Joy Curtis
AI Executive | Scaling Agentic AI into Enterprise Impact
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Actions
Joy Marie Curtis is an AI and organizational transformation executive specializing in Agentic AI, enterprise deployment, and global team scaling. She currently serves as Head of Organizational Development at NeuralSeek, where she leads enterprise AI strategy, delivery models, and talent pipelines across regulated industries including government, healthcare, insurance, and financial services.
Joy’s career began in education, an experience that deeply shaped her leadership philosophy: complex systems succeed when they are designed for people first. That foundation now informs her work guiding organizations through large-scale AI adoption—helping executives cut through hype, reduce risk, and turn AI from experimentation into measurable business impact.
She has overseen 40+ enterprise AI initiatives, delivering Agentic AI solutions across IBM, AWS, and Azure, and ensuring deployments meet PCI, HIPAA, and SOC 2 compliance standards. Her work sits at the intersection of strategy, governance, and execution—aligning executives, legal and compliance teams, technologists, and end users around a shared operating model for AI.
A sought-after speaker, Joy challenges the tendency to overcomplicate AI implementation. She introduces leaders to metacognitive approaches to AI adoption—thinking deliberately about how organizations think, decide, and deploy—so AI initiatives remain grounded in purpose, accountability, and outcomes. She speaks candidly about both successes and failures, offering practical frameworks that help organizations move AI from concept to real-world, scalable impact.
Joy has presented at LASCON 2025, Microsoft Azure, and Google’s Agentic AI forums, speaking to executives, developers, and compliance leaders on responsible AI deployment, enterprise readiness, and scaling AI organizations globally.
Badges
Area of Expertise
Topics
AI Beyond the Sales Pitch: Turning Promises into Operational Reality
AI doesn’t fail because the technology isn’t ready—it fails because organizations make implementation far more complex than it needs to be.
In this session, we move past vendor demos and inflated promises to look at what actually determines whether AI delivers business value. Drawing on real-world implementation experience, this talk breaks down the few decisions that matter most—and the common traps that derail even well-funded initiatives.
Designed for leaders responsible for outcomes, not experiments, this session reframes AI implementation as an execution and change problem—not a technical one—and offers a practical way to move from ambition to impact without unnecessary complexity.
Scheduled presentations in 2026 and 2025 presented at Big Mountain Data and Dev Conference, DevFest Salt Lake City 2025, Future Data Driven Summit, and Denver Dev Day the Developer's Conference.
Target Audience
Boards, C-suite executives, and senior VPs
Technology, digital transformation, and innovation leaders
Executives accountable for AI investment outcomes
Session Level
Executive / Advanced
Focused on decision-making, governance, and execution
No technical or data science background required
Preferred Session Duration
45 minutes + 10–15 minutes Q&A
Adaptable to 30 or 60 minutes
Session Format
Executive keynote with real-world implementation examples
Emphasis on judgment, tradeoffs, and organizational readiness
Technical Requirements
Projector or large display (16:9 slides)
Microphone for large rooms
No live demos or system access required
Additional Notes
Emphasizes AI as an execution and leadership challenge, not a technology problem
Designed for leaders responsible for outcomes, risk, and ROI
Applicable to enterprise, public sector, and regulated environments
Scaling Impact: Leading 100 Interns to Deliver Real-World AI at Speed
Scaling complex solutions is a leadership and operating-model challenge—not a staffing one.
This session presents a case study in how a single accountable program owner, supported by subject-matter experts, governed and scaled a 100-person early-career cohort—primarily interns with little to no professional experience, ranging from high-school students to recent graduates—to deliver a real-world Agentic AI solution using NeuralSeek in six weeks.
Given the experience gap, success depended on intentional design rather than informal collaboration. The program was structured around a clearly defined end state, explicit expectations for participation, and disciplined discussion frameworks that kept work aligned to a shared goal while preventing common scaling failures such as dominance by louder voices, misinterpretation of objectives, and diffusion of accountability.
The session highlights how clear ownership, structured communication, and graduated recognition of effort—not just outcomes—enabled predictable execution and measurable results at scale without adding management layers or operational overhead.
Target Audience
Boards, C-suite executives, and senior VPs
Program, product, and delivery leaders scaling teams or initiatives
Innovation and workforce development leaders
Session Level
Executive / Advanced
Focused on governance, alignment, and scalable execution
No technical AI background required
Preferred Session Duration
45 minutes + 10–15 minutes Q&A
Adaptable to 30 or 60 minutes
Session Format
Case-study–driven executive keynote
Practical frameworks for scaling without adding management layers
Technical Requirements
Projector or large display (16:9 slides)
Microphone for large rooms
No live demos or system access required
Additional Notes
Case study includes scaling a 100-person intern cohort (high school to graduate level, minimal professional experience)
Single accountable program owner with expert advisory support
Six-week delivery horizon tied to a real-world AI use case
Emphasizes structure, shared goals, and recognition of effort over heroics
Presented at Business Week Experience 2025
Leading When You’re Not the Expert: Context Before Control in Cross-Cultural Work
Effective cross-cultural leadership is not about memorizing norms or treating culture like a checklist. In complex, global environments, leaders rarely know everything—and the real risk comes from not recognizing when they’ve missed context.
This session is grounded in leadership experience across diverse cultural settings, including teaching kindergarten on the Navajo Nation early in a career, serving as Vice President of a university Black Student Union, managing Latin American and North American teams, and designing international internship programs with global certification pathways. These experiences shaped a leadership approach focused less on cultural “expertise” and more on situational awareness, humility, and recoverability.
Executives will explore how to develop the skills to recognize social cues, respond constructively when missteps occur, and maintain an approachable leadership posture that invites context rather than silence. In business environments where outcomes depend on negotiation, trust, and long-term relationships, strong leadership goes beyond transactional exchanges—it depends on creating conditions where people feel safe to provide insight, correction, and direction before issues escalate.
Target Audience
Boards, C-suite executives, and senior VPs
Leaders managing global, cross-cultural, or cross-functional teams
Executives involved in negotiations, partnerships, or international operations
Session Level
Executive / Advanced
Focused on leadership judgment, negotiation, and trust
No prior cultural or international training required
Preferred Session Duration
45 minutes + 10–15 minutes Q&A
Adaptable to 30 or 60 minutes
Session Format
Executive keynote with lived-experience case examples
Frameworks focused on situational awareness and recoverability
Technical Requirements
Projector or large display (16:9 slides)
Microphone for large rooms
No live demos or interactive technology required
Additional Notes
Emphasizes culture as a leadership skill, not a checklist
Focuses on recognizing misalignment, responding to social cues, and maintaining approachability
Grounded in experience managing LATAM and North American teams, international programs, and early-career leadership roles
Applicable to enterprise, public sector, nonprofit, and global organizations
Joy Curtis
AI Executive | Scaling Agentic AI into Enterprise Impact
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Actions
Please note that Sessionize is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of the data provided by speakers. If you suspect this profile to be fake or spam, please let us know.
Jump to top