A seven-week cohort program for senior executives who want to understand AI well enough to use it, lead with it, and know when not to trust it.
Next cohort: September 2026 · 6 seats · VP and above
Six executives in a room with a facilitator who uses these tools daily. You will build things, break things, and learn from each other's real work. The curriculum is structured. The conversation is not.
The highest-value moments come from watching a colleague solve a real problem with AI in front of the group. Show-and-tell is the product, not a feature.
Each session follows a 20/30/40 structure: instruction, peer sharing, hands-on practice. You leave every session having built something.
Conversation, delegation, and automation, applied to your actual business problems, not hypothetical case studies.
Small cohorts by design. Above six, peer interaction degrades. You will know everyone in the room and learn from their domains as much as from the curriculum.
Prerequisites (Claude 101 and AI Fluency) handle the basics before you walk in. The program starts where most programs end.
The five things any chief-of-staff system has to do, the reasons AI behaves the way it does, and how to brief it well. You leave with an operating philosophy and the goal for the system you will build.
The program is anchored by one project. Starting in Module 2 you build your own AI chief of staff on your own infrastructure, one capability at a time, and you leave owning a working system you can maintain, extend, and explain. Module 1 sets the architecture and the goal. Every session after it adds the next piece.
How to choose among conversation, delegation, and automation, then the first mode in depth: steering a model, holding context across sessions, and recovering when a thread goes sideways. You stand up the foundation of your system and get your first working surface live.
Handing a bounded job to a model and reviewing what comes back: where the line of trust sits, which work suits it, and how to shape the result. You personalize your system so it reflects how you actually work.
When a task should stop being a conversation and run on its own, and the four questions to answer before you turn it loose. You build the loop that keeps your system current with nothing to maintain by hand.
Documenting AI-assisted work, keeping it auditable, and standing behind it in public and regulated settings. You write the runbook that makes your system yours to operate.
A practitioner's framework for organizational AI: governance, leading adoption, and reading the model landscape. You draft the AI policy your team will run on and make the governance decisions your own system enforces.
The executive's highest call, deciding what the organization should adopt. You build and defend a vendor evaluation against a real pitch, present a 90-day adoption plan, and walk the room under the hood of the system you built. Graduation is the system working and you able to run it.
Sixteen executives completed the founding program in spring 2026. These are their words, unedited for enthusiasm.
"Before this program, I thought I knew enough to use AI in my day-to-day work. It changed the game for me. I am now challenging these tools daily and exploiting my own weaknesses to become more efficient."
"I was skeptical of AI. I believed it was more hype than hope. Jay encouraged me to try again with the new models, and the pendulum has swung. I have a better understanding of how to harness this power on my terms."
"I started using AI as an email editor and a glorified Google. I am leaving with an arsenal of tools and a completely different mindset about what is possible, professionally and personally."
"Whether you are already using AI in your everyday work or have never touched it, this program is extremely helpful in framing how to use AI with practical application in your daily life."
The program is designed for senior executives (VP and above) whose domain expertise and judgment combine multiplicatively with AI capabilities.
You have tried AI tools and found them underwhelming. You are open to being wrong about that, but you need someone who will show you, not sell you.
You are already using AI but feel like you are scratching the surface. You want to learn from peers who are further along and facing the same organizational challenges.
Your team is asking about AI and you need to lead the conversation with confidence. Personal fluency comes first. Organizational strategy follows.
You think for a living. Strategy, analysis, decision-making, communication. AI does not replace your judgment. It removes the friction around it.
Seven weeks. Seven sessions. Six seats. One facilitator who uses these tools in his own practice every day.
Three decades in insurance operations, from The General's growth from $300M to $1.5B in premium to advisory work with carriers, insurtechs, and operators across the industry.
Jay built Catalyst Academy because the best AI programs teach tools, and the best operators need more than that. They need a thinking partner, a peer group, and someone who will be honest about what AI can and cannot do. He uses these tools daily in his own practice and teaches from that experience, not from a slide deck.
Cohort D begins September 2026. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Want to talk before you apply?
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