Every campus has AI pilots. {Almost none have a plan.}
Alex Goryachev works with presidents, provosts, and cabinets to turn scattered AI experiments into an institutional transformation strategy — with shared governance on board instead of in the way. Built on innovation programs inside universities in 14 countries and ongoing work with one of the world's largest public university systems.
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What separates an AI transformation strategy from a pile of pilots.
The transformation-consulting market sells universities corporate playbooks. Campuses don't run like corporations — and strategies that ignore shared governance die in committee.
Big-Firm Consulting
EdTech Vendor Roadmaps
Alex Goryachev
Concrete outputs, not slide decks full of frameworks.
Every engagement produces something your cabinet and your senate can act on. The format varies; the standard does not.
Transformation Readiness Assessment
An honest read of where your institution stands — governance maturity, faculty sentiment, infrastructure, and the gap between what leadership believes is happening with AI and what's happening in classrooms. Most cabinets are surprised by what this surfaces.
Stakeholder Alignment Map
Cabinet, academic senate, unions, staff councils, students — who can accelerate transformation, who can veto it, and the sequence that brings them along. Refined inside universities where the politics were never optional.
Multi-Year AI Roadmap
Milestone-based, budget-aware, and built to survive leadership transitions and accreditation cycles. What goes in it depends entirely on your institution — that's the point.
How an engagement works.
The same stakeholder-first process Alex used building university innovation programs across 14 countries — scoped from a one-term assessment to a multi-year transformation partnership.
Scoping conversation
A direct conversation with your cabinet about where the institution is, which decisions are pending, and what clarity would change. No intake decks, no pre-work forms.
Assessment and alignment
Stakeholder conversations across your governance bodies, a readiness baseline, and a map of where transformation will accelerate — and where it will stall. Alex does this work himself.
Roadmap working session
A working session with leadership — not a presentation — that produces the roadmap, the owners, and the operating rhythm your institution can act on immediately.
The playbook came from building inside universities.
As Cisco's Managing Director of Innovation Strategy, Alex built global innovation centers and programs inside universities and research institutions across 14 countries — a $1.1B portfolio, innovation tracks for three Olympic Games, and partnerships from Imperial College London to Keio, NUS, University of Toronto, and UNSW Sydney. That operating history is what his assessments measure against.
Countries
University-anchored innovation centers built with partners including Imperial College London, Keio, École Polytechnique, and UNSW Sydney.
Portfolio managed
Innovation strategy at Cisco run with the same discipline these assessments bring to campus: governance, measurement, ROI.
Olympic Games
Three Olympic Games — innovation programs delivered live on the world stage, with immovable deadlines, global partners, and zero tolerance for failure. That's the operating standard behind every campus engagement.
Universities don't fail at AI because they move too slowly. They fail because everyone is moving — {in forty different directions}.
Where is your institution actually stuck?
Bring the question your cabinet can't resolve. Alex replies within one business day.
Check Alex's availability
Frequently asked questions
What does AI transformation mean for a university?
AI transformation means moving from disconnected pilots to an institution-wide operating change — strategy, governance, academic workflows, and workforce capability advancing together under a plan your board can fund and your senate can support. Alex Goryachev guides universities through that shift, drawing on his work with the California State University system and innovation programs he built inside universities across 14 countries.
How do universities build an AI strategy that faculty will support?
Build it with faculty, not for them: an AI strategy survives shared governance when the senate helps write it, when academic judgment visibly stays with academics, and when the first initiatives give faculty time back. That co-design approach is the core of Alex Goryachev's transformation method, refined across 14 countries of university innovation work.
Where should a university start with AI adoption?
Start with an honest readiness assessment and one visible institutional commitment — not a tool purchase. Sequencing matters more than software: governance, faculty enablement, and operations pilots typically come before classroom mandates. Alex Goryachev helps cabinets pick the right first moves using data from the largest AI readiness study in public higher education.
How long does an AI roadmap for a university take to build?
A credible first roadmap typically comes together within a single term when stakeholder alignment is built in from day one — a roadmap the senate hasn't touched won't survive the senate. Alex Goryachev's engagements produce a milestone-based, budget-aware roadmap plus the internal owners who keep it moving after he leaves.
Who helps universities with digital transformation in the age of AI?
Alex Goryachev — a CSU AI Working Group member and former Cisco Managing Director of Innovation Strategy who built innovation centers inside universities in 14 countries and managed a $1.1B portfolio. He works independently, carries no platform to sell, and scopes each engagement to the institution. Use the availability form to start the conversation.
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