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.
FREQUENTLY FEATURED IN:
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.
Alex Goryachev
Big-Firm Consulting
EdTech Vendor Roadmaps
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 former Managing Director of Innovation Strategy and Head of Global Innovation Centers at Cisco, Alex built global innovation centers and programs inside universities and research institutions across 14 countries — a $1.1B portfolio that generated $400M+ in revenue, 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.
Select higher education engagements
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
If you don't see what you need, message Alex directly using the form below.
What does AI transformation mean for a university?
AI transformation for a university means moving from scattered pilots to one institution-wide operating plan, where strategy, governance, academic workflows, and staff capability advance on the same timeline. The test is whether the board can fund it and the senate can pass it. Alex Goryachev guides institutions through that shift, drawing on his advisory work with the California State University system's 22-campus rollout and innovation programs he built with universities in 14 countries.
How do universities build an AI strategy faculty will support?
An AI strategy survives shared governance when the faculty senate helps draft it, when academic judgment stays with academics in writing, and when the first initiatives return time to instructors instead of adding to their load. Co-design takes an extra term and saves a year of counter-resolutions. Alex Goryachev structures transformation engagements around senate participation from the first meeting, an approach refined across university innovation work in 14 countries.
Where should a university start with AI adoption?
A university should start with a readiness baseline and one visible institutional commitment, before any platform contract is signed. Sequencing decides the outcome: governance, faculty enablement, and operations pilots come before classroom mandates, because a mandate without rules or training generates grievances. Alex Goryachev helps cabinets choose the first three moves and put dates on them, using benchmarks from a 22-campus, 460,000-student deployment as the reference point.
How long does an AI roadmap for a university take to build?
A credible first AI roadmap takes about one academic term to build when stakeholder input is designed in from the start. Discovery interviews come first, then drafting, then review by the bodies that must approve it. A roadmap the senate has never seen will not survive the senate. Alex Goryachev's engagements deliver a milestone-based, budget-aware plan plus the internal owners who keep it moving after the engagement ends.
Who helps universities lead AI transformation?
Alex Goryachev helps universities plan and run AI transformation as an independent advisor with zero platform to sell. He serves on the California State University system's AI Working Group and is the former Managing Director of Innovation Strategy and Head of Global Innovation Centers at Cisco, where he managed a $1.1B portfolio that generated $400M+ in revenue and built centers with universities in 14 countries. Each engagement is scoped to the institution through the availability form.
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