She turned a 40-person company into a $110M machine. No hiring spree. No consultants. Just AI and leadership.
The story of a CEO who stopped planning AI transformation and started building one.
Most CEOs talk about AI transformation like it is somewhere on the horizon — a three-year roadmap, a seven-figure consulting engagement, a PowerPoint deck that never leaves the boardroom.
Kathy Slowinski skipped all of that. She walked into her company on a Wednesday in April 2023, launched a hackathon, and never stopped. Within months, her team had compressed 3 million lines of legacy code down to 125,000. Board prep went from a full day to 90 minutes. Product specs that used to take days were shipping in an hour. The bug backlog hit a 34-year low. Revenue per employee quadrupled.
She did not read about AI transformation. She built one — from the inside, in real time, with her own people.
From Server Racks to Second Brains
Kathy’s career did not start in a boardroom. It started with server hardware — racking systems, configuring networks, earning a Microsoft MVP designation before most executives knew what cloud meant. She was an early AWS adopter, building infrastructure at a time when “the cloud” was still a hard sell to CTOs.
That technical foundation carried her through leadership roles at CircleUp, Neighborhoods.com, Numerator, and IgniteTech — companies where she learned how product, data, and revenue intersect at scale.
Then came Trilogy, where she took the helm as CEO across CopperTree, Jigsaw, and Kayako. Three products. Lean teams. Legacy codebases. The conventional playbook said hire more, outsource more, plan more.
She bet.
She bet that a small team, armed with AI and given the freedom to experiment every single week, could outperform a company ten times its size. And she was right.
Transformation Timeline
April 2023
Weds.ai is born
Kathy launches a weekly company-wide hackathon. Every Wednesday, the entire team stops regular work and builds with AI. No permission needed. No approval chains. Just build.
Mid 2023
Second Brains go live
AI-powered support agents handle 80% of customer inquiries. The team shifts from answering tickets to training models and refining workflows.
2023 - 2024
The numbers speak
Revenue per headcount quadruples. 3 million lines of legacy code compress to 125,000. Board prep drops from a full day to 90 minutes. Product specs ship in an hour instead of days. The bug backlog hits a 34-year low.
“To my fellow CEOs: If AI is still something your team is ‘exploring,’ you are already behind.
That is why working with Kathy Slowinski has been such a game changer for us at Zartico. Kathy does not approach AI as a feature or side experiment. She treats it as an operating model.
She has built, scaled, and stabilized complex companies using AI-first principles. She knows where it works, where it breaks, and how to move organizations beyond endless pilots into real operational change.
When she joined our annual all-company meeting, she challenged the entire organization to stop studying AI and start using it. That challenge led directly to FriA.I.Days at Zartico — inspired by her Wed.AI Labs — where we now run demos, experiments, and hackathons to rethink how work actually gets done.
That is exactly why she is The AI Boss.
Her message is simple: the CEO has to lead. If leaders are not actively using AI tools to rethink how work gets done across product, marketing, support, and operations, the company will never move fast enough.
If you are a CEO wondering where to start, the answer is simple. Start using the tools yourself. Your organization will follow.”
Why Not a Consultancy
Here is what the big firms will not tell you: they have never done this themselves. They have frameworks, maturity models, and hundred-slide decks. What they do not have is scar tissue.
Kathy has scar tissue. She knows what it feels like when the first hackathon flops and half the team thinks AI is a threat to their jobs. She knows the resistance that comes from middle management when workflows start shifting. She knows because she lived it — not as an outside advisor with a flight home on Friday, but as the CEO who had to show up on Monday and keep building.
The consultancy model promises initial deliverables in six to twelve months, with full transformation stretching to five-plus years. Kathy’s self-directed approach delivered major operational gains within 12 months and 4x revenue per headcount in under 24.
Philosophy
“Stop learning about AI. Start doing AI.”
“Consultants give you a roadmap. I give you the engine and teach your people to drive.”
“AI does not replace your team. It reveals who on your team was waiting for better tools.”
“Kathy has singlehandedly pushed AI to the forefront of our YPO chapter and made it accessible, practical, and incredibly valuable for our members. Her depth of knowledge and relentless curiosity make her a powerful guide for leaders trying to understand how AI can create real advantage in their businesses. I’ve personally gained tremendous insight from her and consistently walk away from our conversations seeing the future more clearly.”
Credentials
- CEO, Trilogy (CopperTree, Jigsaw, Aurea Portfolios)
- Former CPO and CRO, CircleUp (acquired by Brightflow.ai)
- SVP Product, Design & Customer Success, Neighborhoods.com
- SVP Product, Numerator (acquired by Kantar)
- SVP Product, IgniteTech
- VP Product and Marketing, SPINS (acquired by Warburg Pincus)
- Sr. Director Product Design, Experian
- YPO Member, Park City Chapter
- YPO AI Champion
Ready to stop planning and start building?
Kathy works with CEOs and leadership teams who are done waiting for permission to transform.