Guiding AI product strategy across enterprise, healthcare, and other verticals
I help product teams and senior leaders make informed decisions around AI product development through industry analysis, user insight, and hands-on product evaluation.
AI is poised to disrupt nearly every facet of work and life, yet the pace of development has created a gap between model capability and end-user user value. The long-term transformative potential of natural language interaction with computers and agentic AI cannot truly manifest without a human-centered focus on near-term needs and end-to-end workflows.
For the last four years I have specialized in understanding the development, use, and trajectory of AI—evaluating real products and ecosystems, and translating findings into roadmaps, demos, and executive narratives. My audiences have included Bill Gates, the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, and others, where I have delivered deep‑dive analyses across more than a dozen verticals including productivity software, healthcare back office, and education.
Role: Program lead, leading teams of 2-5
Duration: 4+ years, ongoing
Output:
Executive sessions featuring hands-on product demonstrations with heuristic commentary
Product landscaping
Market overview, industry trends, and user insight reporting
Key company profiles
As program lead, I…
Managed and directed 20+ research projects examining the developments of AI across verticals including productivity apps, healthcare back office, and social media
Facilitated immersive learning sessions for senior leaders
Built a practice within Artefact by guiding colleagues to develop the technical and business lenses necessary to comment on AI development, and coaching them on executive engagement
Approach
Landscaping
Uncovering and evaluating the most noteworthy players in a given vertical
User insight
Understanding how products are used via interviews, observations, and social listening
Hands-on evaluation
Developing a first-hand awareness of product performance and potential
Synthesis
Framing current and future developments of AI in a given vertical
Snapshotting a wide range of landscape activity.
I track and profile companies in a targeted space to identify which are most strategic — the incumbents, scaling startups, and dark horses that are individually important to have on one’s radar and collectively best represent the activity in any given domain. I engage subject matter experts and track industry news to develop broad context to where an industry is headed.
Facilitating hands-on product demonstrations.
Companies easily grab headlines for promising revolutionary generative AI features, and cynics are quick to critique generative AI’s current limitations. The reality is somewhere in-between and is best understood by experiencing for oneself. I facilitate live demonstrations and produce concise and targeted pre-recorded walk-throughs that showcase the product experience and provide heuristic commentary as to its current strengths, shortcomings, and future potential.
Agentic AI: Evaluating the state-of-the-art and tracking latest developments.
I provide regular updates to clients on the AI state-of-the-art. By combining broad landscape and trends analysis, user insight, and hands-on product evaluation, I have helped executive teams stay up to date on competitor activity and experience for themselves the state-of-the-art, enabling them to confidently direct their organization today and extrapolate future opportunities as technologies mature.
In 2025, agentic AI emerged as the next frontier for AI development. I provided a close look at products such as Manus and Genspark whose multi-agent architectures enabled more sophisticated general agents, and identified the ways in which these products fell short for real-world workflows.
Social AI: Understanding the implications of AI designed to feel like a friend, partner, or mentor.
AI companions have emerged as a predominant use case for generative AI, and millions of people have built platonic and romantic relationships with chatbots. I led a team examining the emergence of popular platforms like Character.ai, Spicy Chat, and ChatGPT’s voice mode that delved into the the risks and benefits of socially engaging AI, the nature of AI-human relationships, and the potential societal impacts of AI designed to solicit emotional connection.
Header splash image: Martina Stiftinger