AI hype has been loud for three years, but most leaders still tell me the real work begins after the demo. That was the starting point for my conversation with Christina Ellwood, co-founder of AI Realized, a community built to help enterprises move from pilots to production with less noise and more results. 

Christina has a calm, practical way of explaining why progress has accelerated from a tiny fraction of companies in production to roughly one in five this year, and why many of the remaining blockers have little to do with model choice and everything to do with people, policy, and permission to ship.

We talk about the messy middle between a proof of concept and a live service that customers can rely on. According to Christina, the most complex problems are organizational. Teams need upskilling, guardrails, and clear deployment guidelines to ensure effective execution. Legal and brand risk create hesitation. Boards want more substantial evidence and better controls. That is where leadership shows up in a very human way. 

The skill she hears most often from successful program leads is humility. No one knows everything here, and the leaders who admit that, invite challenge, and keep learning are the ones getting to value without creating chaos. I loved her point that cross-organisational leadership is fast becoming the hidden superpower as AI connects systems and workflows that used to sit in separate silos.

We also look forward to the 2025 AI Realized Summit, scheduled for November 5 in San Francisco. Attendance is intentionally capped at 500 to maintain high-quality conversation and genuine networking. Expect Fortune 2000 use cases across multiple industries, a healthy mix of predictive and generative work, and practical talk on small language models, multi-model strategies, and running models inside your security perimeter. 

Eric Siegel will keynote on combining predictive analytics with generative techniques, and you will hear from executives at companies including Amazon, Audible, Red Hat, and Zscaler. Christina highlights one example from Fandom that combines predictive ad targeting with generative tools to enhance brand safety and suitability, a trend I expect to see repeated throughout the day.

If you are leading AI programs and need fewer slogans and more proof, this episode will feel like a deep breath. We explore how to move faster while staying responsible, why smaller and multi-model setups are gaining traction, and how to build confidence with your board without overpromising.