James Kavanagh in

James Kavanagh

Go-getter · DISC type d
Founder and CEO at AI Career Pro
📍 Greater Newcastle Area, Australia

James is the Founder and CEO of AI Career Pro and Hooman AI, focusing on AI safety, engineering, and governance. With over 20 years in senior leadership at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, he has deep expertise in regulatory assurance and building secure cloud platforms for government sectors.

He draws a powerful analogy between AI safety and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, arguing that system failures are often rooted in fundamental design flaws rather than mere regulatory non-compliance.

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Experience
12 Years
Current Role
Founder and CEO
Job Level
Leadership
Location
Greater Newcastle Area, Australia
Personality Overview

How James shows up

Decisive
Challenger
Fast-Paced

They don’t always try to control the conversation but neither do they like yielding it fully. They focus on objectivity in a pitch and pay little attention to bells and whistles. They respond well to confident salespeople.

Priorities

Topics James cares about

AI Governance
His career focus is on building a new, adaptive approach to AI governance that creates confidence in AI systems for developers and users alike.
AI Safety Engineering
Advocates for merging the disciplines of AI Safety and AI Governance, believing that technical engineering and science are foundational to effective oversight.
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Career

Work history

3-2025
Founder and CEO
AI Career Pro
8-2023 - 3-2025
Senior Manager, Responsible AI Assurance
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
8-2022 - 8-2023
Senior Manager, Regulatory Intelligence Automation
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
8-2020 - 8-2022
Senior Manager, International Regulatory and Security Assurance
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
4-2019 - 3-2020
Head of Microsoft Azure Government Engineering, United Kingdom and Australia
Microsoft
In the press

Media appearances

Doing AI Governance | James Kavanagh | Substack - AI Career Pro. Featured in AI Career Pro Blog (Substack)
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The Growing Risk of Third-Party AI - by James Kavanagh. Featured in AI Career Pro Blog
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Education
8-2023 - 8-2024
GAICD
Australian Institute of Company Directors
2020 - 2020
Certificate in Executive Leadership
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Social presence
in
Behavioral profile

DISC profile (public)

d

Dominance (D)

Dominance (D) reflects how goal and task oriented a person is, and their ability to accomplish results irrespective of how demanding the circumstances might be. Those scoring high tend to be motivated by winning, competition, and success.

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