Who we are
Close the gap between AI responsibility and board confidence.
Vela was established at the intersection of two realities: AI is moving rapidly through organizations, and boards are increasingly responsible for its consequences.
Who we are
Vela was established at the intersection of two realities: AI is moving rapidly through organizations, and boards are increasingly responsible for its consequences.
Vela’s Story
Vela Board Advisors was founded on one observation: boards are being held accountable for AI decisions they didn't make, under standards that didn't exist when they joined the board.
In 2025, Paula Fontana, Tamara Gracon, and Joanna Ridgway, working alongside Jenny Kay Pollock and Reut Lazo, surveyed the AI governance landscape. Technical models existed for engineers. Regulatory models existed for compliance officers. Executive models existed for management teams. Nothing existed for the people legally accountable for AI oversight: boards of directors. So the team built one: the AI Board Governance Compass.
It debuted at the Private Directors Association national conference in 2025. The reception was strong enough to take it on the road. The team has since presented to directors and senior executives at Baker McKenzie and Snowflake headquarters in San Francisco, at BDO in Atlanta, and most recently at Haynes Boone in Dallas.
In early 2026, the team rebranded as Vela Board Advisors, formalizing the work into a single company built to bring the Compass, and the engagements it generates, to the boardrooms that need it next.
Vela is the constellation of the Sails. It was once part of Argo Navis, the great ship of the ancient navigators who had no shore in sight. It fits the work: finding patterns, then learning to navigate by them. Never really there. Always striving.
Why Vela
Vela is the constellation of the Sails. It was once part of Argo Navis, the great ship of ancient navigators who had no shore in sight. The stars that mattered were always there. The skill was learning to read them before the journey demanded it.
Vela was co-founded by three operating executives with backgrounds working with venture-stage and growth-stage companies. Each brings a distinct functional lens to AI governance: risk and standards, finance and operations, and growth and customer. Together they cover the executive perspectives boards need to assess AI risk with depth.
Paula is a board director and Chief Marketing Officer, and the founder of Eudai AI, an applied AI advisory firm. She serves as CMO and Board Director at iluminr, where she led the company to recognition as a Gartner Cool Vendor in Third-Party Risk Management and inclusion in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Legal, Risk, Compliance and Audit Technologies. She is also CMO at United Effects Ventures, a B2B technology studio and venture fund supporting origination-stage founders. Through the Private Directors Association AI Task Force and Research and Standards Council, she contributes to the emerging standards that define what board-level AI oversight looks like. She has been recognized as an Elite 18 CMO for customer-led B2B leadership.
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Tamara is the founder and CEO of TBG Consulting, a Silicon Valley advisory firm working with established and growth-stage companies on transformation strategy, change management, and operations. She spent nineteen years at KPMG as a Managing Director in tax, leading complex M&A, international tax, transfer pricing, and valuation work for high technology and life sciences clients. She is an elected board member of the Private Directors Association, a Founding LP at How Women Invest, and previously chaired Membership and Engagement for the PDA San Francisco chapter. She holds an MBA in Finance from Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and a BA in Economics and Political Science from the University of Colorado.
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Joanna is Chief Revenue Officer at Cien.ai, an AI-native go-to-market analytics platform serving B2B enterprises, management consulting firms, and private equity. Her career spans more than two decades in financial services, including roles as Managing Director and Head of the Southwest Region at Santander Bank, and senior commercial banking and corporate finance roles at JPMorgan, Fifth Third, and Bank of America. She sits on the boards of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, the Jubilee Center, the Texas Lyceum, and the Texas Women’s Foundation Executive Leadership Council, and is a member of the Private Directors Association AI Task Force. She holds a BBA from Rhodes College.
LinkedInThe framework
The Compass was developed because no existing governance tool was built for directors. Audit frameworks, regulatory guidance, and executive-level AI policies all assumed a different audience, people with technical access, management authority, or enforcement power.
Directors have none of those things. What they have is fiduciary responsibility and the right to ask questions. The Compass was built to make those questions better.
It maps readiness across 16 indicators, covering AI literacy, oversight structure, organizational alignment, and stakeholder accountability, and surfaces where a board's governance posture is strong and where it carries unexposed risk.
Our constellation
Vela isn't a single firm with a single answer. We're a network, operators, board directors, law firms, insurers, universities, conference bodies, and technology partners, who share one conviction: boards can govern AI well when the right people are in the room. Every engagement is built with partners, and the constellation keeps growing.
Organizations we work with
The Compass is the entry point for every Vela engagement. Request access or a briefing to discuss what it surfaces for your board.