Senior AI leadership that ships — in 90 days, not a €300K hire.
You may already have an AI strategy. What's missing is adoption, technical depth, and someone accountable for shipping it. I embed with your team a few days a week and turn the deck into production systems your people actually use — governed, GDPR-proof, and built on European infrastructure.
EU-nativeGDPR by designEU AI Act readyStart in 1–2 weeks
Sjoerd de Kreij
Fractional Chief AI Officer · Founder, Impacter
AI departments I've built and optimized for
You don't have an AI problem. You have an adoption problem.
The models work. The strategy exists. What's missing is the execution muscle to make AI real inside your organization — and someone accountable when it doesn't.
“We have an AI strategy deck. Nothing has shipped.”
MIT found 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots deliver no measurable P&L impact. Strategy without an operator to ship it stalls at the slide.
“Our pilots never make it to production.”
The average organization scraps roughly 46% of its AI proof-of-concepts before they ever go live. Pilot purgatory is the default, not the exception.
“Nobody uses the tools we bought — but they're all secretly using ChatGPT.”
Around 80% of employees use unapproved AI tools while fewer than 1 in 10 have had real training. That's risk without return, and shadow data leaving the building.
“The board keeps asking for our AI story and I don't have one.”
Most CEOs now face board pressure for measurable AI outcomes. You need a credible narrative and a roadmap that survives the next quarterly review.
Strategy is the easy part. Adoption and delivery are where it breaks.
BCG's research on AI winners is blunt: success is 10% algorithms, 20% technology and data, and 70% people and process. I spend my time on that 70% — the part every strategy deck skips.
- You have a strategy, but no one owns turning it into shipped software.
- Your people are curious but untrained — so adoption stays low and shadow AI grows.
- You can't hire senior AI talent fast, and can't justify a €300K full-time Chief AI Officer yet.
- Legal and compliance keep saying no because there's no governance to say yes to.
Outcomes on the table, not services on a menu.
Every engagement is measured the way you'd measure a hire: by what ships, what gets adopted, and what it saves — not by hours billed or decks delivered.
Shipped use cases, measured
Real automations and agents live in production within the first 90 days — each with a before/after number you can take to the board.
A workforce that actually adopts AI
Hands-on training, workflow redesign and internal champions that turn shadow AI into sanctioned, measured productivity.
Governance that lets legal say yes
An AI usage policy, risk tiers and EU AI Act literacy program — compliance as a sales asset for enterprise deals and fundraising, not a blocker.
A board-ready AI narrative
The story, the roadmap and the reporting cadence that answer 'what's our AI plan?' with evidence, not slides.
Delivery access, not just advice
I direct the engineers and the platform that build it, so strategy becomes working software instead of a backlog.
Capability that outlasts me
By design, I leave behind a named internal owner, a governance cadence and playbooks — so you build capability, not dependency.
A 90-day mandate with something shipped every month.
No six-month discovery phase. A fixed, transparent plan that produces a visible result in weeks two to four and a production system by day 90 — then converts to an ongoing retainer or a clean handoff.
01
Find where AI actually pays off
Days 1–30 · AssessAI-readiness and data audit, a use-case inventory ranked by ROI, and one symbolic quick win live in weeks. You get a flash-findings memo the board can read.
02
Make it safe and get it moving
Days 31–60 · Govern & pilotAn AI governance charter — risk tiers, usage policy, GDPR and EU AI Act baseline — plus company-wide AI-literacy training and one to two high-ROI pilots live with dashboards.
03
Production, ROI and a roadmap
Days 61–90 · Ship & scaleThe first use case in production with measured ROI, a 12–18 month roadmap with approved business cases, a board reporting cadence, and a named internal owner to carry it.
The seniority of a Chief AI Officer. A fraction of the cost.
Most companies under a few hundred million in revenue don't need a full-time Chief AI Officer yet — they need the outcomes one delivers, this quarter.
Full-time Chief AI Officer
Heavy- €280K–€650K base — €1.5M+ loaded in year one with bonus, equity and team
- A 6–9 month executive search before anyone starts
- A single point of failure if the hire is wrong
- Scarce senior talent that mid-market firms rarely win
Fractional AI Officer
Right-sized- A fraction of the cost — a monthly retainer, scaled to days per week
- Start in 1–2 weeks, first result inside a month
- Pattern-recognition from many AI departments, not one
- No lock-in: 30-day notice and a built-in capability handoff
I've shipped AI, not just advised on it.
I'm Sjoerd de Kreij. I've led data and AI inside companies like Albert Heijn, DEGIRO, Marktplaats, Roularta Media, Renewi and ICI Paris XL (AS Watson) — building the teams, systems and adoption that turn AI from experiment into operating capability.
Today I run Impacter, an EU-native AI automation platform I built and operate. That's the difference buyers rank first: I'm an operator who ships production AI, not a consultant who leaves a PowerPoint. When I recommend something, it's because I've already built it.
“Most companies don't need more AI strategy. They need someone accountable for shipping it — safely, and in weeks. That's the whole job.”
Sjoerd de Kreij
Fractional Chief AI Officer · Founder, Impacter
The questions boards always ask.
Straight answers on cost, scope, compliance and what happens when the engagement ends. If yours isn't here, ask it on the call.
A Fractional Chief AI Officer is a senior AI leader who works with your company part-time — typically one to two days a week — instead of joining as a full-time executive. They own AI direction, governance and delivery outcomes the way a permanent CAIO would, at a fraction of the cost and with none of the twelve-month hiring lead time.
A full-time Chief AI Officer in Western Europe costs roughly €250,000–€350,000 a year once salary, bonus and employer costs are included. A fractional engagement covers the same mandate for a fraction of that, because you buy one to two days a week for a defined period rather than a permanent headcount — and you can stop when the capability is transferred in-house.
Choose a Fractional AI Officer when the bottleneck is direction, governance and internal adoption rather than raw build capacity. An agency delivers projects you specify; a fractional officer decides which projects deserve to exist, gets legal and security to yes, and makes the organisation actually use what ships. Impacter does both, which is why delivery access is included in the mandate.
Consultants advise and leave a deck. A fractional AI officer is embedded and accountable — I own the outcome, direct delivery, and stay until it ships and gets adopted. You get executive ownership, not a report.
If you're above roughly a billion in revenue with a mature AI portfolio, you probably should. Below that, the workload is front-loaded into strategy, governance and the first shipped systems — exactly what a fractional delivers in months, at a fraction of a €1.5M loaded first-year cost, and starting in weeks instead of a 6–9 month search.
Then you're ahead of most. The gap is almost always execution: adoption, technical delivery and governance. I take your strategy and make it real — training your people, shipping the first production use cases, and putting the compliance in place so legal stops blocking it.
That's common, and it's why I bring delivery access — the Impacter platform and engineers to build with. You don't need to hire a team before we start; part of the mandate is defining what to build internally versus buy, and leaving you a named owner.
Everything runs on EU infrastructure and is GDPR-proof by design. Governance and an AI-literacy program are part of the first 90 days — which also satisfies the EU AI Act's staff literacy duty. Done right, compliance becomes an asset in enterprise sales and fundraising, not a blocker.
One to three days a week, on a fixed monthly retainer, usually over 6–18 months with a 90-day initial mandate. No long-term lock-in — 30-day notice — and a built-in plan to hand off to an internal owner or help you recruit the full-time role when you're ready.
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