AVP, AI COE Leader; Hybrid

Overview

Selective Insurance is excited to announce that we are looking for an AVP who will lead our brand-new AI Center of Excellence (COE), responsible for operationalizing Selective's enterprise AI strategy by proactively identifying enterprise AI needs, researching and monitoring AI innovation, accelerating adoption across business units, and directing the design, execution and delivery of reusable AI capabilities that advance Selective's strategic and business objectives.

This position will manage a cross-functional team of AI architects and engineers, as well as a network of formal dotted-line relationships with Forward Deployed AI Leads and legal and regulatory contacts. This role also manages COE engagement with business units through Forward Deployed AI Leads embedded in each business unit and provides senior-level engagement with business unit executive leadership on strategic alignment, portfolio priorities, and escalation resolution.

Serves as the primary relationship owner between the COE and IT application delivery and enterprise governance bodies, ensuring AI investments are aligned to organizational priorities, measured for business impact, and governed according to risk and regulatory requirements.

• Leads operationalization of the enterprise AI program under the direction of the SVP, Enterprise Strategy & Execution, including setting priorities, coordinating cross-functional AI activity, and reporting on portfolio status, value realization, and risk. Responsible for the daily leadership of the AI COE team across strategy, engineering, governance, and enablement functions.
• Directs the research, design, engineering, and delivery of reusable enterprise AI capabilities, including retrieval-augmented generation infrastructure, AI agent orchestration frameworks, core insurance system integration layers, enterprise knowledge pipelines, and evaluation frameworks, ensuring production readiness, security, and alignment to enterprise AI reference architecture. Monitors the external market for AI innovation and available technology.
• Proactively identifies enterprise-level AI capability needs and patterns by analyzing business unit demand, emerging technology opportunities, and cross-BU commonalities — not solely relying on intake submissions. Owns the enterprise AI portfolio by operating standardized intake and evaluation processes, aggregating portfolio status and value realization data from Forward Deployed AI Leads and other sources, and maintaining a comprehensive portfolio dashboard. Establishes performance indicators and measurement methodologies, designs controlled rollout approaches, and produces evidence-based recommendations to scale, refine, pause, sequence, or retire AI initiatives.
  
  Prepares decision-support materials for the AI Steering Committee and executive leadership.
• Manages the COE's engagement with business units through a team of Forward-Deployed AI Leads embedded within each business unit. Provides senior-level engagement with business unit VPs and Product Owners on strategic alignment, portfolio priorities, and the resolution of escalations. Coaches and supports Forward Deployed AI Leads in shaping use cases, managing business unit relationships, and driving adoption.
• Manages the collaborative relationship with IT and Application Development to ensure clear ownership boundaries, coordinate on agent framework decisions and API development for core insurance systems, and resolve technical direction or resource contention issues.
• Coordinates AI governance in partnership with the AI & Model Governance Committee, Legal, and Compliance, ensuring AI deployments comply with the Written Artificial Intelligence System Program, meet regulatory requirements, and maintain appropriate audit trails, human oversight controls, and guardrails for AI agent actions.
• Oversees enterprise AI enablement and adoption, including engineering upskilling, role-based business training, and change management initiatives that build effective human-AI collaboration in core insurance workflows. Provides strategic direction for the GenAI Alliance and AI Champions network, with Forward…