A six-week, assessment-based credential for the people responsible for putting AI systems into operation responsibly. The credential is awarded only on a passed examination, completed labs, and a defended capstone — not on attendance.
Led by William J. Storey III · 17-year U.S. Army information systems security officer · builder of the GIA runtime-governance platform.
Plenty of AI certificates certify that you showed up. This one certifies that you can do the work: constrain an AI system's authority, design the human gates, and produce evidence you can defend a year later.
A real cut score
A criterion-referenced knowledge examination with a published passing standard set by a modified-Angoff method — not a curve, and not a participation certificate.
Graded, not watched
Five guided labs, each graded against published criteria. Every lab produces a section of your capstone: a real plan for a real system, not a quiz.
Presented and defended
You assemble a Governed Runtime Operating Plan, present it, and defend it to an evaluator against a published rubric. You leave with something usable at work the next day.
Vendor-neutral and traceable to public frameworks: the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act. The discipline of making governance run where decisions actually execute.
D1 · Foundations of runtime governance
Design-time vs. runtime; why an unenforced control is assurance in name only.
D2 · Policy-to-runtime translation
Written obligations into machine-checkable controls; gates vs. guardrails.
D3 · Human-AI co-agency
In / on / over / out of the loop; escalation that reaches the right person in time; avoiding review theater.
D4 · Auditability, provenance & evidence
Decision records that reconstruct; tamper-evidence and append-only integrity.
D5 · Risk classification & escalation design
Proportionate oversight tiers; balancing risk against alert fatigue.
D6 · Monitoring & continuous oversight
Drift, incident response, and proving controls still work.
D7 · Standards & regulatory alignment
Mapping controls to NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and EU AI Act obligations.
You choose a subject system in Week 1 — real, sanitized, or well-specified — and every lab adds a section to your final plan.
Find your system's decision points, controls, evidence, and oversight — and which controls exist only on paper.
Turn three written obligations into executable controls: trigger, behavior, authority, evidence, failure mode, residual risk. The keystone lab.
Tier every action by impact and reversibility, place humans in / on / over / out of the loop, and design the escalation path.
Specify the record every consequential decision leaves, and the integrity properties that make it trustworthy a year later.
Define drift signals and the incident-response arc; map your controls to NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act.
Assemble the plan, state its Known Limits honestly, present it, and defend it to an evaluator. Plus the knowledge examination.
Six weeks of live instruction, the guided labs, the examination, the capstone review and defense, and your first credential — a verifiable ID in the public registry, valid two years.
Seats are scoped on a short call. Retakes beyond the first: $95.
Taught by the operator who built the control plane.
William J. Storey III spent 17 years as a U.S. Army information systems security officer, where "prove it to the auditor" was the daily standard, and built GIA, a runtime-governance platform that enforces authority, gates, and forensic evidence on live AI systems. Not a slideware consultant.
This is an independently administered private professional credential issued by GIA Academy, a division of Advanced Consulting Experts, awarded on documented requirements. It is not an academic degree, an occupational license, a third-party-accredited certification, or an ISO certification, and it is not government-recognized. Holders agree in writing never to represent it as any of those, or as an authorization to certify others. The designation is earned by completing the program; the full Credential-Use Policy is published in the Candidate Handbook and bound by the Code of Ethics. As a founding cohort, the published standards are being finalized before enrollment closes.
If you are responsible for AI once it is in production, this is the credential that says you can keep it inside authority — and defend it. Founding cohort seats are limited.
Questions? operations@aceadvising.com
