Yale Club of DC In-Person AND Virtual Event

AI Panel Series: Operationalizing AI - 
Product Development & Process Innovation in Practice

Thursday, February 12, 2026

6:00pm-8:00pm

Refraction Innovation Hub
North #8 Floor
McLean, VA 22102

Following the strong response to our inaugural AI Panel, the Yale Club of Washington, DC invites alumni to the second installment of our AI Panel Series, focused on how AI is being operationalized inside real organizations to drive product development and process innovation.

This session moves beyond individual productivity tools to examine how teams and companies are embedding AI into core workflows - from product ideation and design to delivery, quality assurance, and operational improvement.

Through practical alumni use cases, brief demos and discussion, panelists will share what worked, what failed, and what actually scaled when moving AI from experimentation to execution.

What You’ll Learn

• How alumni are using AI to accelerate product development and improve operational efficiency
• Where AI fits into real-world product and process workflows - and where it does not
• Lessons from deployments that scaled, as well as experiments that stalled or failed
• Adoption challenges, including trust, governance, and organizational change
• Practical patterns you can apply within your own team or organization

This event is designed for professionals who want to understand how AI is put into practice, not just what the latest tools can do.

About the Speakers

Isaias Tesfalidet, Law '10 - Isaias is Director of Tech Extension / Marylanders Online at the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, where he leads the deployment of AI chatbots and agentic voice systems in public-facing service environments. He brings over 18 years of experience across technology integration, governance, and risk advisory in public and private sectors. Previously, he served as a Staff Attorney at the Office of the President of Eritrea, advising on international law and state responsibility, and holds an LL.M. from Yale Law School and an LL.B. from the University of Asmara.  

Alan Carniol, SOM '10 - Alan is a business strategist who has built AI systems that work and watched others fail spectacularly. In the past year, he has prototyped AI-powered tools for government contractors, e-commerce, and construction companies - training, discovering that successful AI deployment requires solving organizational adoption problems, not just technical ones. His implementations have facilitated multi-million dollar contracts and eliminated dozens of weekly manual hours, while his failed experiments taught him why most enterprises struggle to move AI from pilot to production. As founder of Interview Success Inc, Alan scaled operations to serve 60,000+ clients. He holds an MBA from Yale School of Management and brings hard-won lessons on what actually drives AI adoption in organizations: clear ROI, user trust, workflow integration, building on existing processes, and incremental change - not revolutionary transformation.

Mark Bourgeois, SOM '94 - Mark is CEO of Oratium, a company that helps clients solve the “Death by PowerPoint” problem in sales conversations and in executive communications. Mark has designed, given and revised thousands of presentations with Oratium and across his career, developing methods and techniques that he has taught to colleagues and clients. His written and oral communications background includes working as a legislative aide in the United States Senate, a reporter with The Tampa Bay Times, a management consultant with Booz-Allen, and head of Asia for DebtX. Additionally, he worked in Content Delivery within the Financial Services practice of the Corporate Executive Board, where he created new research and presentations, and trained others in presentation design and delivery. A husband and father of three, Mark has a Master’s in Public and Private Management from Yale University and a Bachelor’s from Tulane University.

Light refreshments will be served

Specific location information will be sent to registrants

All alums are members of the Yale Club of Washington, DC. However, we do ask for your support in one or both of the following ways: 

1)      Please become a supporting member if you are not one already. 

2)      Donate to the Yale Club of Washington, DC (see option on registration page). 

Membership dues and donations are both critical income sources for the Club, which enable Club operations, programs, and financial viability.