This newsletter provides practical guidance, tools and resources for the real work of governing safe, secure and lawful AI.

Newsletter #64 - September 2026

By James Kavanagh

We missed last week's edition but have some existing news, so this one's a little different. No feature article. Instead, two things we've been building that are now live.

The AI Governor

A podcast sharing stories and insights from people doing the real work of AI governance.

If you've read the blog for any length of time you'll know I love a story. A near miss that tells you something about how to achieve real safefy, or a career that took a turn nobody planned. Through our courses and working with clients, I get the privilege of a steady supply of new stories from people doing the work of AI governance. Many of those stories are too good to keep to myself.

So I've started a podcast to bring those people to you directly.

The AI Governor is a fortnightly conversation with someone doing AI governance work. I ask for the whole story: where they came from, how they learned, and what the job actually turned out to be. I probe mistakes, mishaps and misadventures along the way. The things we can all relate to and learn from. The AI Governor podcast will feature new episodes fortnightly, and is available on YouTube, Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Episode 1: You're not starting over in AI governance, with Ulaş Özgüven, VerifyWise

I wrote about Ulaş and his co-founder Gorkem Cetin in 5 Ways to Take the Practice Leap as an example of the fifth path: when the tools you need don't exist, build them. VerifyWise is an open-source AI governance platform that pulls the EU AI Act, ISO 42001 and the NIST AI RMF into one place, so teams can map risks, manage inventories and automate evidence without duplicating effort. Gorkem brought two decades in open-source and enterprise software. Ulaş brought venture and go-to-market experience. It's also the platform our Governance Foundation Cohort uses to turn their inventory and use-case work into something that runs. So Ulaş was the obvious first guest.

Before VerifyWise, Ulaş spent twenty-five years in cybersecurity: intrusion prevention, identity fraud protection, secure data rooms. None of that had "AI governance" written on it, because the career didn't exist yet. His argument in this episode is that moving into AI governance is not a pivot. You're applying what you already have to a new and harder problem.

If you've built a career somewhere adjacent and are wondering whether it counts, listen to this one for the pattern he only recognized in hindsight. If you've already made the move and are early in it, listen for what he says the job actually demands. He is blunt about which skill matters most, and it isn't the one most new entrants worry about. And if you know the frameworks well and want to know what happens when they meet a real organization, listen for what VerifyWise's customers discover when they inventory their own AI for the first time. Knowing the standard, it turns out, is where the work starts.

Watch Episode 1: You're not starting over in AI governance

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🎙️ If you don't want to miss an episode, be sure to SUBSCRIBE wherever you get your podcasts.

📻 If you have a story about how you found your way into AI governance, or you know someone who does, reply to this email and tell me about it. We're always looking for these stories and guests, and to be honest, the stories I most love to hear are from people who wouldn't normally put themselves forward.

Free AIGP Exam Prep Course (Domain I) lessons on YouTube

The second big thing!

Earlier this year I wrote about preparing for and passing the AIGP exam in 21 days. The argument was simple. Domain I, the foundational concepts, terminology and context, accounts for roughly 21 percent of the marks. Domains III and IV together carry more than half. Yet most preparation material spends up to half its time on Domain I, and most candidates spend their study hours watching content rather than practicing scenario questions.

Domain I-A and the first practice exam have always been free inside our course. We've now gone further and published every Domain I video lesson (that's I-A, I-B and I-C) on YouTube, along with our guidance videos on what the exam covers and how to approach it.

There are two reasons for doing this.

The first is that Domain I is the part of the exam where you should be moving quickly. Putting it out for free lets you cover it in a couple of sittings and decide whether the rest of the course is worth your money, with no account to create and nothing to commit to. If you watch the Domain I lessons and they're not for you, you've lost nothing.

The second is that I'd rather people spent their study time where the marks are. Our full AIGP Exam Preparation Course (Domains I-IV) maps one-to-one to the 2026 Body of Knowledge v2.1 across all 59 topics, detailed explainers, with over 700 practice questions and five full practice exams weighted toward the scenario and case-study format the real exam uses. That's where the difference is made, and honestly, that's what you pay for.

Watch Domain I, form your own view, and then decide. We have a whole lot more coming to YouTube soon too

🎧 The playlist is here: AIGP Exam Preparation. Please feel free to share with anyone you know planning on sitting the AIGP exam in the future.

What we're working on

That covers two of the bigger things we've shipped lately. But there's more coming.

The new website is close to launch. It's been rebuilt with two visitors in mind: people who are still working out whether AI governance is for them and want somewhere to start, and our students, who will find it does a good deal more than the current site.

We're also putting the finishing touches on a piece of research on AI governance jobs. It looks at what the market is actually asking for, what that means for the profession, and what it means for anyone weighing a move into this work as a career. Blog #64 on the gap between job ads and the real work was an early cut of that thinking. The full piece goes further.

As always, reach out if you have questions or feedback for us. We're learning alongside you, and the questions you send genuinely shape how we look at things and what we build next.

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