About
About BoardSight — the AI oversight practice built for boards and audit committees
BoardSight is the AI governance practice of Cognitive Corp. We help directors, audit committee chairs, and chief risk officers oversee AI. Our review found the gap: of 14 governance standards a board can pull today, only one requires the independent second line of defense — the challenge that protects the board. We close it. We map 14 global standards to the Three Lines model your committee already uses, then turn that into board-ready tools: risk registers, charter language, scorecards, escalation protocols, and quarterly reports. It is built for boards facing the EU AI Act, SEC disclosure, and Delaware Caremark duties — backed by Cognitive Corp's 175-plus research papers and five preliminary governance frameworks.
Origin
We didn't set out to build a governance firm
In 2022, James Waddell and Vik Bangia set out to solve a practical problem: helping organizations actually put AI to work in the built environment. Not slideware — real enablement, where AI earns its place in how buildings and portfolios are run.
Enablement raised a harder question. Once AI was shaping real operational decisions, leaders needed to understand why — how a recommendation was reached, what it relied on, and when it could be trusted. Enablement led us to explainability.
And explainability led to governance. Explaining a decision is not the same as governing it. Directors and audit committees needed structure around AI: clear ownership, an independent line of challenge, and evidence they could defend to a regulator. We built that structure for the built environment first — where AI meets physical operations and the consequences are concrete.
That work became BoardSight. It operates at the board level, independent of the systems it helps oversee. Even where we aren't the ones delivering the operational AI, we can give a board — and its audit committee in particular — the oversight tools, evidence, and independent perspective the moment now demands.
The Problem
The instruments didn't exist
An audit committee chair told us: "AI is now my committee's responsibility. Where's my framework?" We looked. It wasn't there.
The available guidance was written for engineers, not directors. The standards were technical, not fiduciary. And the most critical governance function — independent risk oversight — was almost entirely absent from AI frameworks.
So we built what boards actually need. Risk registers directors can read. Assessments they can deploy. Oversight architectures that map to the governance structures they already use.
How We Work
You get artifacts, not advice
We start with the standards your regulators reference — NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, COSO ERM, EU AI Act — and finish with something you can use on Monday. We don't reinvent wheels. We instrument them for the boardroom.
Every engagement produces artifacts your board can use immediately: populated risk registers, charter language, escalation protocols, and quarterly reporting cadences.
We bring deep fluency in built-environment AI (real-time IoT, operational technology) combined with enterprise-wide scope — so we speak the language of boards where AI intersects physical infrastructure.
The Research Behind It
175+
Research Papers
An internal AI governance research corpus
5
Proprietary Frameworks
Preliminary instruments built for board-level oversight
14
Standards Reviewed
Board-available — every verdict cited
1 of 14
Require a Second Line
Only one board-available standard requires independent AI challenge
The Team
The people behind your briefing
James Waddell
Chief Research Officer
Chief Research Officer at Cognitive Corp. Builder-philosopher of the built environment with deep expertise in AI governance, smart facility management, and corporate real estate optimization. Leads Cognitive Corp's 175+ paper research corpus on AI governance across building standards.
Vik Bangia
Advisor
Founder and CEO of Verum Consulting and an MCR-credentialed corporate real estate and facilities management advisor working in the field since 1993. He brings three decades of enterprise CRE/FM strategy, outsourcing, and operations experience — and a disruptor's eye for status-quo sourcing practices — to BoardSight's work at the intersection of AI governance and the built environment.
See if we're the right fit
15 minutes. No obligation. Just honest answers about your board's AI readiness.
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