Every Leader Should Build a Board of AI Advisors
Heller Search Associates, Wednesday, October 14th, 2026
West Monroe CIO Kevin Rooney runs 13 AI agents as a personal advisory board, including one built to argue against him.
Kevin Rooney describes building a second, AI-based advisory board alongside his human one, made up of 13 agents orchestrated through Codex.
Most of the agents map to his leadership team's functions, joined by Zen, built from his values, Contrarian, built to argue against him, and Equity Lens, built to catch his blind spots.
The board helps him prioritize, holds him to his commitments and challenges how he spends his time.
He argues that most CIOs think too small by building single-task assistants, when a holistic board that knows their goals and context can challenge their thinking, though the hard part is continuing to build each agent's context.