The training that makes you a more powerful thinker in the AI era.
AI did not arrive to replace your thinking. It arrived to give you a Thinking Assistant — extraordinarily capable, but always working at your direction and under your judgment. AI Leaders Academy is a twelve-week training program for the business leaders and professionals who intend to direct this transition, not be reshaped by it.
The world has changed.
The way information is generated, the way decisions are made, the way organizations operate, the way leaders think — all of it now moves through AI systems that did not exist three years ago. We are in the Intelligence Era.
This is the most consequential shift business has seen in a generation. It is also one of the most dangerous to navigate alone. Leaders who move too slowly lose ground to those who move with discipline. Leaders who move too quickly — without structure, without ethics, without judgment — put their organizations, their teams, and their own reputations at real risk.
This program was built for the leaders who want neither. Not cautious stagnation. Not reckless acceleration. The leading edge.
AI is not your partner. It is your Thinking Assistant.
A distinction that matters. Partners are equals. Thinking Assistants are not. AI does not share your judgment, your accountability, your ethical responsibility, or your standing as a leader. It works for you, at extraordinary speed and scale, on the analysis you direct. The leadership is yours. The decisions are yours. The voice is yours.
What changes is what your thinking can do. The analysis you can hold in mind. The drafts you can iterate before lunch. The research you can pull in real time. The communication that lands the first time. The time freed for the strategic work only you can do.
Think with the capacity of a team.
Hold more variables in mind. Run more scenarios. Test more hypotheses before deciding. Your judgment stays singular — what expands is the analysis you can do before exercising it.
Move at the speed of the era.
Decisions that used to take a week take an afternoon. Drafts that used to take days take an hour. The work doesn't accelerate by working harder — it accelerates because you're directing AI to do the work that doesn't require your judgment, so you can focus where your judgment matters most.
Get your hours back.
Leaders who use AI well don't end up with more meetings and more outputs. They end up with more time — for strategy, for their people, for the deep thinking only they can do, and for the life outside work that makes the work sustainable.
Built where the work actually happens.
Most AI training is taught by technologists or vendors. This one isn't.
A real working firm, teaching what we've actually done.
AI Leaders Academy is led by the senior practitioners at Volume PR — a working strategic communications firm with twenty-five years of client work, real revenue consequences, and real ethical stakes. Every framework has been tested in live business operations. Nothing here is theoretical.
Grounded in the PRSA Code of Ethics.
AI is new. The standards of professional practice are not. This program is structured around the six provisions of the PRSA Code of Ethics — honesty, advocacy, expertise, independence, loyalty, fairness — adapted into operational protocols any business leader can apply. Ethics is not a sidebar. It is the operating frame.
Tool-agnostic, by design.
We do not sell software. We do not resell platforms. We take no affiliate commissions from any AI vendor. Our recommendations reflect what has actually worked in real operations — not what pays us to recommend it. When we tell you to use a specific tool, you can trust why.
Grounded in the science of communication.
Led by Elizabeth Edwards — author of the PR 3.0 framework and the Affective Intelligence framework. Participants leave understanding not just how to use AI, but how the human mind actually receives information and makes decisions — and how to lead within that reality.
Twelve topic areas. Three movements.
Asynchronous core curriculum your team works through at their own pace across twelve weeks, with live touchpoints at key moments. Each topic delivers something you apply to your real work immediately — and a working framework or document you keep and use long after the program ends.
Grounding: Understanding what has changed.
Before tools, before workflows, before applications — the foundation. What has shifted in business, what the new ethical landscape requires, and how to direct AI as a Thinking Assistant rather than be managed by it.
The Intelligence Era: What's Changed for Leaders
A working definition of the era we are now operating in. Why AI-mediated discovery has restructured business decisions, audiences, and reputation at a foundational level — and why leaders sit at the center of this transition rather than its edges.
Ethics as the Operating Frame
How the six provisions of the PRSA Code of Ethics — honesty, advocacy, expertise, independence, loyalty, fairness — apply directly to AI-mediated work. Where your organization's ethical exposure sits. The protocols that separate leading practitioners from reckless ones.
Bias, Slop, and the Quality Problem
What AI gets wrong, where bias enters the system, and the reasoning structures that keep your work high-fidelity. Why unexamined AI outputs put leader and organizational trust at risk — and how to build review practices that catch what matters.
Your AI Stack & Confidentiality Standards
The four major large language models — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — and what each does well. Why pro-tier versions matter for serious work. The privacy settings and organizational structures that protect sensitive information.
The new operating model.
How the work actually changes. Daily-practice transformation across leadership communication, organizational knowledge, decision-making, and content — orchestrated, quality-controlled, and built to compound.
Multi-Model Orchestration
Why no single AI should be doing all your work. How to direct ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity as a coordinated assistant team — each doing what it's best at. Research, drafting, fact-checking, polish — orchestrated by you.
Voice, Prompting & the Language of AI
How to direct your Thinking Assistant precisely. The vocabulary, framing, and context-setting that turn a general-purpose AI into an expert specialist on your work. The language of power prompting that dramatically improves reasoning quality.
Transcript Intelligence & the Knowledge Asset
Every meeting your organization holds is a trainable asset most leaders discard. How to capture, organize, and reactivate the institutional knowledge that lives inside your conversations — turning meetings into a compounding asset rather than a sunk cost.
Stakeholder Communication at AI Speed
How AI changes board communications, executive messaging, employee comms, and external influence. The cadence of proactive insight that makes leaders indispensable. When to accelerate with AI — and when speed becomes a liability.
Content, Voice & Brand at Scale
How to produce the full range of strategic content your organization needs — executive thought leadership, internal communications, board materials, public messaging — from the same source material, in voice, at high quality. The governance techniques that keep AI-produced work recognizably human and recognizably yours.
Leading: claiming new territory.
From AI-forward operations to AI-forward leadership position. Crisis-ready governance, AI visibility for your organization, and the personal practice that compounds across your career and your life.
Crisis, Governance & the Anti-Slop Standard
What a crisis looks like when AI is involved. The governance documentation that protects your organization when things go wrong. The review system that catches problems before they reach the public — grounded in the PRSA Code of Ethics.
AI Visibility: How You Show Up in AI Search
Why your organization's AI visibility is now the most consequential discovery channel you have. What content structure drives AI citation, what schema matters, how to audit your current visibility, and how to build an ongoing practice to maintain it.
Becoming the AI-Forward Leader
The role-level posture that compounds across your career. Positioning yourself in your organization as the strategic AI-forward voice. The outcomes that justify expanded scope. And — equally important — the personal practices that make AI a Thinking Assistant in your life as well as your work.
Every leader operates with the effective capacity of three to five people.
When this body of work is implemented inside a team, individual practitioners typically operate with between 100% and 500% greater effective capacity — not because they're working longer hours, but because their Thinking Assistant is doing the work that doesn't require their judgment, leaving them free for the work that does.
For a leader, that's the equivalent of expanding your effective team by several people — without the payroll, recruiting, onboarding, or management overhead. The question isn't whether this is worth the investment. It's whether your organization can afford to be a year — or three — behind the leaders who move now.
This is not a webinar. It is a college-level course.
Twelve weeks of structured curriculum at university intensity, designed to restructure how you and your team operate in the AI era. You are not enrolling in training. You are restructuring how thinking, communication, and decision-making get done in your organization. Priced accordingly.
Members in good standing of the associations we partner with receive 15% off any seat tier, stackable with bundle pricing. Confirmation of membership required at enrollment.
A limited number of scholarship seats are available each cohort for early-career professionals, students, and leaders working without organizational support. Mention “scholarship” in your contact form message.
Invoice, ACH, and credit cards accepted. A 3% processing fee applies to credit card payments — many participants prefer this to capture AMEX or business card rewards on the program investment.
Elizabeth Edwards.
Founder & President, Volume PR · Lead AI Speaker, PRSA · President, PR Consultants Group
Elizabeth has been working in AI communication since the 1990s — a communications lead on Microsoft's Clippy and early AI work at Ogilvy's technology infrastructure practice. She founded Volume PR in 2001 specifically to study the intersection of psychology, communication, and technology.
She is the founder of Volume PR, The Affect Institute, and the Engagement Science Lab. She serves as Lead AI Speaker for the Public Relations Society of America and President of the PR Consultants Group — a nationwide network of 50+ independent senior firm owners.
She is the author of the PR 3.0 framework and the Affective Intelligence framework, published through her Substack Affective Influence and delivered in keynotes across the 2026 PRSA speaking circuit. Every framework taught in AI Leaders Academy has been applied in live client work and measured against real operational outcomes.
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