FRACTIONAL AI GOVERNANCE LEADERSHIP
The AI governance lead you don't have headcount for.
Embedded, part-time senior capability for banks, fintechs and regulated institutions operating across the US and Latin America. I don't hand you a governance program on paper — I build one that runs inside the systems your teams already use, and then I run it. Based between Florida and Mexico.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The role exists. The headcount doesn't.
Most institutions already have AI making decisions somewhere — scoring risk, flagging transactions, screening applicants. What they don't have is a person who owns it. Compliance is stretched, IT owns the systems but not the decisions, and nobody has the standing to say a model shouldn't go live. Hiring a full-time AI governance lead is hard to justify and harder to fill. So the function stays unowned until an examiner, an auditor, or a correspondent bank asks a question nobody can answer.
SAMPLE POLICY CLAUSE — BEFORE / AFTER
ENGAGEMENTS
One role, three ways to buy it.
§ 01
Fractional AI Governance Lead
A named senior owner for AI governance, embedded with your compliance and risk teams on a monthly retainer. I hold the model inventory, chair intake review for new AI systems, maintain the policy set, run the monitoring cadence, and answer the questions examiners and correspondent banks ask. Where your systems can't support what governance requires, I build the piece that's missing rather than writing it into a recommendation.
§ 02
Governance Build-Out
Where the program doesn't exist yet: policies, model inventory, intake and approval workflow, risk tiering, monitoring — built, wired into the systems your teams already use, and handed over running. Often the first 90 days of a fractional engagement rather than a separate project.
§ 03
Vendor & Model Review
A point-in-time read on a specific AI system — one you're buying, or one already in production. What data it touches, what governance it assumes you have, whether the model has drifted, and whether a specific decision can be explained. Standalone, or the first thing I do in a fractional engagement.
THE ROLE
What I actually own.
Not advice on the side. A named function with defined responsibilities, reporting into your risk or compliance structure.
The model inventory
Every AI system in production or pending — including vendor-embedded tools and whatever shadow AI turns up — with a named owner, risk tier, data touched, and review date. Kept current, not built once.
Intake and approval
New AI requests come through a defined front door instead of arriving sideways through procurement. I chair the review, apply the risk tiering, and route each request — including saying no when a system shouldn't go live as designed.
Monitoring and escalation
Thresholds set, monitoring output actually read, drift and performance drops escalated to someone who can act. AI failure is usually silent — the system stays up and produces worse answers — so this is the part that catches what nothing else does.
The answer when someone asks
Examiners, internal audit, correspondent banks and enterprise customers are all starting to ask what governs your AI. I keep the documentation in a state where that question has an answer — and I'm available to help give it.
The parts your systems don't have yet
Governance breaks where the tooling doesn't reach — no way to track which model version made a decision, no place for intake to live, no monitoring that anyone actually receives. Most advisors write that up as a gap for you to solve later. I build it: inventory that pulls from your systems instead of a spreadsheet someone updates quarterly, intake inside the ticketing tool your teams already open, monitoring with thresholds that reach a named person when something moves.
ENGAGEMENT
Scaled to what you actually need.
8 HRS / MONTH
Essential
$1,500/mo
Inventory maintained, intake reviewed, quarterly governance review, and availability for questions as they come up. For institutions with a handful of AI systems and no one currently owning them.
16 HRS / MONTH
Core
$2,800/mo
Everything in Essential, plus monthly monitoring review, policy maintenance, vendor review as needed, and direct support when audit or a correspondent bank asks questions. The common starting point.
24 HRS / MONTH
Lead
$4,000/mo
Everything in Core, at a cadence that supports an active build or a multi-entity footprint. For institutions standing up the program from scratch, or operating across more than one regulator. This is the maximum engagement size — capacity is deliberately limited.
Three-month minimum, then month to month. Project work priced separately.
WHO'S DOING THE WORK
Most AI governance advice comes from people who've never had to make it work.
Mieru Consulting is an independent AI governance practice. My background is implementation consulting at McKinsey & Company, followed by hands-on AI governance work at an AI governance technology company focused on financial institutions — the policies, model inventories and audit questions regulated clients get graded on. Most of that work has been the operational half: not deciding what a control should say, but making it exist in a system somebody uses on a Tuesday.
Based between Florida and Mexico, working with institutions across the US–Latin America corridor. That matters more than it sounds: a US examiner and a Latin American regulator ask different questions about the same model, and most advisors can only answer one of them.
QUESTIONS
Before you book a call.
What does "fractional" actually mean here?
A named part-time role, not ad hoc advice. You get a defined function — model inventory, intake review, monitoring cadence, policy maintenance — at 8 to 24 hours a month, reporting into your risk or compliance structure. Same responsibilities a full-time hire would carry, at the fraction of capacity most institutions actually need.
How is this different from hiring a governance consultant?
Most AI governance advisors came from compliance, legal or audit. They write good policy — and then hand it over for someone on your team to operationalize, which is the part that usually doesn't happen. My background is implementation. When the model inventory needs to pull from your systems rather than live in a spreadsheet, or intake needs to sit inside the tool your teams already use, I build that. The test I'd apply to anyone doing this work: ask what they left running after the last engagement ended.
Why an independent consultant instead of a big firm?
A big firm sells you a partner for the pitch, then staffs the actual work with junior analysts who learn your business on your clock — and you pay for that learning curve. Here, one person scopes the engagement and does it. No handoffs, no one billing you to get up to speed.
Are you certified in ISO/IEC 42001 or the NIST AI RMF?
My grounding in both comes from applying them directly — building governance programs against them, not just studying for an exam. If a specific certification is a hard requirement on your end, tell me and we'll figure out if that's a fit before either of us spends time on it.
How quickly does this start producing something?
First month is discovery and the inventory — which on its own usually surfaces two or three systems nobody had accounted for. Policies and intake follow in months two and three. By the end of the first quarter there's a functioning program, not a plan for one.
What does this cost?
Fractional engagements run $1,500 to $4,000 a month depending on capacity, with a three-month minimum and month-to-month after that. Standalone vendor or model reviews start at $3,500. Build projects are scoped separately.
Do you only work with banks?
Most of the work is with banks, fintechs, and trust companies, but the underlying problem — AI making decisions nobody can fully account for — isn't unique to banking. If that's your situation, reach out and we'll figure out if it's a fit.
If you build it, who checks it?
Not me — and that's deliberate. A program should be reviewed by someone who didn't build it, which is why I work alongside audit and compliance firms rather than replacing them. If you want independent validation of what gets built, I'll help you scope it and stay out of the assessment.
Do we need to be in Latin America for this to be relevant?
No — most of my clients are US institutions. But if you have Latin American subsidiaries, correspondent relationships, or customers, the regulatory picture is genuinely different on each side, and that's where I'm most useful. A model that satisfies a US examiner may not satisfy Mexico's automated-decision rules, and vice versa.
What if we already have a compliance team?
Most clients do — that's the normal case. I'm not replacing anyone; I'm the specialist capacity they don't have time to build. Your compliance team knows your business and your regulator. What they usually don't have is someone who can open a model, test it for drift, and document it to a standard that survives examination.
GET IN TOUCH
Start with an intro call.
Thirty minutes, no deck. Tell me what AI is running and who currently owns it — that conversation is usually clarifying on its own.