AI Fellows
The AI Fellows are a select group of senior industry leaders who serve in an advisory capacity to the Fordham AI Business Hub powered by the Gabelli School of Business. Drawing on deep experience across business, technology, policy, and applied AI, Fellows provide strategic guidance, thought partnership, and external perspective as the Hub advances its mission.
Erica Berthou
Global Executive Committee Member and Partner,
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Erica Berthou is a member of the Global Executive Committee at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, based in New York, and co-leads the global Private Equity Funds group. She focuses on private equity firms, fundraising, strategic firm transactions, liquidity solutions, compensation, and firm ownership. Before joining Kirkland, she worked at Debevoise & Plimpton, Mannheimer Swartling, and Vinge.
Erica has experience across infrastructure, energy, buyout, growth, impact, and credit fund strategies, and has counseled leading sponsors on matters involving hundreds of billions of dollars raised across U.S. and international markets. Erica is consistently recognized as one of the country’s leading fund formation attorneys, ranked Band 1 in Chambers USA since 2009 and Chambers Global since 2011. Her honors also include the Financial Times’ “10 Most Innovative Practitioners” list in 2025 and a “Hall of Fame” designation by The Legal 500 U.S.
Erica is also driving Kirkland’s AI initiative, working with firm leadership to develop AI-driven tools and workflows across the fund formation and fund transaction practice. She holds degrees in law and/or economics from NYU, King’s College London, Stockholm University, and Uppsala University, and is an Aspen Institute Fellow, a Member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, a Member of the Private Investment Funds Forum, and serves on the Board of Directors of the USA Cycling Foundation, and on the UNICEF USA Advisory Board.
Dan Diasio
Principal, Artificial Intelligence, EY
Dan Diasio serves as EY’s global and Americas consulting artificial intelligence leader and Americas consulting CTO, overseeing over $1B in AI-driven revenue. He leads a global team across 10 regions, advising C-suite leaders at the world’s largest companies on AI transformation. As CTO, he builds the next generation of products and platforms and is focused on unlocking new business models for how consulting gets delivered and monetized in an AI era.
His perspective: AI lifts the floor. People raise the ceiling. Most transformations get stuck automating yesterday instead of designing tomorrow.
At EY, the approach has been to live the transformation first—launching training programs reaching 125,000 consultants globally and redefining consulting services in the face of AI.
Diasio appears on platforms that include: Harvard Business School Future of Work, Microsoft WorkLab, CES, and SXSW. He is a member of the NIST Generative AI Public Working Group.
Tal Goldhamer
AI Educator and Activator; CEO, Find the Tailwind
Tal Goldhamer imagines a world where people are so inspired by what they learn that they feel compelled to pass it on to others. He is an AI expert, educator, and transformation advisor who helps leaders and teams grow, drawing upon 30 years of experience at EY as a former senior partner and a decade as chief learning officer.
Today, as CEO of Find the Tailwind, Goldhamer hosts AI transformation workshops across the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. His programs provide leaders with practical confidence in AI to identify high value use cases that create momentum for real change.
Goldhamer also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Denver, teaching graduate courses on artificial intelligence. He shares his deep thought leadership at conferences and symposiums, as well as through media outlets such as Harvard Business Review. Goldhamer also is known for his practical, plain-language style that keeps AI accessible.
Vincent Ponzo
Former Responsible AI Business Development Lead, Amazon AI, Author, “Say Hi to AI!”
Vincent Ponzo has been a member of New York’s startup and technology ecosystem since earning an MBA from Columbia Business School in 2003. He held executive roles at several NYC venture-backed startups and later served as the managing director of the Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School, where he also taught as an adjunct professor.
He spent eight years at Amazon, first on the AWS Startups team, launching and leading the company’s university startup engagement strategy, and later on Amazon’s AI team as head of responsible AI business development.
Ponzo currently advises multiple startups, is an AI Fellow at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, and recently published a children’s book on artificial intelligence titled “Say Hi to AI!”
Dana Rao
Former Executive Vice-President, General Counsel, Adobe
Dana Rao was executive vice-president, general counsel at Adobe, where he managed Adobe’s legal, public policy, and cybersecurity organizations and served as corporate secretary to Adobe's Board of Directors. His focus areas ranged from creating Adobe’s AI Ethics engineering program, its Content Authenticity Initiative to fight deepfakes, and advocating for creator IP Rights in the age of AI. He retired as general counsel in October 2024.
Previous to Adobe, Rao spent 12 years as an intellectual property attorney at Microsoft. He began his legal career at the law firm of Fenwick & West in Palo Alto. Rao earned an undergraduate degree from Villanova University in electrical engineering and a law degree from The George Washington University School of Law.
Rao currently is working on and working with a variety of early-stage, AI-focused start-ups.
Jeff Sousa
Head of Technology Management & Resiliency at Wells Fargo
Jeff Sousa is the Head of Technology Management & Resiliency at Wells Fargo and is a member of the firm’s Technology Leadership Team.
In this role, Jeff leads the strategy and execution function for Global Technology, an organization of nearly 40,000 professionals responsible for designing, delivering, and governing technology solutions across the company. He oversees major division-wide transformation programs, the enterprise architecture function, and Technology’s vendor management strategy. Jeff also directs a global business management organization focused on workforce planning, location strategy, change delivery, and metrics analytics.
Jeff additionally oversees Technology’s resiliency, risk, and regulatory execution function. He is accountable for driving the creation of standardized governance frameworks, strengthening risk practices, and driving operational excellence to ensure the company’s Technology landscape meets evolving regulatory expectations.
Before joining Wells Fargo, Jeff served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Global Operations & Technology at the Bank of New York (BNY) and previously served as both divisions’ CFO. He also held senior leadership roles at Goldman Sachs, where he drove strategic initiatives across finance, operations, and sales & trading technology.
Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Fordham University and a master’s degree in international management from Stevens Institute of Technology.
He lives in the New York metropolitan area with his family.
Tendü Yogurtcu, PhD
CTO & Board Advisor
Tendü Yoğurtçu, Ph.D. is a technology executive, board advisor, and AI strategist with more than 25 years of leadership experience across enterprise software, data, cloud, and artificial intelligence.
As CTO at Precisely, she led technology strategy and product innovation across a global data and AI portfolio, advancing trusted and agentic AI capabilities at scale. Prior to Precisely, she served as General Manager of Big Data at Syncsort, helping drive the company’s expansion into modern data and cloud platforms.
Dr. Yoğurtçu advises companies, startups, and venture ecosystems on AI strategy, governance, and innovation. Her work focuses on helping organizations deploy AI responsibly while aligning technology with business growth and long-term enterprise value.
She has taught Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology and serves on advisory boards for Drexel University School of Applied AI and Stevens Institute of Technology School of Engineering. She is also active in AI leadership including Firstboard.io’s AI Council, Forbes Technology Council, and TÜSİAD New York Network.
Recognized for technology leadership by organizations including WomenTech Network and Women in IT Awards, Dr. Yoğurtçu completed Harvard Business School’s Preparing to Be a Corporate Director program. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology and M.S. and B.S. degrees from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.
Peter Zangari
Partner & Head of Americas, MDOTM Ltd
Peter Zangari is an accomplished executive with over 25 years of experience, with leadership positions in business management, research, investment management, and financial technology and services. His diverse professional background includes pioneering research in equity factor risk modeling and market risk measurement, business turnaround experience, and innovation in research management design. Among his accomplishments, he is most proud of his ability to recruit, motivate and retain investment and technical teams of varying sizes.
Currently, Zangari is a private investor and in January 2024, became a partner and head of Americas for MDOTM, an early stage fintech company that focuses on the global investment industry. He also is an adjunct professor at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business where he currently teaches a course on AI and the Financial Markets.
Previously, Zangari was the global head of research and product development at MSCI until January 2023. He was a member of the firm’s executive committee. Prior to joining MSCI, Zangari held increasingly senior positions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management and J.P. Morgan.