Head of AI Academy

Janus Henderson Investors•Denver, CO

8d•Hybrid

About The Position

Janus Henderson is undergoing a significant AI transformation to become the world's most technologically advanced asset manager. The AI Academy is a crucial component of this transformation, focusing on upskilling employees and driving cultural change. The Academy has achieved enterprise scale, with high adoption rates, increased prompt volumes, and a robust network of champions and advanced users. The Head of AI Academy will lead the next phase of this function, taking ownership of its strategy, curriculum, proficiency pathways, champion networks, platform, community, measurement, and governance. This leadership role requires a blend of capability building, stakeholder engagement, AI literacy, and change enablement expertise. The position involves setting curriculum direction, coaching champions, influencing senior stakeholders, and defining success metrics for AI adoption. The role operates within the AI Academy framework, collaborating with various internal teams and external partners.

Requirements

Proven leadership experience — building, leading and developing teams and/or distributed networks of champions across multiple business units, ideally in an enablement, capability or change context.
Strong, practical understanding of AI and GenAI concepts, capabilities and limitations, with the ability to translate them for non-technical audiences and set a credible direction for the programme.
Hands-on familiarity with the firm’s core toolkit — Microsoft Copilot and the M365 ecosystem, Copilot Studio and adjacent tooling — and a genuine appetite to evaluate, learn and deploy new tools as they emerge.
Demonstrated experience designing and running training, curriculum or capability-building programmes at scale, and the judgement to tell apart a session people endure from one they apply the next morning.
Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, with credibility across business and senior audiences and the ability to lead through influence where contributors are embedded in departments.
Practical change-management and adoption experience — understanding that access and training are only half the job, and that surfacing and removing adoption blockers is the other half.
Strong measurement literacy — comfortable designing surveys, interpreting adoption data and building scorecards, and disciplined about the difference between adoption (a prerequisite) and value (the goal).
Self-directed and comfortable operating with ambiguity — the Academy is being scaled and reshaped, and you will define how much of it runs, with sponsorship but without a detailed playbook.
Strong documentation instincts — produce reusable curriculum, pathways and playbooks that outlast your direct involvement and can be picked up by others.
Experience working in a regulated environment (financial services, asset management or comparable) where governance, compliance and data sensitivity shape how solutions are designed and deployed.
Understanding of the regulatory obligations of the firm, and abide by the regulated entity requirements and JHI policies applicable for your role.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience in asset management or financial services — exposure to investment, distribution, operations or client-service workflows.
Experience with AI governance, risk and responsible-AI practices, and familiarity with the emerging regulatory landscape (e.g., EU AI Act).
Familiarity with Copilot Studio, the Power Platform, agentic tooling and the ability to understand how these tools fit in with our evolving internal AI platforms.
Background in a community-of-practice, guild or cohort-based enablement model, or in internal communications and community building.
Product-management sensibility — MVPs, iteration, user feedback and prioritisation — applied to curriculum and enablement rather than software features.
Experience managing vendor or staff-augmentation partnerships that flex delivery capacity.

Responsibilities

Own and evolve the AI Academy strategy and operating model, ensuring it remains tool-agnostic and aligned with the firm's AI transformation ambitions.
Evolve the operating model to combine decentralized business ownership, local capability, embedded delivery, and central standards for advanced training and community.
Shift the program from broad access to depth of use, focusing on role-based capability, repeatable workflows, and stronger guardrails, and set the roadmap for advanced training pathways.
Own and continuously improve the three-tier proficiency journey and its underlying learning.
Direct the core curriculum, including AI 101 and Copilot 101, and relaunch the advanced program for power users.
Build advanced, role-specific content to address training gaps, including prompting craft, Copilot Studio, agent design, Excel and productivity depth, and hallucination and governance guardrails.
Lead and grow the Air Traffic Controller (departmental AI leads) and Fighter Pilot (advanced users) networks, running a train-the-trainer model.
Set standards, protected-time expectations, and ways of working for the networks, and secure line-manager accountability for the ATC time commitment.
Coach, develop, and recognize champions, and build the community and peer learning to keep them engaged and effective.
Own the AI Academy homepage and its sections, serving as the central hub for AI enablement.
Own the Use Case Library and Prompt Library, driving contribution, curation, and reuse of proven patterns.
Consolidate AI training material into a single channel and brand.
Run the communications cadence, including the AI newsletter and innovation community feed, and improve its relevance, engagement, and discoverability.
Own the adoption dashboard and the Academy’s contribution to the ExCo scorecard, evolving metrics from license assignment to proficiency and depth of engagement.
Run structured user research to map demand, pain points, and training needs, and prioritize the roadmap based on evidence.
Report progress, risks, and decisions into the firm’s AI transformation governance.
Embed the firm’s Responsible AI principles across all Academy content and pathways.
Partner with AI Governance, Technology, Security, Risk, and Compliance to ensure tools and patterns align with data-privacy, security, and responsible-AI posture.
Position the Academy as the adoption layer for new enterprise AI tools and agents, leading change management.
Lead the central Academy team and specialist contributors, setting direction, standards, and a high bar for quality.
Chair the Academy governance forum and monthly ATC catch-ups, and represent the Academy in AI transformation leadership forums.
Carry out other duties as assigned.

Benefits

Hybrid working and reasonable accommodations
Generous Holiday policies
Private Medical Insurance
Life Insurance Cover
Paid volunteer time to step away from your desk and into the community
Support to grow through professional development courses, tuition/qualification reimbursement and more
Maternal/paternal leave benefits and family services
Complimentary subscription to Headspace, Apple Health, Strava
All employee events including networking opportunities and social activities
Annual SZÉP Card allowance
Annual Bonus Opportunity: Position may be eligible to receive an annual discretionary bonus award from the profit pool.
Competitive compensation
Pension/retirement plans
Various health, wellbeing and lifestyle benefits