Elijah Young
Enterprise Automation & AI/LLM Architect & Power Platform CoE Builder | Over $60M+ value delivered
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
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Elijah Young is an Enterprise Automation Architect and AI/LLM strategist who helps Fortune 500 organizations turn pilots into platforms at scale. He bridges the gap between executive strategy and hands-on delivery, specializing in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI gateways, Copilot Studio, and Power Platform governance/ALM.
- Led a Vertex AI RAG for IT Operations that lets engineers query events in natural language, with automated evaluation for quality and drift.
- Established a NIST-aligned AI governance model that gives leaders end-to-end oversight—from idea intake to operations—without slowing delivery.
- Built a Power Platform Center of Excellence that supports 30,000+ makers with training, DLP, and FinOps guardrails, enabling a small team to run a large tenant.
- Executed program turnarounds (3 → 27 solutions in a year) by standardizing methods and designing for self-healing.
Trusted by NBCUniversal, Home Depot, Sherwin-Williams, Exelon, Ford, Southern Company, Panera, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Delta Air Lines, Elijah has delivered more than $60M in measurable business value. His sessions blend real-world enterprise playbooks with practical templates, equipping both executives and practitioners to scale AI and low-code responsibly.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Power Platform Security & DLP: From Wild West to Governed at Scale
Security wants control; makers want speed. You can have both. This practical session shows how to design a security posture for Power Platform that prevents data exfiltration without strangling innovation.
We’ll build an environment strategy from data‑risk down, then implement tenant‑scoped and environment‑scoped DLP policies with connector classification, endpoint filtering, and rules for HTTP/custom connectors. You’ll see how Managed Environments, least‑privilege Application Users, and service principals reduce blast radius; how to handle connection ownership and joiner/mover/leaver at scale; and how to set up review/exception processes security actually approves.
We’ll also cover Conditional Access patterns, admin/audit connectors, and the dashboards that show executives where risk is falling and value is rising.
You’ll learn:
✅ How to segment environments by risk profile and data residency requirements
✅ DLP policy design (business vs. non‑business, endpoint filtering, HTTP/custom connector guardrails)
✅ When to use Managed Environments, and how to govern solution catalogs
✅ Least‑privilege patterns for connections, Application Users, and service principals
✅ A scalable exception/review process (requests, evidence, approvals, expirations)
✅ Auditing and monitoring: admin connectors, logs, and “what to watch” dashboards
Additional Details:
- Audience: Platform admins, security/identity teams, CoE leads, compliance officers
- Level / Duration: Intermediate–Advanced; 60 minutes
- Takeaways: DLP policy matrix (starter), environment risk map template, exception workflow (request→evidence→approval), JML connection‑ownership checklist
- Prereqs: Familiarity with connectors, Solutions, and basic tenant admin concepts
Power Platform ALM with Solutions + Pipelines (Pro‑Dev Friendly CI/CD That Makers Love)
Most teams grow fast, then stall at deployment. This session gives you an end‑to‑end ALM playbook for Power Platform that works for both makers and pro‑devs—without manual-export chaos.
We’ll design Solution structure for reliability (Core vs. App vs. Data layers; managed vs. unmanaged), map environment variables and connection references, and walk through application users/service principals so deployments don’t depend on one person’s account. Then we’ll wire up Pipelines for Power Platform with GitHub or Azure DevOps: approvals, gates, rollback, and auditable release notes.
We’ll cover how to retrofit existing “wild” apps/flows into Solutions, how to handle Dataverse schema changes safely, and how to package custom connectors and API endpoints.
Finally, we’ll add observability and value tracking so every release is measurable, repeatable, and fundable.
You’ll learn:
✅ Solution segmentation patterns (Core/App/Data) and when to go managed
✅ How to convert non‑solution assets cleanly and avoid “works‑on‑my‑tenant” moments
✅ Environment variables, connection references, and secrets without human bottlenecks
✅ Pipelines patterns (GitHub/Azure DevOps) with approvals, gates, and rollback plans
✅ Handling Dataverse changes, dependencies, and layered updates confidently
✅ Packaging custom connectors and API Management endpoints with governance baked in
Additional Details:
- Audience: Platform admins, senior makers, release/DevOps engineers, solution architects
- Level / Duration: Intermediate; 60 minutes (also available as a 90‑minute deep dive)
- Demos / Artifacts: Pipeline template (GitHub or ADO), ALM checklist, rollback playbook, Solution segmentation map, sample connection reference matrix
- Prereqs: Basic familiarity with Solutions and Power Apps/Power Automate
The Automation Flywheel: Turning Power Platform into an Enterprise Value Engine
Most automation programs plateau at a handful of bots and flows. This keynote unpacks a repeatable “automation flywheel” that compounds value: stabilize what exists (self‑healing, observability), prioritize ruthlessly (value, feasibility, run‑cost), standardize delivery (reusable components, pipelines/ALM), and instrument outcomes (benefit burn‑down, cycle‑time, avoided cost) so sponsorship grows on its own.
I’ll map the exact moves we used to take a program from 3 solutions per year to 27 while rebuilding trust—how we harden brittle bots, create “golden paths,” and measure what executives fund. You’ll see how to evolve from pilots to a portfolio: guardrails (DLP, Managed Environments), runtime reliability (heartbeats, circuit breakers, queue‑based retries), and value telemetry (Power BI dashboards your CFO understands).
The result: fewer fire drills, faster releases, and visible ROI that unlocks budgets.
You’ll learn:
✅ Stabilization patterns that cut break/fix work and raise SLA compliance
✅ A prioritization rubric that consistently surfaces high‑leverage use cases
✅ How to stand up a component library and ship faster without rework
✅ The metrics that sustain executive sponsorship beyond the first win
Additional Details:
Audience: CoE leaders, PMO, RPA leads, platform admins
Level: Intermediate; Duration: 45–60 minutes
Takeaways: Stabilization checklist; component library starter; value/ROI workbook
Self‑Healing Power Automate Desktop Bots: Patterns That Slash Support Tickets
What if your bots could recover before the business notices? This session teaches the resilience patterns that turn PAD automations into well‑behaved systems.
We’ll implement heartbeats and health checks; idempotent actions; queue‑based retries with backoff; timeouts and circuit breakers; structured exception taxonomies; “poison queue” isolation; and graceful degradation with clear runbooks.
We’ll also cover observability—how to log the right signals (success/fail, duration, payload hints) and wire Application Insights/Power BI so you spot drift early.
Bring your “brittle build” mindset; you’ll leave with a refactor plan that reduces ticket volume and improves SLA adherence without a ground‑up rewrite.
You’ll learn:
✅ The minimum viable telemetry model for bots
✅ When to retry vs. fail fast (and how to make the decision transparent)
✅ How to retrofit legacy automations with self‑healing incrementally
✅ Measuring the before/after (ticket heatmaps, MTTR/MTBF trends)
Additional Details:
Audience: RPA developers, solution architects, CoE platform engineers
Level: Intermediate–Advanced; Duration: 60 minutes
Demos: Live patterns with PAD; downloadable pattern cards and a stability‑first checklist
Governance Sprint (Hands‑On): Build Your Environment Map + DLP Policy Today
In this interactive workshop, your team will leave with a working draft of your Power Platform environment strategy and a DLP baseline you can take straight to security.
We’ll map dev/test/prod lanes, define connector allow/deny sets, document naming/ownership, and outline intake and approval patterns. Then we’ll pressure‑test decisions against your tenant realities: shadow IT, premium connectors, Dataverse boundaries, and Managed Environments.
We’ll also cover the “first 90 days” rollout plan—lightweight policy education for makers, a governance site with living docs, and a simple change‑control loop so you can adapt as adoption grows.
You’ll learn:
✅ How to design environment lanes that prevent chaos without blocking delivery
✅ Building DLP that enables (not just restricts) business agility
✅ Intake patterns that scale (templates, solution shells, guardrails)
✅ What to monitor and how to respond (owner drift, connector sprawl, data egress)
Additional Details:
Audience: Platform admins, architects, security, CoE leads
Level: Intermediate; Preferred Duration: 3–4 hours (half‑day)
Deliverables: Environment map; DLP baseline; intake workflow; role/permission matrix
Five Humans, 150K Users: The Playbook for Power Platform at Scale
This keynote is the operating model behind sustainable scale. We’ll show how a five‑person core team can support 150k users by combining: environment lanes; enabling DLP; ALM with Solutions and Power Platform Pipelines; maker enablement at scale (office hours, templates, solution shells); and license/FinOps practices leaders actually fund.
We’ll cover the governance posture that unlocks (rather than throttles) delivery, how to turn intake from chaos to cadence, what telemetry matters (adoption, quality, value), and how to earn and keep executive green‑lights with visible ROI.
Expect concrete templates and a “first 90 days” plan to turn pilots into a durable platform.
You’ll learn:
✅ The minimal viable CoE team and how to scale influence with templates
✅ Practical ALM/Pipelines for repeatability (and fewer “it works on my tenant” moments)
✅ DLP patterns for productivity with data safety
✅ Telemetry and value tracking that keep funding flowing
Additional Details:
Audience: Platform owners, architects, security leads, executives
Level: Intermediate–Advanced; Duration: 45–60 minutes
Takeaways: Environment map template; DLP baseline; request/intake outline; pipeline/ALM checklist; ROI tracking starter
Automation Stabilization Bootcamp: From Red Bots to Green Bots
Bring your three worst automations. We’ll triage the failure modes, add self‑healing and robust exception handling, instrument telemetry, and define SLAs/runbooks.
This is a practical, sleeves‑rolled session where we classify issues (app selectors, timing, auth/timeout, data drift), apply quick‑win fixes, and set up a sustainable support posture.
You’ll walk out with a stabilization backlog, pattern cards your team can keep reusing, and a plan to convert break/fix time into new delivery capacity.
You’ll learn:
✅ A simple FMEA‑style rubric to prioritize fixes that reduce the most pain
✅ Exception taxonomy and how to route actionable errors to humans
✅ “Golden path + fallback” design for brittle steps (document, click, parse)
✅ Minimal on‑call runbooks and SLOs that keep bots green
Additional Details:
Audience: RPA devs, CoE engineers, support leads
Level: Intermediate–Advanced; Preferred Duration: 3–4 hours (half‑day)
Deliverables: Stabilization checklist; exception taxonomy; component library starter; SLA/runbook template
Copilots + Power Platform: What’s Real, What’s Hype, and Where AI Actually Helps
AI is everywhere—so what actually speeds delivery and creates defensible value on Power Platform? This strategy talk separates signal from noise.
We’ll cover when Copilot Studio, AI Builder, and retrieval patterns materially help; where an AI gateway fits; how to evaluate outputs; and the governance/guardrails your security team needs to say “yes.”
Expect practical patterns: document “chat‑to‑act” that triggers flows; service desk diagnostics with retrieval; human‑in‑the‑loop approvals that keep auditors happy.
We’ll discuss LLMOps—prompt/version management, evaluation sets, content safety—and how to build business cases that survive scrutiny.
You’ll learn:
✅ A simple AI opportunity map for Power Platform (use case fit vs. risk)
✅ How to prove value fast without compromising compliance
✅ Where to use Copilot Studio vs. custom endpoints (and how to govern both)
✅ The evaluation and safety guardrails that keep pilots out of trouble
Additional Details:
Audience: Executives, platform owners, heads of automation/data
Level: Strategic; Duration: 45–60 minutes
Takeaways: AI opportunity map for Power Platform; gateway/evaluation checklist; business case template
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