Susan Adams
I live for conversations about what AI is asking of us. In classrooms, at meetups, on panels, in labs, wherever people are working out what AI means for how we think, learn, and lead, that’s where I want to be.
Currently
CEO & Founder
Women in AI Colorado
Founder & Director
Women in AI Labs
Associate Director, Teaching & Learning
Achieving the Dream
Adjunct Associate Professor
University of Denver
AI and Professional Practice
Co Board Leader-elect
GlobalMindED
Executive Board
Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group
What I Do
I design AI learning experiences for organizations, teams, and faculty. My courses build durable skills: systems thinking, critical judgment, and the capacity to use AI inside your own expertise. The course I built for the University of Denver is under consideration as a foundation for their Accelerated Bachelor of Professional Studies program. The same pedagogy translates to corporate L&D, nonprofit capacity building, and workforce development.
I speak and facilitate at the intersection of AI, learning, and human agency. Every keynote includes a facilitated activity, because ideas land differently when people work with them in real time. I read rooms, move energy where it needs to go, and design experiences that make complex AI questions feel approachable and actionable. Recent venues include Grace Hopper, the South African Education Conference, and PBS.
I help mission-driven organizations integrate AI into how they actually work. The approach is systems thinking paired with coaching: I unpack workflows, surface the questions that matter, and help teams arrive at strategies they own. My sweet spot is being the catalyst, the one asking the questions that help a leader or a team find their own clarity. This work is grounded in a belief that AI should be deployed for human benefit, and that the people closest to the work should be the authors of how it gets used.
Frameworks
Staying the author of your own mind
The anchor of my teaching and consulting. People should stay the authors of their own thinking as AI becomes part of how they learn and work. It runs through my University of Denver course and every keynote.
Limits that sharpen the work
Ethical boundaries give creative work its shape and integrity. This is a module in my DU course and the spine of the workshops I design for professionals.
The operating model for Women in AI Labs
People learn AI best in trusted community, building real things together. This is how Women in AI Labs runs: peer-led, hands-on, and coached.
Connection, Collaboration, Co-creation
The design principles behind the communities and learning experiences I build, so people move from audience to authors.
A philosophy of AI adoption
How I help people and organizations adopt AI on their own terms, with clear judgment about where it serves the work.
Speaking
Courses & Programs
University of Denver · Ten-module asynchronous course
An undergraduate course I designed, developed, and teach as its inaugural adjunct faculty, built around cognitive sovereignty. Students develop their own agency in an AI-assisted world, learning where AI tools enhance communication, collaboration, leadership, and decision-making while they keep human judgment and professional integrity. It culminates in presentations to professional practitioners.
Women in AI Labs · Three-hour foundations lab
A productized, peer-led lab for women: pre-lab exercises, a facilitated build, and coaches in the room. People leave having built a personal AI assistant in trusted community.
University of Denver Continuing Education · Seventeen-ambassador cohort
A community-of-practice program with three facilitator-coaches that grew seventeen ambassadors into AI literacy leaders, culminating in a public showcase.
About
I founded Women in AI Colorado, teach AI and Professional Practice at the University of Denver, and serve on the executive board of the Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group. My work centers on cognitive sovereignty: the idea that people should stay the authors of their own thinking as AI becomes part of how we learn and work.