Responsible AI Governance and Risk Leader

The Responsible AI Governance and Risk Leader is a critical member of Ascensus’ AI leadership team and responsible for establishing, overseeing, and enforcing the Responsible AI governance framework across Ascensus by ensuring that AI initiatives adhere to ethical standards, legal and regulatory requirements, enterprise risk management principles, and organizational values. This role owns central coordination of AI policies, assists the company with assessing, measuring and mitigating risks related to AI, and promotes responsible AI practices to support transparency, accountability, and compliance.

Section 2: Job Functions, Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Thought Leadership and Stakeholder Alignment: Responsible AI governance and risk leader subject matter expert across the organization. Interacts with key stakeholders including Ascensus senior leadership, clients, vendors, and regulators, and ensures alignment and achievement of key goals. Acts as a change agent and drives the organization’s AI evolution forward.
• Policies and Procedures: Leads the creation, implementation, and enforcement of Ascensus’s AI governance framework to ensure responsible use of AI across the company. Responsible for policies and procedures, materials for external stakeholders, and guidelines for internal stakeholders.
• AI Lifecycle Integration: Collaborate with business, product, and technical teams to ensure responsible AI best practices are embedded throughout the AI lifecycle.
• Risk Management: Partner with Risk, Compliance, IT, and Information Security to define AI-related risk dimensions and ensure alignment with the broader enterprise risk framework. Leads the AI Risk Committee and reports on AI governance to executive leadership. Proactively monitors high-risk use cases based on established risk protocols to guide mitigation strategies.
• Contract Negotiations: Represent Ascensus in contract negotiations with key stakeholders including sophisticated financial institutions, strategic partners, clients, and vendors. Partner with Legal, Service & Operations, and business leaders to ensure that Ascensus and its vendors comply with AI-related contract provisions.
• Compliance: Ensure that AI initiatives meet applicable legal and regulatory requirements. Partner with Legal, Risk Management, and Compliance to ensure compliance efforts with respect to audits and client reporting.
• Evolution and Strategy: Proactively evolves Ascensus’ AI governance model and strategy to comply with industry’s best practices. Establishes KPIs to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of responsible AI policies and governance, and updates policies and procedures as necessary.
• Culture: Supports Ascensus’s core values of People Matter, Quality First and Integrity Always® in all actions on a day-to-day basis to show support of organizational culture.
  
  

Supervision

• N/A
  
  

Section 3: Experience, Skills, Knowledge Requirements

• Bachelor's degree with minimum of 3 years of risk and/or privacy experience or other relevant discipline preferred.
• Juris Doctor (JD) degree and work experience as an attorney is a plus.
• Proven ability to work with interdisciplinary teams, including engineering, product development, compliance, and legal, to integrate AI governance frameworks effectively.
• Subject matter expertise in AI, and hands-on experience with operationalizing AI principles and frameworks to ensure they are embedded across the full AI lifecycle.
• Familiarity with handling AI-related operational incidents, including post-incident reviews and preventative strategy development.
• Ability to understand key technical concepts, such as model explainability, robustness, and bias, to guide teams effectively.
• Experience with change management, including ability to lead cultural shifts within an organization to drive implementation of AI principles and practices and ensure successful values-based communication campaigns.
• Experience designing and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) for ethical AI initiatives to demonstrate progress and impact.
• Communicates effectively, verbally and in writing, with business leaders, clients, prospects, business partners, vendors, regulators, and others.
• Demonstrated integrity, values, principles, and work ethic.
• Holds a reputable certification in AI governance, data governance, or other related discipline, such as:
• Certified Artificial Intelligence Practitioner (CAIP)
• Certified Ethical Emerging Technologist (CEET)
• Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US)
• Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC)
  

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