Meet the generous leaders bringing curiosity, clarity, and practical possibility into communities across the country—and helping more people discover that they’re not learning AI alone.
The AI Salon Ambassador Program equips trusted community leaders to bring a human-centered approach to generative AI into the rooms where people already gather: creative communities, entrepreneur groups, business networks, civic organizations, professional associations, and local events.
Ambassadors lead conversations, host small groups, create connections, and help people move from uncertainty or overwhelm into curiosity, confidence, and possibility. This isn’t about teaching tools for the sake of tools. It’s about using AI to amplify creativity, insight, leadership, and human genius.
Ambassadors bring the Cycle of AI Readiness into their communities.
Being an ambassador isn’t ceremonial — it’s a light but real practice. Ambassadors bring a human-centered approach to AI into the rooms they already move through, meeting people where they are.
Ambassadors bring AI into the everyday places people already gather — meetups, business breakfasts, creative circles, community events — making it easy and welcoming to start exploring AI right where you live.
They lead the room: hosting small-group discussions, giving talks, and running hands-on demos that turn hesitation about AI into curiosity, confidence, and practical next steps.
They listen closely to what people are genuinely excited and worried about, then bring those real-world insights back so the whole community keeps learning from what’s happening on the ground.
Ambassadors are chosen for who they already are — not a résumé. These are the qualities they embody.
They do what they say they’re going to do. They are their word.
They have the agency — and the healthy gall — to act without waiting for permission.
They’re comfortable being visible and using their voice — online, in person, or both.
They’re genuinely passionate about generative AI — already curious, already exploring.
Independent, free thinkers who can respond in real time and hold a room.
They embody curiosity, playfulness, generosity, empathy, and creating excellence.
They are chefs, founders, strategists, storytellers, civic leaders, and community builders. What connects them is a belief that AI’s best future will be beautifully—and unmistakably—human.
Carmela believes the future of AI must be anchored in human empathy. With a background in visual storytelling and aspirations in philanthropy, she combines compassion, creativity, and intuition with AI’s potential to address neglected systemic gaps—hosting open dialogue around ethical governance, intentional adoption, collective healing, and empowerment.
Sunny helps businesses understand whether AI recommends them—or ghosts them entirely. Drawing on experience at Amazon, MIT, and Goldman Sachs, she translates technical complexity into plain English. She also founded Better Days Ahead AI from a belief that AI should create opportunity for struggling businesses and people outside the tech world.
Niki is a Digital Thanatologist, project-management expert, and award-winning leader in Web3 and AI. Through ENDevo, My Final Playbook, and the Digital Legacy Podcast, she creates practical tools and readiness frameworks that help people navigate death, incapacity, digital identity, legacy, and consciousness with greater clarity and confidence.
Daisy serves as the AI Salon’s Director of Advocacy and Policy Development. Her background spans interfaith dialogue, community organizing, policy, and governance. She builds programs that treat AI readiness as a civic skill—not merely a technical one—and helps communities ask better questions about who writes the rules.
Dr. Mazza is a behavioral scientist, strategist, and systems thinker exploring how AI is reshaping human behavior and organizations. Her work brings a thoughtful, evidence-minded perspective to the human realities behind technological change.
Bob brings more than 30 years of experience in residential real estate, sales, relationship building, and customer strategy. He uses AI across sales, marketing, training, customer outreach, operations, and decision-making, with a special interest in making it practical and accessible for professionals without technical backgrounds.
Kellye Kamp is the founder and CEO of SourceKamp Labs and an AI adoption consultant who helps businesses take practical first steps with generative AI. With 4,000+ hours working hands-on with GenAI tools, she is known for making AI clear, usable, and immediately valuable for non-technical teams. Through customized workshops, speaking engagements, automation tools, and her work as an instructor with Dallas College, Kellye helps professionals build practical, responsible AI skills grounded in measurable results. Her mission is to bridge the gap between powerful AI capabilities and real-world implementation so teams can adopt AI confidently and responsibly.
Noemi Reyes helps people and small businesses make sense of technology, organize their ideas, and build practical systems that make work easier. By day, she supports complex systems and projects in county government as a Management Information Project Leader. She also teaches and consults around AI, business systems, websites, brand identity, and positioning—helping owners clarify their message, simplify workflows, and use automation thoughtfully. Noemi cares about useful solutions, not technology for its own sake, and believes small businesses can adapt and compete with confidence when they have the right support.
Melissa “Mel” Batoon is an entrepreneur, systems thinker, and AI educator exploring how intentional human context creates more meaningful collaboration with AI. Drawing inspiration from Ubuntu philosophy and human-centered design, she believes the future of AI is not just about building more capable systems—it is about building systems that better understand and support the humans they serve. Through experiments like MelOS and Rise & Ready™, she shares practical ideas that help people build technology around the human rather than asking humans to reorganize themselves around the technology.
Sid Hargro is the founder and Chief Imagineer of HarLin Strategies, where he offers fractional executive leadership, mindful leadership coaching, and storytelling to help organizations and leaders navigate what’s next. He is also the founder of Fetched Frame Studio, an AI-native storytelling studio where creative vision comes first and the tools serve it. A global strategic advisor, convener, and educator, Sid works at the intersection of culture, technology, belonging, and experimentation, using human-centered AI to amplify the brilliance of leaders and innovative social enterprises.
Kelly Anderson is a Chef-Technologist with 15+ years of experience leading product commercialization across powerhouse brands like Nestlé, Disney, Panera, Impossible, and US Foods. She made history as the first chef globally to earn an MIT certification in AI and Machine Learning for Data Science Solutions, layering food brand innovation with data science intelligence. Kelly founded Future of Food LLC, which holds TheFutureofFood.org, FoF Advisory Group, Clean Food Forum, and DyeConverter™—ingredient intelligence for clean label reform. As an ambassador to the AI Salon, Kelly brings an insatiable curiosity, her passion for sharing obscure AI finds, and a relentless commitment to grounded research.
This isn’t theoretical. Every month, ambassadors are out in their cities — in boardrooms and classrooms, chambers of commerce and around kitchen tables — turning curiosity about AI into real, human conversation.
An ambassador spoke about the AI Salon and the realities of AI policy with roughly fifty local business leaders over breakfast in the Tampa Bay area.
At a gathering of market and qualitative researchers, an ambassador led a session on putting AI to work in their craft — then carried the conversation back home.
What began as a single lunch became a recurring circle: neighbors gathering over food for hours of hands-on, human-centered AI conversation.
Across cities and communities, AI Salon Ambassadors are helping people explore what’s possible—with curiosity, generosity, and a distinctly human point of view.