Nancy Yaklich
Nancy Yaklich founded Bratlich to solve the problem she kept meeting inside large enterprises: AI initiatives that win the pilot and lose the rollout.
AI / Digital Center of Excellence built inside a $160B+ privately held global food and agriculture leader
Innovation P&L and GenAI strategy — Caterpillar
Revenue protected by AI products in production
AI and digital transformation, Fortune 500
Governance that holds. Value that shows up in the P&L.
Over 15+ years across healthcare, industrials, and energy, Nancy has led AI and digital transformation at some of the world's largest operators. At Cargill, she built and led a $45M AI / Digital Center of Excellence, giving the company a structured path from emerging technology to operational deployment. At Caterpillar, she owned GenAI strategy and a $5M innovation P&L, moving generative AI from experimentation into product and service lines. At UnitedHealthcare, she led AI products in production that protected $460M in revenue.
The common thread is execution in physical-asset, highly regulated industries — where the gap between a demo and a deployed system is measured in safety reviews, compliance sign-offs, and the trust of frontline teams. Nancy's approach treats governance as the mechanism that gets AI into production faster, not the reason it stays in a slide deck.
Through Bratlich, Nancy works with executive teams and boards as an independent AI transformation advisor on interim and fractional mandates: standing up AI operating models, defining the Chief AI Officer function, and building the governance and enablement systems that turn AI investment into measurable enterprise outcomes. She is also a co-founder and advisor at NorthStar.
Nancy publishes The Governance Signal, the Weekly AI Governance Roundup — a LinkedIn newsletter published weekly and read by 360+ enterprise leaders, on what boards should expect from AI governance and what hiring a Chief AI Officer actually requires. She also writes The Ventured AI Brief, a biweekly brief for leaders turning enterprise AI into measurable business value.
She is based in Minneapolis, MN.
Education, certifications, and continuous study.
- MBA, Hamline University, St. Paul, MN
- BA, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
- Artificial Intelligence Program, University of Oxford, Saïd Business School
- Business Strategy Certificate, The Wharton School
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
- Six Sigma Green Belt
Nancy shares weekly on enterprise AI governance, pilot-to-production execution, and what boards should expect from a Chief AI Officer.
The Governance Signal — the Weekly AI Governance Roundup, published on LinkedIn. One weekly read on making AI governance a speed advantage. For executives, boards, and the people who have to ship.
Working through an AI transformation, or defining what your Chief AI Officer role should own?
Bratlich advises executive teams and boards on interim and fractional mandates.