AI moves at the speed of technology.Adoption moves at the speed of people.

Dr. Wendy Rasmussen works with funders, institutions and business leaders on the human side of AI.

I help leaders close the gap between what AI can do and what people and institutions are ready for.

I work across philanthropy, higher education, workforce development, small business and government, and I move between altitudes. One conversation is about the future of work and how we prepare young adults for career paths that are changing fast. The next is hands-on: which connectors, skills and plugins will actually save a team time. I know enough about AI to see where it fits, and enough to know which expert to bring in.

How I work

Every engagement starts with a specific problem

Advise

Senior counsel for leadership teams working out how AI fits their organization, their people and the communities they serve. Candid, practical, and grounded in what I'm seeing across sectors.

Convene

Bringing together people who are working on the same problem from different sides, and designing the room so that something real comes out of it.

Embed

Longer engagements inside an institution, building the strategy, governance and partnerships that help AI adoption take hold and last.

Where I'm working now

Four vantage points on the same question

AI Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation

Exploring how a mid-size metropolitan region can adopt AI in ways that expand opportunity and reduce inequity, starting in Kansas City.

Head of AI People Lab at The AI Lab

Advising mid-market companies on the people side of AI transformation, from leadership alignment to how teams actually change the way they work.

Claude for SMB Trainer for small business owners

Helping small business owners put AI to practical use in the work they already do.

Founder and Principal of Alpenglow Insights

Advisory, convening and embedded work with leaders deciding what AI should mean for their organizations and the people they serve.

Most people connect people.I connect problems.

I kept hearing about two problems in separate rooms: executives who can't get AI to take hold, and an entry-level rung everyone says is disappearing. Then at the AI Lab I watched AI-native undergraduates coaching executives through exactly that. The knowledge was flowing up the pyramid, not down, and I haven't thought about entry-level work the same way since.

Connections like that happen to me a lot, because of where I sit: on the front line of AI adoption inside businesses, in conversation with the economists and policy researchers trying to understand what AI is doing to work, and inside philanthropy, where the question is how to turn what we're learning into impact. I carry what I learn in each place to the other two. Often the answer one of them is looking for is already working in another.

My mission

I want to help people, and the institutions around them, build resilience through this AI moment so no one gets left behind.

The benefits won't spread evenly on their own. They have to be thought through with care, so they reach the people and places most likely to be missed.

Who I work with

Funders deciding how to use AI themselves and how to support the organizations they fund. Institutions preparing people for work that AI is already changing. Owners and executives who want AI to make their teams stronger. Civic leaders shaping how a community adopts it. The most useful ideas usually come from the sector next door.

Dr. Wendy Rasmussen

Resilience has been the thread through my whole career: helping people through change they didn't choose, and helping the institutions around them do it well.

I trained in counseling psychology, a field built around how people adapt and grow through hard transitions. As a Navy psychologist, I advised military leaders on the readiness and resilience of the service members in their units. From there I moved into behavioral health technology, where I led clinical strategy at a growth-stage company and worked alongside data science teams building AI-powered tools.

Today I work where AI meets people and institutions. I'm based in Colorado, and my work takes me wherever the problem is.

Kauffman Foundation AI Fellow
Head of AI People Lab, The AI Lab
PhD, Counseling Psychology, University of Iowa
MBA, UC Berkeley Haas, with a certificate in AI for Business
Licensed clinical psychologist
U.S. Navy veteran

Bring me a specific problem.

The best conversations I have start with something real you're working on. If that's where you are, I'd like to hear about it.

Schedule a call wendy@alpenglowinsights.com LinkedIn