# chadboersema.com — full > Chad Boersema is an AI practitioner — Chief Data Officer at National Louis University, founder of eleved.ai, and co-founder of Osusu (early stage). With more than 30 years making technology and data work inside real organizations — most of that in higher education — he helps organizations of every size navigate AI strategy, readiness, and education. He writes the LinkedIn newsletter "Before the Committee Meets." ## Bio (long) Chad Boersema has spent more than three decades making technology actually work inside real organizations — most of that inside higher education, one of the most demanding organizational environments there is. He began in student affairs and the registrar's office before moving into the technology that institutions depend on — first on the vendor side helping colleges run their student and data systems, then leading student information systems, business intelligence, and information services from within. He currently serves as Chief Data Officer at National Louis University, where he leads organizational data strategy and AI adoption. He is the founder of eleved.ai, where he helps organizations of every size navigate AI strategy, readiness, and education, and builds AI-enhanced tools grounded in how organizations actually work. The practice began in higher education and now extends to small businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations facing the same AI shift — most without a Chief Data Officer to turn to. His mission is to help organizations genuinely thrive through that shift — and, in higher education, to help institutions that cannot survive transition with dignity so their students are never stranded. He is also co-founder of Osusu, an early-stage venture still taking shape. Details have not yet been announced. Chad holds an MS in Information Systems and a BA in International Studies, both from Roosevelt University. He writes the LinkedIn newsletter "Before the Committee Meets." ## Career arc (facts) - 1991: Began as a resident assistant - 1993: Registrar's office - Vendor side: student and data systems (e.g. SunGard / Collegis era) - Director of Student Information Systems - Director of Business Intelligence & Information Services - 2022–present: Chief Data Officer, National Louis University (22+ years at NLU overall) - Founder, eleved.ai; Co-founder, Osusu (early stage) ## Selected work (public-safe framing) - Leading AI adoption across a national university: moving an institution from scattered, ungoverned AI use toward a coherent, governed approach connecting data governance, policy, and practical adoption. - Building the systems higher ed runs on: two decades leading student information systems, business intelligence, and information services, plus vendor-side experience. - Founding eleved.ai — practical AI readiness for organizations: a structured AI-readiness framework, a field-guide series, education, and AI-enhanced tools. Born in higher ed, now serving organizations of every size. Details at https://eleved.ai. - Co-founding Osusu: an early-stage venture still taking shape; details not yet announced. ## What Chad believes about AI Organizations should approach AI practically and honestly — neither hype nor fear. The goal is to help organizations of every size thrive through the AI shift. In higher education specifically, that includes helping institutions that cannot survive transition gracefully so students are not stranded; he is especially focused on under-resourced organizations most at risk of being left behind. ## Writing - "Before the Committee Meets" — LinkedIn newsletter on AI, data, and leadership in higher education: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7440262156727754752 - The Higher Ed AI Field Guide (forthcoming) — published through eleved.ai: https://eleved.ai/field-guide ## Essays (self-hosted, canonical) Long-form essays Chad authors and hosts on chadboersema.com (also cross-posted to his newsletter at times). Listed at /writing; each lives at /essays/. RSS feed: https://chadboersema.com/rss.xml - "The Data Is Secondary" — Opens with test scores stored in an athletics table because a column was going spare — years later, people who never met that decision read the table as saying something about athletes. The essay argues that meaning doesn't live in a number; a number is the residue of some operation, some form, some Tuesday in a specific office, and the origin story is the primitive while the number is its shadow. The field arranges itself as if data sits at the center of the institution (feed the warehouse, serve the dashboard), which is wrong the way geocentrism was wrong: the operations are the center and the data goes around them. Covers the half-blindness of analysts (fluent in the query, ignorant of the work) and operators (know the story, can't see the structure), why locally sensible optimizations quietly break other departments downstream, why so much of data governance is really language governance, and the test Chad uses in real meetings: before you trust a number, can you tell its creation and evolution story? https://chadboersema.com/essays/the-data-is-secondary - "A Relationship, Incorporated" — The first universities owned no buildings; the word universitas meant the people, a guild of teachers and students, not a place. The essay argues that all the scaffolding of modern higher ed — campuses, budgets, committees, metrics, dashboards, even the Chief Data Officer — exists to serve one primitive relationship: a learner and someone who knows something, with the learning happening inside it. Scaffolding tends to forget what it is for and start serving itself; drawing on Campbell's Law and the long slide in instruction's share of university spending, Chad argues the institution must continually recalibrate to the student learning at its center and keep asking whether a given decision serves a student learning or only the apparatus. https://chadboersema.com/essays/a-relationship-incorporated ## Contact & profiles - Email: chad@chadboersema.com - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadboersema - X: https://x.com/chadboersema ## Products and framework Products, the AI-readiness framework, and field guides live at https://eleved.ai. They are not hosted on this personal site; this site references and links to them.