AI Board Governance
Vela equips boards and the executives who support them to navigate AI risk, close governance gaps, and capture the advantage that comes with moving early.
The governance advantage belongs to boards that read the signals before they become stories.
AI has changed what boards are accountable for. Most haven't caught up yet. The ones that do first move with more confidence, more credibility, and more room to act.
The Assessment
Built for the boardroom, not the technology team. The Compass maps where you stand across 16 indicators and four dimensions — surfacing gaps and opportunities before a crisis forces the issue.
| 1 | Individual | Director-level AI literacy and personal accountability |
| 2 | Board | Collective oversight capability and governance structure |
| 3 | Organization | Alignment between executive leadership and board-level AI signals |
| 4 | Stakeholder | Regulatory, insurer, and investor expectations |
The Work
Built for board time and board-level accountability — for directors and the executives who work alongside them.
Why It Matters Now
Not as technical experts — as effective overseers. The right questions protect companies and unlock value that governance-weak boards miss entirely.
The signals that precede AI governance failures are visible before the outcome is. Vela helps boards learn to read them.
Boards that close the oversight gap early move faster and earn more trust from regulators, insurers, and investors than those who wait.
How We Work
The Compass maps readiness across 16 indicators — establishing a specific, defensible baseline.
Facilitated session built around your board's real risks and opportunities. Decision-focused, board-paced.
Live governance scenario — real-time decisions, real consequences. Instincts form in the debrief.
A structured due diligence record — the evidence of active oversight that regulators and insurers increasingly require.
The signals that matter in AI governance were always there. The skill is learning to read them before they become a crisis.
On board oversight in the age of AI
Request a briefing to discuss the Compass assessment and what a Vela engagement looks like for your board.
Who we are
Vela Board Advisors was founded on one observation: boards are being held accountable for AI decisions they didn't make, under standards that didn't exist when they joined the board.
The founding
Most governance tools were built for regulators and executives. Directors — the people legally accountable for oversight — were expected to work backward from frameworks designed for people with completely different jobs.
Vela exists to fix that. We build tools, programs, and engagement models designed from the ground up for board members and the executives who support them — people with full accountability and limited time, who need clarity, not complexity.
The AI Board Governance Compass is our proprietary framework. It maps readiness across 16 indicators and four dimensions, gives boards a shared language, and creates the record of active oversight that regulators and insurers are increasingly asking to see.
Vela is the constellation of the Sails — part of the ancient ship Argo Navis, used by navigators who had no shore in sight. The signals that matter in AI governance were always there. The skill is learning to read them before they become a crisis.
Vela was co-founded by three practitioners with deep experience in board governance, AI strategy, crisis simulation, and the boardroom dynamics that determine whether oversight holds or breaks down.
Paula is the founder of Eudai AI and Board Director and CMO at iluminr. She serves on the Private Directors Association AI Task Force and Research and Standards Council, where she works at the intersection of AI governance, board leadership, and enterprise risk. She has spent her career building the tools and frameworks that give boards and executives clarity in high-stakes decisions.
Tamara is CEO of TBG Consulting and an elected board member of the Private Directors Association. She brings deep experience in governance strategy, board effectiveness, and director development — with a particular focus on how boards navigate complex risk environments and build the oversight structures that hold under pressure.
Joanna is Chief Revenue Officer at Cien.ai and a member of the PDA AI Task Force. She brings a practitioner's lens to the commercial and strategic dimensions of AI governance — understanding how AI deployment decisions travel from the executive suite to the board table, and where the oversight gaps tend to form.
The framework
The Compass was developed because no existing governance tool was built for directors. Audit frameworks, regulatory guidance, and executive-level AI policies all assumed a different audience — people with technical access, management authority, or enforcement power.
Directors have none of those things. What they have is fiduciary responsibility and the right to ask questions. The Compass was built to make those questions better.
It maps readiness across 16 indicators — covering AI literacy, oversight structure, organizational alignment, and stakeholder accountability — and surfaces where a board's governance posture is strong and where it carries unexposed risk.
Organizations we work with
Additional partners and logos coming soon.
The Compass is the entry point for every Vela engagement. Request access or a briefing to discuss what it surfaces for your board.
Services
Every Vela engagement starts with the Compass assessment. From there, the work takes four forms — each designed around the reality of board time, board accountability, and board-level risk.
Assessment
The Compass is Vela's proprietary framework for assessing board governance readiness across 16 indicators in four dimensions. It was built from the ground up for directors — not for regulators, not for executives, not for technologists.
Most governance assessments tell organizations what they're supposed to do. The Compass tells boards where they actually stand and what that means for their liability exposure, their oversight record, and their ability to respond when something goes wrong.
The Compass runs as a facilitated session, a self-assessment, or a full diagnostic. Every engagement produces a governance record — documentation that a board actively assessed its AI oversight posture.
Sixteen indicators. Four dimensions. Scored 1–5 with criticality weighting. D&O liability considerations woven throughout.
Advisory
AI governance isn't a one-time assessment. Boards face a continuous stream of decisions — deployment approvals, policy reviews, regulatory responses, insurance renewals, executive accountability questions — and most of those decisions arrive without enough context.
Vela's advisory work gives boards and governance committees a standing resource: someone who understands both the governance obligation and the AI reality underneath it, and can help translate between the two in real time.
Engagements are scoped around your board's specific needs — standing advisory relationship, project-based support, or pre-meeting briefings ahead of AI-heavy board agendas.
Simulation
The hardest governance decisions are the ones that arrive without warning — an AI deployment that's already live, a liability question that surfaces in a board meeting, a coverage gap that becomes visible only after an incident.
Vela’s simulation catalogue places directors inside those decisions before they happen. Participants navigate a live scenario — making real governance calls, encountering real tradeoffs — and leave with the instincts that come from having made the decision once before.
Vela's simulation catalogue covers a range of AI governance scenarios — each designed around a specific decision point that boards are likely to encounter. Scenarios are available in two formats: a case study format for structured discussion with expert facilitation, and an immersive simulation format delivered through a purpose-built governance scenario platform. Both formats can be built around a board's specific industry context and risk profile.
Director Education
Most AI education programs are designed for technologists or executives. They assume technical access, implementation authority, and time directors don't have. Vela's education programs start from the board's actual position — full accountability, limited information, and legal fiduciary duty.
Programs are built around the questions directors can actually ask and the decisions they're actually responsible for. The goal is not AI fluency — it's governance confidence: the ability to ask the right questions, recognize the right answers, and know when to escalate.
Request a briefing to discuss your board's governance posture and what a Vela engagement looks like for your context.
Events
Workshops, briefings, and simulation experiences designed for boards, governance committees, and the executives who support them.
Upcoming
A facilitated workshop for Private Directors Association members covering the AI Board Governance Compass, agentic AI risk, and the governance questions boards should be asking now.
A single-player simulation for D&O policyholders — directors navigate a live AI deployment proposal and the governance, liability, and coverage questions it raises.
A private facilitated session for audit and risk committees covering AI risk identification, escalation pathways, insurance coverage architecture, and emerging governance record requirements.
Past events
An invitation-only breakfast working session on AI governance for independent board directors. Participants worked through two agentic AI case studies using the Compass framework.
A Task Force briefing covering emerging D&O liability standards for AI oversight, AI washing risk, and the insurance coverage gaps most boards don't know they have.
First closed pilot of the AI Board Governance Compass with a mid-size company board, generating live diagnostic results across all four dimensions and a governance record output.
Every Vela engagement can be scoped as a private session — designed around your board's specific industry, AI exposure, and governance maturity.
Discuss a Private SessionRequest a briefing to discuss upcoming programs or scope a private session for your governance committee.
Resources
Perspectives, frameworks, and tools for boards and the executives who support them — on AI governance, director liability, and the oversight decisions that matter.
Featured
Boards sometimes hesitate to run a governance assessment for fear of creating a discoverable record. The policy environment developing around AI oversight suggests that reasoning deserves a second look.
Read the pieceNot technical questions — governance questions. The ones that reveal whether the deployment has a defensible oversight structure or a liability gap in waiting.
When a company overstates what its AI does, directors can find themselves personally exposed — especially if they approved communications they didn't scrutinize.
Regulators, insurers, and plaintiffs' attorneys are converging on a new standard. What "adequate AI oversight" means for directors is being defined right now.
Boards are rarely told what AI fairness testing was done before deployment. Most don't know to ask. Here's the question set that changes the conversation.
Fire drills exist because the first time shouldn't be the real thing. The same logic applies to AI governance decisions — and almost no board has run the drill.
When an AI system causes harm, three different insurance towers all claim the loss belongs to someone else. Understanding the gap is a governance responsibility.
The Compass assessment is where every Vela engagement begins. Request access or a briefing to discuss what it surfaces for your board.
Contact
Whether you're ready to run the Compass, exploring a private workshop, or just want to understand what Vela does — start here.
Every Vela engagement starts with a conversation. We'll discuss your board's context, governance maturity, and what's most pressing — then recommend the right starting point.
PDA members
Vela serves on the Private Directors Association AI Task Force. PDA members can request priority access to upcoming workshops and the Compass assessment through the PDA member portal.
We respond within one business day.
Category
The Compass is where every Vela engagement begins. Request access or a briefing to see what it surfaces for your board.