Susan Adams believes AI adoption is fundamentally a question about how decisions get made who holds judgment, who carries accountability, and what we protect as irreducibly human. As founder of Women in AI Colorado and its flagship program, Women in AI Labs, Susan has built one of Colorado’s most innovative AI learning communities. The Labs don’t just teach tools they teach practice. Through cohort-based experimentation, weekly reflection rituals, and community sensemaking, participants develop what Susan calls patterns of practice: the habits of mind that let you work with AI while staying the author of your own thinking. The program has grown from local meetups to national visibility, including a breakthrough at Grace Hopper Celebration 2025 where the Labs reached 1,000+ women and sparked requests to replicate the model across the country. As adjunct instructor at the University of Denver, Susan teaches AI and Professional Practice: Design, Ethics, and Application which is a course designed to help students develop conscious, intentional relationships with AI systems rather than defaulting into dependency. In her day role as Associate Director of Teaching and Learning at Achieving the Dream, she shapes AI strategy and faculty development across 300+ community colleges, guiding institutions past the plagiarism debate toward the deeper question: how do we design learning environments where human judgment still matters? Susan holds certifications from the London School of Economics (Ethics of AI) and Stanford HAI (AI-Enabled Organizations). She believes the stakes of getting AI right in education are not abstract they determine whether the next generation of learners develops real capability or the appearance of it.
