Top AI Execs to Watch

Brad Mascho, NCI

Brad Mascho is chief artificial intelligence officer at NCI. Prior to this, he co-founded AI firm CrossChx in 2012. There, he headed a company that took AI solutions to the commercial health care sector to address issues around unique patient identification, medical records and drug abuse. CrossChx was named three years in a row as a best place to work in Columbus, Ohio.

Why Watch: The first chief artificial intelligence officer in the GovCon space, Mascho leads a team that leverages the human-machine partnership through NCI’s Shai solution. Shai operates as a typical user given passwords, accounts and other technology solutions to automate high-volume, repetitive tasks.

Mascho said NCI prepares workforces to experience optimal results of AI by guiding them through every step of the process from education to implementation.

“Customers are experiencing the max utility of AI because we understand it and use it to scale human potential,” he said. “With our AI solution, Shai, we enable our customer’s workforce to focus on higher-value work by removing repetitive tasks. Shai stands for Scaling Humans with Artificial Intelligence —and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

As AI technologies continue to emerge and evolve, more and more organizations desire its benefits, but don’t always know how to leverage them, Mascho said.

“That’s where NCI is different,” he added. “We provide our customers AI as a service. We approach every use of AI by building a strong foundation through AI governance, enterprise security and change management. Coupling superior solutions with our experience and dedicated services are the reason we’ve been successful in this area.”

As a way to counter potential bias within the solution, the company developed its NCI P³methodology, which factors in programmatic interactions and collaboration to better understand business objectives, deployment of agile methodologies for prioritizations based on business objectives, and creation of a backlog of workflows to drive solution deployment, Mascho said.

NCI intentionally chooses AI tools entirely made and maintained in the United States, he said, thus meeting strict federal security requirements.

“It’s an exciting time in artificial intelligence,” he said. “Commercial industries pioneered it, and government agencies are really beginning to embrace the efficiencies that AI can bring. I wholeheartedly believe these next-generation technologies, such as AI and advanced data analytics, are the true keys to solving our customers’ complex missions.”