You've Adopted AI. Is Your Company Actually Ready For It?
What AI readiness actually requires, and the questions to ask before it costs you credibility.
DUSTY FIELDS
Director of Innovation, Tonic
Leader of AI Product Development & Internal Innovation Initiatives
KATE ISHAY
Marketing / Sales
Boston University Master of Global Marketing Management
September 24, 2026
11:30 AM MST/1:30 EST
What You’ll Learn
How to identify where AI can actually move the needle in your business, and where it’s noise dressed up as progress
What has to be true inside your company before an AI initiative adds real value, using a practical process-readiness lens
Why a proof-backed story matters more than a new tool, and how to keep AI-related claims sturdy enough to survive investor and customer scrutiny
A framework for asking the right questions before adopting AI, so budget and attention go toward what actually changes outcomes
How process, story, and appropriate AI use work together, through real examples from growth-stage companies
Who This Is For
Technical founders, post-seed to Series B, who’ve adopted AI in some form and want to know if their company is actually ready for it
Founder-engineers who can build the thing but are being asked for an AI story that holds up with people who aren’t technical
Founders who’ve heard “we need an AI strategy” from a board member or advisor and want more than a buzzword in response
Technical leaders who suspect some of their AI initiatives are more show than substance and want a way to tell the difference
Founders who want a readiness framework before greenlighting the next AI initiative, not another tool recommendation
If you're a technical founder building a post-seed to Series B company and you suspect some of your AI adoption is more show than substance, this session is built for you.
The founders getting real value out of AI right now aren’t the ones who adopted first. They’re the ones who did the readiness work: mapping what their business actually needs before a tool gets scaled, and building a story about their AI use that’s specific enough to survive scrutiny from an investor, a customer, or a skeptical new hire. Skip that work and AI doesn’t fix a weak process or an unclear pitch. It scales both faster.
Dusty Fields, Director of Innovation at Tonic, will walk through how his team evaluates a company’s actual readiness for AI, including the process-mapping work that has to happen before any tool gets scaled. Dusty focuses on the gap between AI’s promise and its practice, helping organizations move from experimentation to production with solutions that are secure, governed, and built to deliver measurable business impact.
Kate Ishay, co-founder of Psyche Digital, brings 15+ years of B2B marketing experience with growth-stage companies across sectors including clean tech, energy, ag tech, and healthcare, and will cover why a clear, proof-backed story is a prerequisite for AI to mean anything to the people evaluating your company, not an afterthought once the tooling is live.