Dr. Timothy Persons

Dr. Timothy M. Persons is a Founder-CEO and former Chief Scientist to the U.S. Congress who advises boards at the intersection of artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and national security. He brings three decades of experience as a builder, operator, regulator, and governance architect—and the commercial judgment to convert that experience into decisions on strategy, capital allocation, and risk. Boards and CEOS engage him when AI is too strategic for IT alone, too regulated to scale without trust, and too material to treat as a side initiative.

As Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Beowulf Technologies, he leads an AI-native advisory serving boards, CEOs, and government leaders. He advises leadership teams responsible for more than $22 billion in enterprise value, aligning AI investment with growth, risk, and capital allocation. He also leads board retreats that redirect capital from low-value experimentation and install governance for responsible AI adoption.

From 2023 to 2026, as Principal, AI Leader, and Equity Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, he built and led an AI business at eight-figure scale advising Fortune 100 boards and C-suites across financial services, aerospace and defense, and healthcare. He translated frontier AI risk into boardroom-ready frameworks and audit committee guidance, and co-authored PwC’s flagship AI governance publications, now cited by the SEC, OCC, and peer regulators.

For 14 years (2008–2022), Dr. Persons served as Chief Scientist and Managing Director of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the independent auditing arm of Congress. He rebuilt Congress’s science and technology assessment capability, authored the U.S. government’s first AI Accountability Framework, and scaled GAO’s Innovation Lab 77-fold, quadrupling annual S&T output. He delivered a 97 percent reduction in authorization-to-operate time and testified before Congress twelve times on AI, national security, and emerging technology. Earlier, as inaugural Chief Technology Officer of IARPA, he authored five advanced-technology roadmaps spanning analytics, quantum, and cybersecurity; as Technology Director at NSA Advanced Projects, he led an AI/ML biometrics portfolio and oversaw a launch-ready quantum key distribution system.

Board and governance roles include Committee Chair, Emerging Science & Technology and Innovation, National Academy of Medicine; Council Member, U.S. National Academies; member, World Economic Forum AI Governance Alliance; board roles at Wake Forest University Business Analytics and the Virginia Tech–Wake Forest BME Advisory Board; founding member, U.S. AI Safety Institute; former Governance Board Chair, Senior Executives Association; founder and inaugural chair, Polaris Council; Commissioner, Arthur S. Flemming Award.

He holds NACD Membership and completed Harvard Business School’s Preparing to Be a Corporate Director program. He is a Lifetime Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and an IEEE Senior Member. Honors: Arthur S. Flemming Award, Comptroller General Award, and Fed100 Award for AI Leadership. Education: Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering, and M.S., Computer Science, Wake Forest University; M.S., Nuclear Physics, Emory University; B.S., Physics, James Madison University. 100+ publications; TS/SCI eligible.