Head of AI Transformation Portfolio

Practice Group / Department:

Norton Rose Fulbright is a global law firm with more than 3,000 lawyers advising clients across locations in the United States, Europe, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Middle East. We provide a full scope of legal services to the world’s preeminent corporations and financial institutions.

Our vision is to be a world class business, profitable, ambitious, cooperative and considerate, supporting our clients and people through our global business principles of Quality, Unity and Integrity.

With over 7,000 employees worldwide, our culture is the thread that connects us. Our strategy and culture are closed connected – defined by shared ambition, global collaboration and a one-team mindset. We believe pioneering work happens when people are empowered to think beyond boundaries, explore new opportunities and grow through diverse experiences. Alongside the right skills and experience, we are looking for people who are innovative, commercially minded, and motivated by the impact of the work they do – ready to share in our ambition and help shape what comes next.

Because while individuals can do well, together we achieve something extraordinary.

The Role

The Head of AI Transformation Portfolio leads the Central AI Team and is accountable for the firm's AI transformation portfolio: its objectives, prioritisation, strategic alignment, value delivery, readiness, governance, decision rhythm and overall coherence. It is a senior leadership role with reach across the firm, working directly with Executive Sponsors, the Digital Transformation Steering Board and senior leaders across practice, business services, technology, data, risk and security.

The role helps the firm translate AI ambition into practical, scalable and measurable outcomes, ensuring strategic intent is supported by the governance, capabilities, investment and organisational readiness required to deliver it.

The role does not replace programme ownership. Programme leads remain accountable for delivery within their domains. The Head of AI Transformation Portfolio is accountable for the integrated portfolio: defining portfolio objectives, sequencing, dependencies, governance, standards, decision support, value realisation and the resolution of issues that span more than one programme.

• Develop and maintain the firm's AI transformation portfolio strategy, drawing together business, legal delivery, technology, data and functional priorities into a coherent agenda with clear outcomes, milestones, decision points and measures of success.
• Lead portfolio governance and decision support, maintaining the integrated roadmap, preparing recommendations for the Digital Transformation Steering Board, and ensuring the firm has clear visibility of portfolio performance, dependencies, risks, readiness requirements and investment choices.
• Design and run governance that drives decisions rather than reporting: Board agendas should be built around choices, options, trade-offs and recommendations, with decisions tracked through to implementation.
• Own the Central AI Team's plan, setting priorities and sequencing activity so that the transformation progresses as a single integrated portfolio rather than a collection of independent initiatives.
• Turn ambiguity into decisions: frame complex issues, define options, expose trade-offs, build consensus around a recommended course of action, secure the decision and drive agreed outcomes through to implementation.
• Lead firm-wide decisions relating to AI governance, supplier strategy, regulatory compliance, client commitments, policy accountability, workforce implications, AI scale-readiness and operating model evolution.
• Maintain an external intelligence view across clients, competitors, vendors and adjacent industries, translating relevant developments into implications for portfolio choices, R&D priorities and areas of potential competitive advantage.
• Own the AI scale-readiness agenda, working closely with the CIO, CISO, data leadership and programme leads to identify the capabilities, controls, infrastructure, governance frameworks and investment required to support AI and agentic AI at scale. Establish pragmatic guardrails that enable appropriate use cases to progress whilst longer-term foundations are developed.
• Partner with client-facing, legal and business services leaders to identify, prioritise and deliver the AI use cases with the greatest potential in each of their areas, bringing capability, method and delivery support whilst each function retains ownership of change within its own operations.
• Partner with business and functional leaders to build the organisational capability required for AI adoption, including workforce planning, skills development, role evolution, operating model changes and the firm's AI champions network.
• Set and maintain the frameworks through which the transformation operates, including pilot evaluation, scaling, agentic AI governance, business case assessment, vendor onboarding, benefits measurement, responsible use and AI risk management.
• Lead value measurement and executive reporting, providing the Steering Board and Management Committee with a clear view of progress, adoption, benefits realisation and where further decisions are required.
• Lead and develop the Central AI Team, including AI Programme Managers, Change Managers and transformation specialists, and champion the transformation across the firm.

Key Responsibilities

We are open on background, and as interested in candidates from technology, financial services, consultancy and other complex professional environments as from the legal sector. The successful candidate will combine strategic judgement, AI fluency, transformation leadership and the ability to move senior groups from discussion to decision.

Experience

• Leading cross-functional programmes or transformation in a large, complex organisation, where success depended on influence, credibility and evidence.
• Shaping transformation strategy or portfolio strategy and managing it through to execution, with clear targets, milestones and value measures.
• Advising senior leaders on consequential decisions and bringing them clear, well-founded recommendations.
• Strong enough AI fluency to engage credibly with business, technology, data, risk and security leaders, and to understand the implications of emerging capability.
• Experience operating across strategy and execution: equally able to shape a board-level recommendation and resolve the practical dependency blocking delivery.
• Building measurement into a programme and using the evidence to shape decisions, investment cases and prioritisation.
• Using external market, competitor, client or vendor insight to inform strategic choices.
• Leading and developing high-performing teams.
• A track record of decisions implemented and change that lasted.

Attributes

• Credible and confident with the most senior audiences, and constructive in raising difficult questions early.
• Systems thinker: able to see how technology, data, security, operations, workforce, client expectations, regulation and commercial objectives interact, and to identify portfolio-level implications before they emerge as local delivery problems.
• Agenda-shaper: able to originate the right questions, define the choices that matter and move the firm beyond information sharing into debate, decision and action.
• Forms a considered view, advocates for it persuasively, and remains genuinely open to a better argument.
• Builds trust and consensus across functions and seniority levels, and moves groups from discussion to decision.
• Strong judgement on priorities, with the discipline to concentrate effort where it counts.
• Brings structure and momentum to ambiguity.
• Pragmatic, proportionate and delivery-minded: able to create guardrails that enable progress rather than slow it unnecessarily.
• An exceptional communicator, able to make complex ideas land with impact.

#LI-JC1 #LI-Hybrid

To attract the best people, we strive to create a diverse and inclusive environment where everyone can bring their whole selves to work, have a sense of belonging, and realize their full career potential. 
Our new enabled work model allows our people to have more flexibility in the way they choose to work from both the office and a remote location, while continuing to deliver the highest standards of service. We offer a range of family friendly and inclusive employment policies and provide access to programmes and services aimed at nurturing our people’s health and overall wellbeing. Find more about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion here.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams. We strive to create an inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all candidates. If you require any tailored adjustments or accommodations, please let us know here.