The Ethical AI Alliance was founded on a straightforward observation: most organizations treating AI governance as a policy exercise are going to struggle.
Governance that works isn’t written in principles documents. It’s built into operating architecture — into who owns decisions, how risk is tiered across use cases, what telemetry exists to detect when systems drift, and when escalation must occur.
The Alliance was founded by Catherine Gunnell, a senior information security and risk leader with more than 25 years of experience building governance frameworks inside complex, highly regulated global enterprises, including Citigroup. That background — designing control structures that operate across jurisdictions, business lines, and regulatory regimes — turned out to be directly relevant to the challenge most AI programs face after the pilot phase.
The Alliance exists to close the gap between AI experimentation and enterprise capability. Its content, frameworks, and advisory work are designed for boards, executive leadership teams, and AI governance leaders who need to move from principle to execution — before issues surface in audits, regulatory reviews, or public scrutiny.
Responsible AI is not a philosophy. It is an operating discipline.
Catherine Gunnell is an enterprise transformation and risk leader who helps organizations turn ambitious AI, data, and digital strategies into measurable business outcomes. With 20+ years in large regulated financial services environments — including Citigroup and Bank of America — and management consulting at A.T. Kearney and Kells Group, she designs operating models that make innovation executable: aligning decision rights, governance, funding, and delivery cadence so programs move from pilots to production with clear accountability. Her work consistently focuses on value realization through executive-ready dashboards, KPI/KRI frameworks, and adoption mechanisms that improve productivity, reduce cycle time, and strengthen operational resilience.
Catherine specializes in responsible AI governance and secure adoption at scale — designing the authority architecture, data integrity controls, model risk frameworks, and auditability mechanisms that allow AI systems to operate inside complex enterprises without creating regulatory or reputational exposure. She partners with C-suite leaders, product and engineering teams, compliance, and legal to make governance executable rather than aspirational. She is the founder of the Ethical AI Alliance, which publishes frameworks and practitioner guidance on responsible AI deployment for enterprise leaders.
Catherine holds an MBA from Southern Methodist University, a BS from the College of William & Mary, the CISM certification, and completed the University of Texas at Austin Post Graduate Program in AI & Machine Learning.