Available for advisory, fractional, or full-time leadership

Powered by AI. Driven by Humans.™

Most companies can deploy AI. I lead the human half that makes it work.

I'm James Berry. For 20+ years I've led teams through complex change, most recently 5.5 years at CHG Healthcare. AI succeeds or fails on the human side: clear communication, real adoption, and the governance and standards that keep it safe and consistent. That's the half most companies struggle with, and it's where I lead, on top of the data and process work underneath. I've shipped real products too, so I know what works in practice.

Work with me → See what I've built

AI readiness · Data & process · Governance · Communication & adoption · Team leadership
Open to remote, hybrid, on-site, or relocation

James Berry, Founder, Berry App Labs

Companies I've consulted & partnered with

Google Ford GSK Abbott Walgreens Boots Alliance VMLY&R Banfield Pet Hospital

Consulting & Development

What I do

Powered by AI. Driven by Humans.™

AI works only when it's powered by AI and driven by humans: the technology (data, process, and governance) and the people (communication, adoption, and culture). Most consultants do one half. I do both.

Start with the AI Readiness Checklist  ·  powered by AI, driven by humans: Fuel, Engine, Guardrails, Driver, Crew. See where you stand →

Powered by AI · the technology

🤖

AI Operations

Stand up AI inside your operation: agents, copilots, and automations that do real work, safely and measurably. From pilot to production.

🛡️

AI Governance

The guardrails that let you move fast without breaking things: standards, a review process, clear ownership, and a plan for updates. So AI scales without scaling your risk.

📈

Process & Data Readiness

Find the friction, fix the data underneath, and redesign workflows so AI actually has something solid to run on. The rigor of someone who's done it for 20+ years.

⚙️

Manual Tasks to Automation

Replace manual, repetitive work with reliable, AI-driven pipelines that run themselves, so your people spend their time on what only people can do.

🚀

0-to-1 Product Builds

Proof I'm hands-on, not just advisory: when something needs to exist, I design and ship production software, AI-native and multilingual, in weeks. Built with your team so they own it after.

Driven by Humans · the people

📣

Communication & Adoption

Most AI rollouts stall on adoption, not technology. I help you communicate the why, drive real usage, and keep people in the loop as tools evolve, with a single home for updates and release notes.

🤝

High-Performing Team Cultures

Build teams that ship: clarity, ownership, and momentum that outlast any single project. Culture is the operating system everything else runs on.

🧭

Implementation & Change Leadership

Roadmaps that survive contact with reality, plus the leadership to execute them end to end, on time, with the team bought in.

How I run it · the operating model

Every AI initiative runs through the same disciplined pipeline, from framing the problem to proving what it delivered.

Use-case pipeline
Triage incoming requests, size the value, and keep a prioritized queue.
Workflow assessment
Structured current-state reviews to find where AI actually fits.
Solution design
Off-the-shelf, prompt layer, vendor, or custom, whichever earns its place.
Tool governance
A live tool registry, security and privacy review, and tracked spend.
The one-slide answer
Every initiative measured, so leadership can say what AI delivered this year.

And every initiative moves through the same six steps, including the one most people skip: knowing when to stop.

STEP 1
Define & Align
Name the problem worth solving and the objective, agreed with stakeholders before any build.
STEP 2
Pilot
Small, time-boxed, one real workflow, not a company-wide bet.
STEP 3
Evaluate
Measured honestly: time saved, cost cut, revenue moved.
STEP 4
Abandon
Kill what doesn’t earn its place. No sunk cost, no tool sprawl.
STEP 5
Adapt
Fix what works, the tech and the human side both.
STEP 6
Evolve
Scale it, govern it, move to the next use case.

Most teams only know how to launch. The discipline is knowing what to keep, and what to kill.

Ways to work together

One operator, scaled to what you need, from a focused assessment all the way to full-time on your team.

Start with a free 30-minute assessment

A no-cost first call for mid-sized businesses. We look at where you stand today across the technology and the people, and what it would take for AI to actually stick. You leave with a clear next step, whether or not we work together.

  • A read on your current tools, workflows, and data
  • The two or three places AI would help most, and what has to be true for it to work
  • A simple, prioritized starting point you can act on
📅 Book your free assessment → 30 minutes · No cost · No obligation

Impact at CHG Healthcare

Five years. Measurable results.

A snapshot of what I delivered in my most recent role at CHG Healthcare, leading client implementations and data management through process improvement, automation, and cross-functional collaboration. Same team, dramatically more output.

12×
Concurrent implementations
From 1 at a time to 12 at once, 2022 to 2023
66.7%
Faster time to market
Implementation duration cut from 6 weeks to 2
600%
Client support scale
From 40 to 280 clients supported
4.2×
Data points supported
From 6,000 to 25,230 since 2021
62.5%
Cleaner sources of truth
Consolidated reporting and fewer conflicting data sources
0
Added headcount
Every result above delivered with the same team
2 hrs
Manual work automated
A task that once took 2 full days now runs in 2 hours, on the second attempt, the first I shelved for inconsistent results
100%
Perfect EES score
Top-of-scale leadership rating from my team, earned twice
$600M
Business supported

I led, architected, and built a company-wide data management ecosystem from scratch: the single source of truth and the structure that lets our enterprise clients’ data be consumed into the BI warehouse, plus the dashboards and reporting that a $600 million business runs on every day. One connected system that turned scattered spreadsheets into the operational backbone of the entire organization.

What People Say

Trusted from the top and the team

“
He doesn't simply manage to requirements, he shapes them. James has the operational horsepower, the people leadership, and the executive presence to excel in a senior leadership role. He achieved the highest employee engagement scores in the company, and you can't coach a number like that; you have to earn it. I recommend him without qualification.
DA
Daniel A.
VP, Sales & Revenue Operations · CHG Healthcare
“
James was my leader at CHG for nearly four years, and he is the best of the best. His direction and transparency always instilled trust on our team, and he brought out the best in each of us because of it. He leads people first, and he is an incredible manager, mentor, and friend.
SR
Shannon R.
Direct Report, Senior Project Manager · CHG Healthcare
“
I would recommend James Berry everyday and twice on Sunday. He is an outstanding leader of people and makes the most difficult of scenarios seem simple. He made an incredible impact on our organization and our team, and the way he did it with a great sense of humor and inclusion left a profound impact on me.
MW
Michael W.
Director, Enterprise Business Development · CHG Healthcare
Project Management for Everyone workshop led by James

Leadership & Teaching

I teach what I practice

Leading change means making it learnable. I designed and teach "Project Management for Everyone: Mastering Two-Week Planning," a simple, repeatable system that helps people across an organization turn goals into finished work.

It's the same philosophy I bring to consulting: the best process isn't the most sophisticated one. It's the one your whole team can actually run.

2×
Perfect 100% EES

I've twice earned a perfect 100% on the Employee Engagement Survey (EES), a top-of-scale rating of my performance as a leader, given by the people who actually reported to me. Building teams that are this engaged is the foundation everything else stands on: the strategy, the process, and the shipped results all follow from it.

James and his team at a racing-themed team-building event James and his team at a superhero-themed team-building event

High-performing teams that actually want to show up, and have a little fun doing it.

Workshops & Classes

Classes I teach

Practical, hands-on sessions for teams and organizations, available as keynotes, workshops, or multi-session programs, in person or remote.

AI & Automation
🛡️ AI Governance for Small & Medium Organizations ▾
Right-sized governance for companies that want to use AI responsibly without a Fortune 500 legal department. We cover acceptable-use policy, data handling, tool and vendor review, human oversight, and a simple risk framework you can realistically maintain. You leave with a starter policy and a checklist tailored to your size and industry.
🧭 AI Transformation: Start With Your SaaS Inventory ▾
Most AI transformations stall because no one knows where AI actually fits. This workshop starts with the tools you already pay for, maps where AI creates real leverage, and turns that into a prioritized roadmap grounded in your real workflows and budget. You leave with a clear, sequenced plan instead of a wish list.
⚡ AI Hackathons for Non-Developers ▾
A hands-on event where business teams build real, working AI solutions to their own problems, with no coding required. Participants learn to use modern AI tools, scope a problem, and ship a working prototype in a single session. A great way to spark adoption and surface the highest-value use cases hiding inside your team.
🔎 Optimizing Your AI Search Results ▾
As customers shift from Google to AI assistants, businesses need to be found and recommended inside tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI search. This session explains how AI systems decide what to surface and walks through practical steps a small or medium business can take to show up in the answers. You leave with a concrete action list to improve your visibility.
💰 AI Costs and ROI: Tokens, Usage, and Value ▾
A clear-eyed look at what AI actually costs and whether it is worth it. We demystify tokens and usage-based pricing, cover when AI is the right tool and when it is not, and give you a simple framework to measure the ROI of anything you build or buy. You leave able to estimate costs up front and decide which AI projects are genuinely worth pursuing.
🚀 From Pilot to Production: AI That Actually Ships ▾
Why most AI pilots impress in a demo and then quietly die, and the operational discipline that gets them live, adopted, and maintained. We cover ownership, integration, change management, and the metrics that prove an AI project is working. For leaders who are tired of pilots that never reach production.
⚙️ Automating the Busywork ▾
A working session that helps your team spot repetitive, manual tasks and replace them with reliable automation they can trust. We map where time is lost, identify safe candidates for automation, and build a plan to roll it out without breaking what already works. You leave with a prioritized list of automations and a path to put them in place.
Team Building & Culture
🦸 Team Building: Find Your Inner Superhero ▾
A high-energy session that helps a team build trust, discover each person's individual strengths, and become a unit that genuinely works together. Through a fun superhero theme, participants identify their own "powers," learn where they complement one another, and leave with a shared language for how they do their best work.
🎉 Division Culture Committee ▾
A single working day that produces a full year of culture programming for a division or small business of up to 150 people. We design a calendar of events, recognition moments, and traditions, assign owners, and set a realistic budget, so culture becomes a plan instead of an afterthought. You leave with a ready-to-run roadmap for the next twelve months.
Leadership & Project Management
🗂️ Project Management for Everyone ▾
A practical introduction to two-week planning for people who were never trained as project managers. Participants learn to break big goals into clear, two-week commitments, run a simple cadence to track progress, and actually finish what they start. Ideal for busy teams that struggle to turn good intentions into completed work.
🔄 Leading Through Change ▾
An implementation and transformation playbook for managers steering their teams through major change. We cover how to communicate the why, bring people along, manage resistance, and keep momentum when the work gets hard. Grounded in two decades of leading real transformations, not theory.

Want a session tailored to your team? Let's talk →

Product Development

Proof, not promises

I don't just advise on AI. I build with it. These are products I've designed and built, most solo and most multilingual, in a matter of weeks. Several are in beta and launching this summer, the same approach I bring to client work.

6
Products built
30+
Languages shipped
AI
Native, not bolted on
20+
Years leading change
Plate Spotter road trip map with spotted states
Plate Spotter Released June 18
The family road-trip game for soccer's biggest summer.

Spot license plates across the US, Canada & Mexico, meet all 48 nations of soccer's big summer, and answer 2,100+ trivia questions. Works fully offline, no ads, in 23 languages.

23 languages 48 nations 3 countries
Download on the App Store → Visit marketing site →
HairPath patient recovery dashboard
HairPath Launches Jul 1
Your recovery companion.

A patient-experience SaaS for hair-transplant clinics: daily check-ins, AI photo analysis, recovery timeline, and multilingual support for medical-tourism patients.

10 languages AI photo analysis Clinic SaaS
Demo marketing site →
HolyTL;DR
"Stop doom-scrolling your worries. Just talk to God about it."
Philippians 4:6
✅ Text a friend 📝 Journal
HolyTL;DR Launches Jul 15
Scripture that actually hits.

Daily Bible verses in Gen Z voice with 3 actionable steps, personalized to what you're going through. Streaks, leaderboard, monthly goals. Catholic + Protestant.

10 languages AI-powered 185 verses
Demo marketing site →
Family Stori question answering experience
Family Stori Launches Aug 1
Their story. Your family's game.

A gift that asks someone you love 156 questions about their life. Their answers become weekly family quizzes. AI learns from every answer.

30 languages AI-powered Gift-first
Demo marketing site →
STAK
Track the protocol. See the transformation.
Cycle · Week 6 of 12
✦ AI CYCLE REPORT
Body comp trending up, sleep stable. Recovery markers look strong.
Stak In build mode
The transformation engine.

A research log and protocol tracker for cycles, body composition, photos, and labs, with an AI Cycle Report and bloodwork interpreter that turn raw data into insight.

4 languages AI insights Health & fitness
Coming soon
TOURSPINE
Show day · Madrid
14:00Load-in & soundcheck
18:30Doors
21:00Headline set
Tourspine Discovery
The backbone of the tour.

Crew-first tour management for bands, road crew, and everyone who travels with them. Itineraries, day sheets, merch, wellness, and billing, all built for life on the road.

EN / ES / DE B2B SaaS Offline-first
Coming soon

About

The operator behind the work

James Berry, Founder, Berry App Labs
James Berry
Founder, Berry App Labs · AI-First Operations & Transformation Leader

A transformation leader who builds. He leads the human side of AI, the governance, communication, and adoption that make it stick, and ships real software too, so he knows what works in practice.

James spent 20+ years leading teams, streamlining operations, and delivering complex transformations, most recently 5.5 years at CHG Healthcare, where he led high-performing teams through meaningful, large-scale change and built solutions that stuck.

Berry App Labs grew out of a simple conviction: AI succeeds or fails on the human side, not the technology. James leads that side, the communication, adoption, governance, and standards that make AI stick, on top of the data and process work underneath. And he builds the software himself; the portfolio above isn't a side project, it's proof he knows what actually works, not just what looks good on a slide.

That work happens at whatever depth a company needs, from a few days a month of advisory to embedded, hands-on leadership. For the right team, the deepest version is joining full-time as a Director or VP to lead a transformation end to end, in Implementation, Operations, Customer Success, or Business Transformation. Open to on-site, hybrid, remote, or relocation for the right role.

Let's build the next chapter.

Whether you need help getting AI right, a guide for your transformation, or a leader to drive it end to end, I'd love to talk.

📅 Book a call → Email me LinkedIn

One operator, from a few days a month to full-time on your team
Open to remote, hybrid, on-site, or relocation