Nelson A. Colón Vargas, Ph.D.

Fractional Chief AI Officer (CAIO)

Helping organizations adopt AI safely, strategically, and responsibly.

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Why AI Leadership Now?

AI is no longer optional—but neither is risk management, regulatory compliance, or strategic alignment. I help organizations translate AI hype into real-world value, with a strong focus on privacy, security, and responsible innovation.

Services Offered

🎯
AI Strategy & Roadmapping

  • Identify high-impact AI opportunities aligned with your organization's mission and workflows
  • Prioritize where to build, buy, or wait on AI investments
  • Create realistic, compliant, and forward-looking AI adoption plans
  • Coordinate across technical and executive teams to ensure buy-in and scalability

🛡️
AI Governance & Risk Frameworks

  • Develop governance plans that address privacy, bias, and model accountability
  • Align your systems with standards like HIPAA, EU AI Act, Executive Orders and NIST RMF
  • Create audit trails, documentation workflows, and model validation pipelines
  • Support compliance reviews and internal/external oversight processes

🤖
LLM & Agent Oversight

  • Evaluate risks, benefits, and infrastructure needs for deploying generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, custom agents)
  • Establish usage guidelines, logging protocols, and safety boundaries
  • Support implementation of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), API-based copilots, or agentic workflows
  • Ensure agent deployment aligns with user transparency, data protection, and organizational risk appetite

⚙️
Deployment & Infrastructure Review

  • Review pipelines for data ingestion, transformation, vectorization, and model inference
  • Evaluate infrastructure readiness (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, cloud service security)
  • Assess the robustness, reproducibility, and monitoring practices of deployed models
  • Identify potential failure modes and implement fail-safes or fallback mechanisms

👔
Executive Advisory

  • Advise senior leadership on AI investment, hiring, vendor selection, and organizational alignment
  • Design AI literacy and training programs tailored to board members and non-technical executives
  • Serve as a fractional member of your leadership team (CAIO model) without requiring a full-time commitment
  • Translate technical complexity into strategic clarity

📊
Applied ML & Data Science Systems

  • Design and review classical ML systems for classification, ranking, and prediction tasks
  • Develop interpretable models with fairness, auditability, and compliance in mind
  • Guide data collection, preprocessing, and feature engineering for regulatory use cases
  • Support evaluation strategy using appropriate metrics, baselines, and testing protocols

Independent AI Evaluation & Expert Services

In addition to advisory and strategy work, I offer independent expert evaluation of AI systems.

When Is This Useful?

  • Litigation or disputes involving algorithmic decision-making
  • Audits or impact assessments for high-risk AI systems
  • Procurement due diligence and public-sector vendor evaluation
  • Healthcare, finance, or legal settings where privacy, explainability, or harm mitigation is essential

Roles I Can Serve

  • Advisory Board Member – Support startups, nonprofits, or mission-aligned orgs on AI strategy and governance
  • Expert Witness – Provide reports, affidavits, or court testimony in cases involving AI use
  • Independent Evaluator – Conduct neutral assessments of AI systems for bias, privacy, safety, or regulatory alignment
  • Technical Advisor to Counsel – Help legal teams or compliance officers understand model behavior and risks

With experience in federal agencies, healthcare systems, and AI governance, I bring both technical rigor and regulatory fluency to this work.

Leadership & Public Engagement

Outside of evaluation and deployment work, I selectively engage in roles that help shape the direction of responsible AI at the institutional or policy level.

Roles I Welcome

  • Fractional Chief AI Officer (CAIO) – Provide strategic leadership to organizations without the overhead of a full-time executive
  • Advisory Board Member – Support startups, nonprofits, and research initiatives in shaping responsible, mission-aligned AI strategy
  • Public Contributor – Participate in grant panels, policy working groups, and innovation initiatives focused on safe AI adoption
  • Speaker – Deliver invited talks, keynotes, and lectures on AI ethics, compliance, and strategic governance

About Me

Professional Experience

Specialized in high-compliance, privacy-sensitive environments (e.g., healthcare, defense, cybersecurity).

  • 10+ years of experience in AI and data science
  • Served as the AI Lead at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
  • Advisor to startups on AI governance, secure AI and agent deployment, and infrastructure strategy
  • Advisor and technical contributor to cross-agency AI innovation programs, including:
    • Executive Office of the President – The White House
    • Department of Defense (DoD)
    • FBI – National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF)
    • NSF – Convergence Accelerator Program
    • DOT – Intelligent Transportation Systems

Academic Experience

  • Lecturer and course developer of “Computing in Context” at Columbia University - School of International and Public Affairs
  • Lecturer and course developer at NC State’s Data Science & AI Academy, teaching “Fundamentals of LLMs”
  • Guest lecturer and advisor on AI ethics, governance, and responsible deployment

Education

  • PhD in MathematicsUniversity of Iowa
  • MSc in Artificial IntelligenceUniversity of Texas at Austin
  • MSt in Artificial Intelligence, Ethics & SocietyUniversity of Cambridge
  • BSc in Mathematics - University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras

Ready to explore how AI fits your mission?

Contact Me