About

AI governance, risk, and product consultant.

I’m Avita Barnes — a product builder and AI strategist with a BS in Computer Science and 10+ years of product and risk management experience bridging technical complexity, business ROI, and compliance. I help organizations move beyond deep learning’s black box dilemma so AI solutions are transparent, ethical, and audit-ready, combining data science experience with Responsible AI development to deliver technology stakeholders can trust and scale.

Experience

Founder, AI Risk & Product Consultant
2025 – Present

Candid MAC

Implement NIST Risk Management Frameworks to identify AI risks and remediate model drift and algorithmic bias before deployment. Apply Explainable AI to make opaque deep learning decisions traceable and audit-ready, and design Python NLTK + UiPath workflows that automated review sentiment analysis and lifted client foot traffic 15%.

Product Manager
2022 – 2025

WebPros

Led an enterprise identity governance initiative driving an 85% increase in automated provisioning, consolidated customer identities across six brands for $180K annual savings, and used ML clustering of customer feedback to raise CSAT by 15 points.

Product Manager
2021 – 2022

Northwestern Mutual

Standardized enterprise risk management frameworks and security audit protocols, cutting review cycles 35%. Closed stakeholder feedback loops for a 55% improvement in team output and improved developer velocity 15% via CI/CD pipeline audits.

Risk Product Manager
2020 – 2021

IHS Markit / S&P Global

Delivered 300+ risk assessments and remediation playbooks for 12 regional banks and a capital management firm, and streamlined enterprise risk assessment workflows across multi-institutional teams.

Product Owner
2017 – 2020

American Airlines

Drove a 14% ROI increase by championing deprecation of underutilized software assets and delivered 5 major API integrations and cloud migration projects supporting critical operations.

Project Manager
2016 – 2017

Wells Fargo

Managed the migration of 2,500+ databases supporting essential banking services with zero downtime and reduced approval turnaround time by 35%.

Core competencies & skills

AI & Machine Learning

GenAI
Prompt Engineering
NLP
AI Agent / RPA Design
Model Evaluation
AI Governance
Responsible AI
Ethical AI
Explainable AI

Solutions & Automation

AI Workflow Integration
RPA
API Integrations
Zapier
Gemini
OpenAI
Fliki
UiPath
Jira

Product Analysis

SQL
Python
Pandas
NumPy
Mixpanel
Tableau
Looker
Grafana
SHAP
LIME
XGBoost

Enterprise Strategy

Product Vision & Strategy
Product Roadmapping
Backlog Management
Risk Governance
Executive Stakeholder Management
Agile
Enterprise Security
IAM/SSO
SaaS/PaaS Initiatives
Technical Discovery Workshops
GTM
OWASP

Education & certifications

BS, Computer Science

Southern New Hampshire University — 2014

Certified Scrum Master

Scrum Alliance — 2019

Certified Product Manager

AIPMM — 2021

AI Security

INFOSEC — 2026

Explainable AI (xAI)

Duke University — 2026

Volunteerism

Executive Director — God’s Heart Corporation

2024 – Ongoing
  • Leading a tech-first non-profit transformation, building AI agents to maximize resource allocation, donor and social engagement.
  • Pioneering Generative AI to automate grant writing, social media management, and multi-channel content development — increasing output by over 70%.
  • Overseeing strategic growth and board relations while maintaining a lean, high-impact operational structure.