AI on Purpose

Everyone can feel how fast AI is changing work. Almost nobody knows where to start.

I build the human and AI operating systems purpose-driven organizations run on, and I teach leaders and teams to build this capacity for themselves. I got here through two decades inside organizations, most recently as an embedded fractional COO.

For organizations, I work with leadership teams on the systems they run on and on how their people use AI, starting either with the leader or with two sessions where the whole team writes its own agreement on AI. For individuals, I teach TEMPO, a six-week training cohort where you build your own AI operating system. No technical background needed.

How I work with teams TEMPO for individuals

Already know what you need? Book a free 15-minute call.

20+ years

designing how organizations operate

20 to 70

people on the team I grew as a CEO in global health

15+ AI systems

running day to day, for clients and my own practice

Most people I talk to are already using AI. It just hasn't changed how they work.

Most people already use AI as a thought partner. They open a chat, talk through a problem, and get something useful back. But the work still gets done the way it always was. Inside teams I see the same thing on a bigger scale: nearly everyone experimenting on their own, one or two people racing ahead, and no shared agreement on what AI is for or what it's allowed to touch.

I've built AI into how I actually work, as a colleague woven through everything I do. It's raised the quality, the range, and the amount of what I can produce, well beyond what I could reach on my own.

The research now shows both directions: people who accept whatever AI hands them get worse at thinking. People who direct it get better. Every system I build keeps the decisions with you. That is what I help people and organizations do.

Who I work with

Risograph illustration of a scattered manual process resolving into one self-turning machine with an AI node

Your organization

AI capacity and operating systems for your team

I work with leadership teams at purpose-driven organizations, building the systems their team runs on and teaching everyone to use AI well. It can start with the leader or a workshop for the whole team, then grow into a team program, a build for one process, or six months working inside your team.

Learn how I work with teams

Risograph illustration of a guide with people each building their own AI operating system

You

Build your own AI operating system

I teach non-technical professionals to build their own AI operating systems, in a six-week cohort or one to one. You start from a system I've spent months building and refining, then make it yours.

Learn how I work with individuals

Recent work with teams

WHOLE-TEAM WORKSHOP

A written agreement on how a team uses AI

In September I started Foundations with two teams, each working out where AI helps their work and where its limits are. One of them, a global health organization, finished both sessions with a written agreement on how they'll use AI, drawn from the team's own words.

Read how it went →

MARKETING SYSTEM

A marketing engine built inside Tandem

As Tandem's fractional COO, I built a system for the team's campaigns: AI drafts the creative, an agent grades every piece, and the team approves at every gate.

Read the case study →

OPERATIONS SYSTEM

One operating system built in four weeks

I moved a fast-scaling nonprofit's contractor management, procurement, invoicing, and grants out of email and spreadsheets into one system that its staff and contractors work in.

Read the case study →

See how I work with teams

See my work in action

The TEMPO operating system I built to run my practice, showing my client portfolio, connected tools, and daily plan

The TEMPO operating system I built to run my own practice. Every client, project, and priority in one place, wired to the tools I work in and updated on its own. See the case studies →

Four case studies: an operations portal, a marketing automation system, my own AI operating system, and a whole team writing its own rules for using AI. I built the three systems without an engineering team.

Read the case studies →

Try a board view I built, on made-up data →

In their words

“Erica is a rare combination as a fractional COO: real experience, sharp judgment, and energy most people can't sustain even full-time. ‘Fractional’ usually implies half-there. Erica is the opposite, her presence and contributions are constant.”

Rob Hughes

Co-Founder & CEO, Tandem

“She's a problem-solver through and through: a true doer who rolls up her sleeves, tackles challenges head-on, and gets things done. She balances big-picture, strategic thinking with a sharp attention to detail, moving seamlessly between high-level planning and hands-on execution.”

Alison Clark

Former CFO, D-tree

“Erica is the reason I use AI at all. After more than a decade of running a service business, the daily operational work was still mine to carry every morning. That work now runs on scheduled agents that hand me a summary before I sit down. The framework has held up through more than a dozen builds I’ve added since. My goal was never more output. It was my life back.”

Megan Sellheim

Founder, Come Sit Stay · tested TEMPO before launch, now paid to help me run the cohort

“I’d used ChatGPT here and there, but every conversation started from zero. I was re-explaining my whole life every time I opened a new chat. What’s different now is that the mental load that used to live entirely in my head lives somewhere else. Not by doing my job, but by being the extra brain I didn’t realize how much I needed.”

Pam Anderson

Research scientist · TEMPO cohort, 2026

Recent writing

Risograph illustration of a woman at a desk holding a magnifying glass over an open envelope, revealing a small fishing hook hidden inside, with a shield beside it.

OCT 2026

How I think about security in my AI operating system

An authority ladder, the difference between a guardrail and a boundary, and the fake email my agent plants in my inbox every week to see if my assistant falls for it.

Risograph illustration of a flowering branch growing out of a heavy industrial cog, with small bar charts, a compass and an open book among its leaves, while a woman on a step ladder tends the highest branch.

OCT 2026

Renaissance or industrial revolution?

People worry AI erodes critical thinking. Two days after I asked Claude one of my favorite questions, a colleague and I had a dashboard that answered every budget question we'd been stuck on.

Risograph illustration of a woman tapping on her phone while a dashed route carries a train ticket, a house and a map pin across Lisbon's trams and rooftops to a family waiting with suitcases at a station.

SEP 2026

Personal AI agents are arriving fast. I tested one on a family trip to Lisbon. Here is why I won't keep using it.

It saved us almost half the train fare and booked our Airbnb. Then it asked for my children's passports, and its privacy policy didn't back up what it told me.

The cohort

TEMPO: build your own AI operating system

TEMPO is my six-week training cohort where non-technical professionals build a working AI operating system shaped around how they actually work. You work in a small group, with a live session every week (all of them recorded) and your own work running through the system from the first week.

You start from a system I've spent months building and refining, and you make it yours.

Next cohort: Tuesdays, Oct 13 to Nov 17

See TEMPO dates and join

Everything on this page comes down to one idea: adopt AI deliberately, so it strengthens your thinking, in service of work that matters. That's what I mean by AI on purpose.