Brad Bush
A 3-time CEO who has sat in your seat, now helping firms put AI to work.
I've spent 25+ years in executive roles where technology strategy meets business reality. CEO three times, plus CCO, CIO, and CMO. I've run a $100M post-merger integration with 200 people, sold companies to private equity, built sales pipelines from scratch and grown them 300%, and held the CIO seat long enough to understand why most transformation initiatives fail. Today I'm deeply hands-on in B2B AI: building agents, deploying LLMs, and helping mid-sized firms separate real capability from hype through the lens of P&L, not code.
What it means to be an Innovating with AI Certified Consultant
I'm one of only a few dozen consultants worldwide certified through Innovating with AI's Consultancy Project, selected from a program of more than 1,000 students. The certification vets both academic rigor and hands-on practice across AI strategy, implementation, automation, and consulting best practices.
It is a human-centered, ethics-first standard. Certified consultants are trained to lead real AI initiatives inside real businesses, not just talk about them: scoping where AI creates value, deploying it responsibly, and measuring the whole return. You can confirm the credential in the public consultant directory.
View the Innovating with AI consultant directory →Built by an operator, not a futurist.
The AI market is full of people predicting the next decade and developers hunting for a problem to solve. I focus on the operational reality of next Tuesday. Having led from most angles, the server room and the board room alike, I'm as fluent in EBITDA and sales velocity as in models and APIs.
That perspective came the hard way: scaling a senior-living vertical 400%, running the six-month process that sold a 200-person company to a global PE firm, building a robotics startup from zero to an operational product, and consolidating four merged companies onto one platform while saving $7M a month. I've made the build-vs-buy calls, owned the budgets, and lived with the consequences.
At Strategy for AI, I bring that to professional-services firms (CPAs, law firms, investment banks, commercial real estate, architects, and engineers), designing agentic operating models, deciding which decisions get automated and which stay human, and building the guardrails around them. AI informs judgment; it never replaces it.
Experience leading to Strategy for AI.
- Executive MBA, SMU Cox School of Business (Salutatorian)
- BS in Civil Engineering, Rice University
- CxO AI Conference, UT Dallas
- Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance, AI for Board Directors
- Mind and Machines, A Practical View of Agents
- First Tuesdays Connections, Panel on how businesses can use AI
- Success Champion Networks, Local chapter teachings
- Top 50 CMOs to Watch (Global Telecom Business)
- WebRTC Pioneer Award (TMC)
- InformationWeek Top Innovator
- Featured by TechCrunch (2016), human + AI collaboration
- Success Champion Networks member
- Vistage International Member
Credentialed in the tools we deploy.
Beyond the operating experience, certified through Anthropic's official courses and Innovating with AI on the platforms and protocols we build with for clients.
Let's find where AI creates the most value in your firm.
Start with a free executive briefing, or get a personalized AI Opportunity Report for your business.