Fractional Chief AI Officer, in Vancouver and Ho Chi Minh City

What is a fractional Chief AI Officer?

A fractional Chief AI Officer is a senior leader who runs a company's AI work part time. They decide where AI should save time and money, choose the tools, set up the AI agents, and make sure the team actually uses them, without the cost of a full-time executive. It suits companies that know AI matters but have nobody whose job it is.

What I do as your fractional Chief AI Officer

I run AI tools the way a company runs people. I hire them, fire them, give them a place in the team, and check what they cost against what they save. Then I point them at the real processes of each department: finance, HR, sales, marketing and operations.

The work, from first call to running system:

1. Advice. Where AI will pay off in your business first, and where it won't.
2. Architecture. Which tools and agents, how they connect to the systems you already use, and who owns what.
3. Design. The workflows, written step by step, so people and agents know their part.
4. Setup and implementation. I build it, test it with your team, and keep it running.
5. The team, if you need one. When a project needs engineers, I build the team in Vietnam and run it. I'm the orchestrator.

How I learned to run teams

I learned this before AI, running our agency in Saigon.

• Small teams beat one big department. Around 2013, at about 60 people, we split the agency into small teams around groups of clients, each with its own lead. Production stayed shared. That structure let us grow past 100. I set up AI agents the same way: small, each with one owner and one job.
• Someone has to protect the makers' time. When we passed 50 people, project managers interrupted our creatives all day, so we added a traffic manager whose job was to say no. An AI system needs the same gatekeeper: one place where work comes in and gets sorted.
• Most failures happen at the handoff. One of our project reviews found the real problem was weak coordination between teams, not weak talent. AI agents break in the same place, so I design the handoffs first.

That is the job of a fractional Chief AI Officer: owning the structure, not just picking the tools.

Who it's for

• Owners and leadership teams in Vancouver and Ho Chi Minh City who want AI working in the business, not another slide deck.
• People building their own personal brand: coaches, creators, consultants and founders who need structure and an AI team behind them (posts, emails, follow-ups, admin), without hiring staff.
• Western companies that want to build an AI team in Vietnam and need someone who knows both sides. (See Building an AI team in Vietnam.)

Why me

I spent 20 years building and running companies before AI was a job title. I co-founded the digital agency Sofresh in Saigon in 2007, signed with WPP in 2012, and later merged Mirum and JWT into Wunderman Thompson Vietnam, which I led as CEO. Today I run my own businesses with a team of AI agents, and I show how on this site.

I was born in Ottawa and raised in Vancouver. I'm based in Ho Chi Minh City and downtown Vancouver, I fly to Vancouver often, and I meet clients in person in both cities.

Questions owners ask

What does a fractional Chief AI Officer cost? It depends on how much of the business we take on and whether you need a team built. I scope it with you on a first call, in plain numbers, before anything starts.

Do you meet in person? Yes. I meet clients in person in downtown Vancouver and in Ho Chi Minh City, and work online in between.

Do we need technical staff first? No. Part of the job is deciding what you need. If the project needs engineers, I build the team.

Is this the same as hiring an AI agency? No. An agency sells you a project. A fractional Chief AI Officer sits on your side of the table, picks the tools and the people, and stays accountable for whether it works.

Can you work with our existing team and software? Yes. The architecture starts from the systems you already use.

Do I need a Chief AI Officer at all? Not every business does. If someone on your team has the time and owns the result, start there. You need one when AI matters to your business but nobody's job is to make it work, or when tools were bought and nobody uses them.

Should we fix our current AI tools or start over? Start from what you already have. I plan the setup around the systems you already use, and I only replace a tool when it doesn't earn its place. I review AI tools the way I used to review roles: what they cost against what they save.

Is a fractional Chief AI Officer worth it? It's worth it when the time and money AI saves you are bigger than what the role costs. That's the same test I use for every tool and agent: cost against hours given back, checked every month. If the numbers don't add up, it isn't worth it yet.

What are the alternatives to hiring a Chief AI Officer? You can give the job to someone already on your team, hire an AI agency for a project, use a freelancer for one tool, or bring in a fractional Chief AI Officer part time. An agency builds what was agreed and hands it over. A fractional Chief AI Officer stays on your side of the table and owns the result over time.

Book a call · letstalk@lyvietvu.com