Senior technology advisory for regulated enterprises
Brady Leadership & Governance Group helps executive teams and boards turn AI ambition, modernization programs and regulatory findings into delivered results. The firm is led by Michael Brady, former Chief Technology Officer of Wells Fargo, with CTO, CIO and CISO roles across five of the most regulated enterprises in the United States.
Services
Each engagement puts a former Fortune-scale technology executive alongside your leadership team. We set direction, hold delivery accountable and stay until the work runs without us.
Most enterprises have proven AI in pilots. The constraint is now the delivery engine: how fast infrastructure is provisioned and how safely AI connects to the systems that run the business.
Consent orders, supervisory findings and audit gaps need a remediation program regulators believe in. Michael has led that work at AIG, USAA and Kaiser Permanente, including serving as board liaison.
Independent judgment for directors and CEOs on where technology risk is concentrating, where modernization creates or erodes value, and which AI and cyber decisions need sharper oversight.
Large technology organizations stall on handoffs, unclear ownership and missing cadence. We install the rhythm that makes delivery predictable and support leadership transitions.
Approach
A typical AI delivery acceleration engagement runs twelve weeks. Hours are front-loaded to assess and align, then taper as your teams take ownership.
Interviews with Technology, AI and business leaders. Review of plans, architecture and delivery metrics.
A two-day onsite working session to validate delivery plans, set the weekly schedule and confirm baselines.
Daily standups launched, resources adjusted, and blockers escalated to the executive sponsor.
Momentum built on daily deliverables. Early feedback gathered from business stakeholders.
Delivery completed against plan. Next-quarter and sustainment plans handed over to the team.
Typical targets
Targets are set with each client against a measured baseline.
Track record
Selected results from Michael Brady's executive career. Each one maps to a service the firm provides today.
The attacks took out Merrill's capital markets systems at the World Financial Center, and there was no disaster recovery site for them. Michael's team moved $8B of client funds to London, then built a new trading center in Jersey City from nothing. On September 15 he and fourteen colleagues walked into the damaged headquarters in respirators to recover the backup media. With fiber cut across Lower Manhattan, they linked the sites with a free-space laser across the Hudson River.
Merrill Lynch was ready to trade when U.S. markets reopened on September 17.
Led an 8,000-person global organization through the company's digital infrastructure strategy. Opened four new data centers built for efficiency, moved the organization onto Agile, product and cloud operating models, and gave every employee a path to cloud certification. Partnered with Finance to price technology products so business lines could see their spend and move off legacy platforms.
Reconstituted a 12,000-person, $2.2B IT organization serving military members and their families. Served as board liaison for IT and information security remediation under multiple consent orders and a cease-and-desist order. Moved the company to public cloud, modernized core insurance and standardized core banking. Partnered with State Farm on an industry-first blockchain pilot for subrogation.
One of four executive restructuring leaders after the 2008 crisis. Unified technology across 95 countries, consolidated 17 directories into one identity platform, and met every G-SIFI requirement on the way to AIG's 2017 de-designation as a systemically important institution. Then launched ARIES, a machine-learning virtual engineer that diagnosed and fixed outages, and moved insurance pricing from a 90-day cycle to overnight.
Took over infrastructure after publicly reported failures and low morale. Directed a seven-year, board-accountable $1.8B modernization from data centers to operating rooms, and stepped in as CISO to harden security across every clinical application. The program achieved the organization's first independent auditor cybersecurity approval.
Oversaw the infrastructure for high-volume trading and client platforms, where uptime and execution precision drive market confidence directly.
Recognition
For AIG's cloud and DevOps transformation, and for USAA's cloud and core-system modernization.
Business Innovation, for aligning 100% of Wells Fargo's $3B+ technology spend to a product taxonomy.
Governance impact for Wells Fargo's digital infrastructure program and new data centers.
For bringing in Kaiser Permanente's electronic health record, then the largest civilian EHR in the world.
Network intrusion mitigation: real-time assessment and containment of cyberattacks on distributed networks.
For $53M in savings from re-architecting Merrill Lynch's global network services.
Co-Chair and Executive Committee member. Invited United Nations speaker on artificial intelligence.
Board stewardship, internal controls, financial reporting and executive compensation.
Teams he led earned an Uptime Institute Brill Award, six Continuous Availability Awards and contributed to the HIMSS Davies Award.
Managing Principal
Michael founded Brady Leadership & Governance Group to give executive teams and boards the kind of senior technology leadership he spent three decades providing from the inside. He has held CTO, CIO and CISO roles at Wells Fargo, Fidelity Investments, USAA, AIG and Kaiser Permanente, leading technology environments where uptime, security and regulatory discipline are business imperatives.
His work spans financial services, insurance and healthcare: cloud and infrastructure modernization, cyber resilience, regulatory remediation, and AI and machine-learning deployment in highly regulated settings. He is a candidate for public company boards, able to serve on Technology, Risk, Cybersecurity, Audit, Compliance and AI committees.
Contact
Whether you are moving AI into production, answering a regulator or preparing a board, a first conversation is the fastest way to see whether we can help.