatives are in flight under different sponsors with no portfolio owner
  • CFO is asking for an honest ROI read and the existing team cannot give one
  • You're planning a full-time CAIO hire and need senior scoping before the search
  • A pilot has stalled and the next quarter's funding is in question

Anti-positioning

When a fractional engagement is the wrong answer

If you already have a strong head of data or a VP of AI who is empowered, well-staffed, and aligned with the executive team, you don't need us; you need to back them. If your organization wants someone to write a strategy deck and step away, that is a different product called consulting, and there are good firms who do it. If your real problem is that you need a permanent CAIO and you're using the fractional model to delay the hire, we will tell you so and refuse the engagement. We work where the work needs senior accountability, not where it needs a job-title substitute.

The engagement

What a fractional CAIO engagement actually looks like

You get a managing partner of Fulkerson Advisors operating under your executive reporting line for a defined cadence, typically two to four days a month, for a defined horizon, typically six to twelve months. The partner shows up as a peer to your C-suite, not as an outside consultant in the room. They chair the AI portfolio review, sit on the steering committees that matter, sign the build-versus-buy decisions, and own the read-out to the board. When the work demands more than one partner can carry, we deploy the broader bench (senior practitioners, expert network specialists) under the fractional partner's accountability. The deliverable is not slideware. It is a portfolio that ships, a calendar of decisions made, and a clear handover at the end of the term to either a permanent CAIO or to the existing leadership team, who by then knows how the work runs.

  • Two to four executive days per month, scheduled on your calendar cadence
  • Chairs the AI portfolio review and the relevant steering committees
  • Signs the build-versus-buy and vendor-selection decisions
  • Owns the quarterly board read-out on AI portfolio status and value realized
  • Manages the bench: senior practitioners and expert-network specialists as needed
  • Engagement ends with a documented handover to permanent leadership

The contrarian insight

Why most Chief AI Officers fail (and it has nothing to do with skill)

Most permanent CAIO hires do not fail because the person hired was wrong. They fail because the reporting line was wrong. A CAIO who reports into the CIO inherits an IT cost-control mandate and cannot ship value. A CAIO who reports into the Chief Strategy Officer inherits a slide deck and cannot ship anything. A CAIO who reports directly to the CEO with a P&L mandate and the authority to commit budget across business units is the only configuration we have seen consistently produce production AI systems at Fortune 500 scale. A fractional engagement gives you the chance to test the reporting line, the mandate, and the operating model before you commit to a multi-year hire. Most clients who run a fractional engagement first end up hiring a permanent CAIO into a job that is structurally set up to succeed; some discover they don't need to make the hire at all.

Proof

Case files

Each of the files below started with a question only a senior practitioner could answer. The work that followed required someone with the authority to chair the room, sign the decisions, and own the result; the operating posture of a fractional CAIO rather than a project lead.

What we won't do

The work we decline

We don't take fractional engagements where the executive sponsor will not commit to making funding decisions during the term; deferred decisions are the standard failure mode and we won't be a party to one. We don't take engagements where the role is purely advisory with no operating authority; that is a coaching arrangement, not a CAIO. We don't take engagements that conflict with existing client work in the same vertical without explicit cross-disclosure. And we don't take engagements purely to extend a runway on a hire the organization is already overdue to make.

Who you’ll work with

Christian Adib

Christian Adib

Founder & Managing Partner

Christian leads fractional CAIO engagements directly. He has run portfolios from inside Fortune 500 AI teams (BCG forward-deployed, hedge fund quant on a $2B book) and from outside the org as managing partner here; the seat changes, the operating discipline doesn't.

Practice background

  • Christian Adib began his career in management consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton and the Boston Consulting Group, where, as a senior data scientist, he led forward-deployed teams — embedding engineers alongside client operators rather than handing over slideware. He then joined a hedge fund, where, as part of a small team managing a $2B portfolio, he drove quantitative research and built products from scratch.
  • An engineer by training, Christian went on to complete MIT's Leaders for Global Operations program, earning an MBA alongside a master's in engineering. He founded Fulkerson Advisors to close the gap he kept seeing between AI's promise and what survives contact with production — building the firm around one conviction: that the people who scope an initiative should be the ones who ship it.

Case files

  1. Retail · Caribbean conglomerate

    Demand forecasting Center of Excellence

    Operating-model design, hiring pipeline, and quarterly governance cadence that built a sustainable AI capability after the engagement closed.

  2. Enterprise Software

    Enterprise software GenAI portfolio strategy

    Senior judgment that killed two underperforming pilots, accelerated one tied to renewal economics, and gave the CFO a defensible portfolio.

  3. Asset Management · $55B US pension fund

    Equity index strategy backtesting

    Senior practitioner authority to scope, build, and instrument an AI-enabled index strategy now running against a multi-billion-dollar portfolio.

See all case files
Frequently asked

Questions we hear most.

What does a fractional CAIO engagement cost compared to a permanent hire?
A typical engagement runs roughly twenty to forty percent of the all-in cost of a permanent CAIO hire at a Fortune 500 organization, scoped against two to four days per month for six to twelve months. The number that matters more than cost is what the engagement is accountable for: a defined portfolio of decisions made, value realized, and a clean handover. We scope engagement fees against deliverables and decision rights, not against headcount-equivalent comparisons.
How is a fractional CAIO different from advisory or consulting?
An advisor offers a point of view; a consultant builds an artifact. A fractional CAIO holds executive operating authority for the portfolio under their charter, including the authority to commit budget, kill initiatives, and report directly to the board. The reporting line and the decision rights are what make the engagement work; without them, it's advisory by another name and the failure modes that follow are predictable.
Who do you report to during the engagement?
Directly to the CEO or to whoever holds enterprise-wide P&L authority for the AI portfolio. We will engage with the CIO, CFO, Chief Strategy Officer, and operating-unit leaders as the work demands, but the reporting line for AI portfolio decisions stays at the level where cross-business-unit authority lives. We will not take an engagement structured to report into a function head with limited cross-unit authority; the reporting line is the operating model, and we won't run an engagement we know is set up to fail.
What happens at the end of the engagement?
Three outcomes are typical. The first is a clean handover to a permanent Chief AI Officer hired during the engagement (and often scoped during it); we work alongside the new hire for thirty to sixty days during transition. The second is a handover to existing leadership, with a documented operating model and ongoing quarterly reviews. The third, less common, is a renewal of the fractional engagement against a new charter if the organization's needs have evolved. We never extend an engagement on autopilot; every renewal is a fresh charter.
Will you take on the role with conflicts in our industry?
We take a small number of fractional engagements at any given time and we maintain explicit conflict disclosure. If we have an active client in a competitive position to your organization, we will tell you, scope the conflict, and either decline the engagement or scope around the conflict with full transparency. The conflict policy is published in our editorial standards; it is not negotiable.
Can we start with a shorter engagement to test the fit?
Yes. We typically scope a first thirty-day diagnostic engagement that produces a portfolio map, a candid read on what's working and what isn't, and a written recommendation on whether a full fractional engagement is the right next step for your organization. The diagnostic is fixed-fee and scoped tightly; if the answer is no, you have a useful artifact regardless.

Bring us a question, and we’ll bring you an honest read.

Schedule a briefingRead the case files