Robert Maciejko has led, built, and chaired for 25 years. He built two businesses from zero to market leadership with the P&L in his hands, has held board and chair roles, and was a director of an agentic AI company. He is the founder of Board AI Institute and the creator of the STAR framework, and co-author of "Power Steering, Not a Brake: How Boards Should Actually Govern AI," among the most-downloaded board AI governance papers ever published on SSRN.

He works at the board layer, the oversight, the duty, and the operating model, not the technology build. His focus is the question most boards cannot yet answer with evidence: how do we know management is governing AI well, and what do we do if it is not?

What he does

Robert delivers board sessions, private director and executive briefings, and advisory engagements on AI governance for full boards, governance and risk committees, and chairs preparing their boards for an AI-shaped era. His experience spans consumer, financial services, technology, energy, and media, and he helps chairs and boards build that competence themselves, rather than outsource it to a single seat.

The flagship engagement, "AI Governance: Power Steering, Not a Brake," is a half-day working session that gives a board the STAR roadmap and the questions every director should be asking. It is a catalytic intervention, not an AI tutorial.

The STAR framework

STAR gives a board a small set of recurring questions it can apply quarter after quarter: Shareholder Value Thesis, Threat Parity, Ability, and Risk Budget. It reframes AI risk as a portfolio to manage rather than a danger to eliminate, and it exposes the two ways boards most often fail: the clueless board that falls behind, and the FOMO board that deploys before the controls are ready. Full method on the Board AI Governance guide.

Proof and recognition

Robert works with public-company and private boards on AI governance. His work has been associated with The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, and Reuters, featured by Egon Zehnder, and published in Columbia Law School’s Blue Sky blog. "Power Steering, Not a Brake," co-authored with IESE Business School and Egon Zehnder, ranks among the most-downloaded board AI governance papers on SSRN.

Recent keynotes

  • Boardrooms Under Pressure, Institute of Directors Global Webinar, April 2026: keynote to hundreds of directors across more than 20 countries, preceding India’s Chief Economic Advisor.
  • Corporate Governance and Ethics in the Age of AI, Alexandria, Virginia, February 2026: keynote on AI governance as power steering.

Background

Robert built two businesses from zero to market leadership, owning the P&L, and has held senior strategy roles at McKinsey. He has held board and chair roles across 25 years, led parts of INSEAD’s global alumni community for over 15 years, serves on the INSEAD Dean’s AI Advisory Group, and was a director of an agentic AI company. He co-founded the INSEAD AI community, an alumni-led network of more than 3,000 senior executives across 190 countries. He holds an INSEAD MBA and a Princeton engineering degree, is an NACD Certified Director, and is a member of the Society for Corporate Governance and the Private Directors Association.

He writes AI News You Missed, a weekly briefing on what matters most in AI, read by directors and executives worldwide. See the full archive of Robert’s writing on board AI governance.

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