Chief AI Officer

Mark Simpson is Chief AI Officer at GW and one of the UK’s most experienced voices in turning AI ambition into operational reality. With more than 25 years designing and delivering complex software systems for large enterprises, Mark works at the intersection of strategy, engineering, and business accountability, ensuring AI doesn’t remain experimental, but becomes embedded and impactful.

Mark is the architect of the Intelligence Blueprint, a disciplined approach that helps CIOs and business leaders apply disruptive technologies in ways that work inside real organisations with legacy systems, governance constraints, security requirements, and political complexity fully accounted for. His focus is not on AI theatre or pilot purgatory, but on building production-grade systems that integrate into existing environments and deliver measurable commercial outcomes.

He is known for his rare ability to demystify complex technology and translate it into practical, defensible decisions that boards and executive teams can support. Mark’s talks centre on restoring confidence in technology delivery showing how small, empowered teams can move at speed, achieve “weeks to value,” and produce tangible business results without compromising engineering rigour or long-term sustainability.

Beyond his role at GW, Mark is a driving force behind Birmingham Tech Leaders, a collaborative community of senior IT leaders tackling enterprise-scale challenges together. He currently leads a series of AI roundtables designed to surface hard-won insights from practitioners implementing AI in live environments, reinforcing his belief that meaningful innovation is grounded in execution, not hype.

At prestigious industry forums, Mark challenges organisations to move beyond generic AI narratives and instead build systems that work in their world, delivering fast, measurable impact while rebuilding trust between business and technology functions.