Most small and midsized businesses are not waiting to adopt AI. Their employees are already using it, often through free personal accounts that leadership never approved, pasting customer data, contracts, HR records, and proprietary source code into tools the organization has no visibility into. Shadow AI is not a future risk. It is already inside your business.

This session gives SMB owners, operations leaders, and department heads a practical, right-sized AI governance framework they can implement without an enterprise legal team or a six-figure compliance budget. Drawing on federal portfolio governance experience overseeing 40 concurrent capital projects, Dr. Diamond translates complex governance principles into concrete policies, vendor checklists, and risk controls that lean teams can actually deploy.

You will Leave With:

• A shadow AI discovery exercise they can run with their team within the week
• A one-page acceptable use policy template ready to customize
• A five-question vendor evaluation checklist including training-data and cyber insurance considerations
• A First 24-Hours incident response framework for the four most common AI failure scenarios
• A regulatory exposure checklist covering US state-level AI laws currently in effect
• A 90-day governance action plan