Governing your AI environment

Kari Kelly

Founder & Managing Director

Kari founded Ethos Advisory to help leadership teams govern AI in ways that build trust and support growth. She works with boards, executives and founders to treat AI governance as a business strategy developing the trust layer that helps companies close enterprise deals, attract investment and scale with confidence.

Kari leads the Ethos team across all of its services, helping leadership teams set practical guardrails, preparing product and sales for procurement diligence, and building the oversight and reporting directors need.

Her pragmatic approach draws on deep experience as a legal executive where technology, data and business meet, including roles as General Counsel and strategic advisor to high-growth technology companies. Her work includes privacy in regulated sectors such as AdTech, HealthTech and FinTech. She began her career in technology transactions and buy-side M&A in Germany and Silicon Valley.

Kari is also a Regional Co-Lead of Women Defining AI, a community advancing women's leadership in AI.

Chiara Wirz

Senior AI Governance & Privacy Program Advisor

Chiara Wirz is an AI governance, data privacy, and corporate governance specialist with nearly a decade of international experience spanning the United States, Europe, and Switzerland. Grounded in both legal and business administration disciplines, Chiara holds an LL.M., an MBA, and CIPP/US, CIPP/E, and AIGP certifications. She excels at translating complex global regulations into actionable operating structures. Her background spans in-house roles at global technology companies and strategic advisory for fast-growing technology platforms and established enterprises.

At Ethos, Chiara focuses on AI Governance Foundation and Agentic AI Governance engagements. Leveraging her deep expertise in international data privacy compliance and certified proficiency in AI governance, she designs lifecycle accountability frameworks mapped directly to ISO and NIST AI RMF standards. Chiara helps organizations define agent authority, establish human oversight and escalation mechanisms, implement consumer disclosure protocols, and develop performance monitoring and leadership and board reporting processes, enabling clients to adopt advanced AI technologies with greater confidence and accountability.

Kevin Kelly

Senior AI Governance & Emerging Tech Advisor

Kevin Kelly brings extensive experience guiding companies at the frontier of technology, including AI, digital assets, and aerospace, through high-stakes regulatory and commercial environments. Holding a J.D., magna cum laude, from Delaware Law School, he excels at establishing commercial frameworks and risk mitigation protocols, and forward-looking strategies that enable ambitious organizations to scale rapidly in fast-evolving regulatory landscapes. His career includes serving as in-house counsel at a multi-billion-dollar digital assets platform during a period of exponential growth, where he directed commercial contracting, IP licensing, and regulatory strategy under active federal agency scrutiny. Additionally, Kevin has engaged directly with U.S. and EU lawmakers on emerging technology legislation, bringing a policymaker's perspective to regulatory trends.

At Ethos, Kevin focuses on Agentic AI Governance and AI Vendor & Supply Chain Risk. He draws on his technology policy background to help enterprise clients design data governance and fiduciary accountability models, including spend controls and human-in-the-loop safeguards. A frequent author and speaker on technology policy and AI governance, Kevin helps clients prepare AI strategies for board oversight, regulatory attention and counterparty trust.

Heather Johnston

Senior AI Governance Advisor

Heather Johnston brings over two decades of global executive experience managing complex commercial, regulatory, and technological risk. Holding a J.D., magna cum laude, from Pepperdine School of Law, Heather served as General Counsel for an international business line within a global leader in digital security and cybersecurity, leading cross-border teams across North America and global operations. Her tenure involved navigating high-stakes environments at the intersection of technology and enterprise risk by negotiating multi-million-dollar SaaS and software licensing transactions, advising product teams on global go-to-market strategies, and executing comprehensive risk management initiatives. She began her career in litigation and corporate transactions.

At Ethos, Heather translates her deep background in commercial tech and corporate oversight into high-impact AI risk frameworks. She specializes in Board & Executive AI Oversight and AI Vendor & Supply Chain Risk, helping executive leadership teams design durable committee mandates, quarterly risk reporting, and rigorous vendor-diligence protocols. Known for delivering practical, business-aligned solutions, Heather helps keep enterprise AI deployment both commercially viable and aligned with board-level risk tolerance.

Emile Kfouri

Technical Advisor, Agentic AI

Emile Kfouri is a technology leader with decades of experience building and scaling enterprise SaaS and PaaS solutions, with a deep focus on agent-led development and the deployment, design, and oversight of agentic systems in production environments. At Ethos, Emile provides the technical architecture required to make AI governance frameworks credible and operationally sound. He advises enterprise clients on permissioning structures, spend and action limits, human-in-the-loop design, and infrastructure controls to ensure autonomous systems operate safely, predictably, and at scale.