AI Product & Governance Leader · Dubai, UAE

I build AI that scales, and the governance that keeps it safe.

Seventeen years turning new technology into products people trust. I lead product and AI across one of the world's largest education groups, and I publish the research behind responsible AI in schools.

Sutharsan CP, AI Product and Governance Leader
17 yrs
Global experience
140K+
Active users
12+
Platforms built
6+
IEEE & Emerald papers
What I do

Four practices, one discipline.

Most leaders pick a lane. I work where building and governing AI meet, because that is where the hard decisions in education actually sit.

01

Product & AI Leadership

I take AI from idea to live product at enterprise scale. At GEMS Education that means platforms used by more than 140,000 students, parents and educators, built on predictive models, LLMs and modern cloud architecture.

02

Responsible AI & Governance

I lead AI governance at GEMS as an additional mandate. The work covers the policy and tooling that let schools use AI safely, with real attention to minors' data and to UAE, GDPR and FERPA requirements.

03

Research & Frameworks

My doctoral research studies how AI affects learning and student wellbeing. I have published peer-reviewed work in IEEE and Emerald, and built original frameworks for reasoning about trust and governance in education AI.

04

Mentorship & Social Impact

I mentor founders through Misk Launchpad and Sber, more than fifty across Saudi Arabia and Russia, on AI strategy and go-to-market. I also volunteer with Upllyft, a neurodiversity platform working with the Al Noor Training Centre in the UAE.

Selected work

Outcomes, not slideware.

A few things I have shipped or stood up where the stakes and the scale were real.

OpenAI in Abu Dhabi classrooms

Worked with schools to identify the use cases worth building, and partnered with the OpenAI team on the tenancy architecture that enforces group-level policy and access controls across Abu Dhabi schools.

AI governance from zero

Built the AI governance function at GEMS from the ground up, including policy, sub-policies, procedures and a working prototype platform for safe and responsible use.

AI literacy, not just AI access

Built an AI literacy curriculum for educators and students, so the people using AI understand what it does and where it fails.

Research with reach

Original frameworks including PETAI and TRUSTED, accepted for IEEE and Scopus-indexed publication.

Career

From quality engineering to AI strategy.

The sectors changed across telecom, consulting and education. The work stayed the same. Make complex technology dependable for the people who rely on it.

2019 — Present
Dubai, UAE

Head of Product Management & AI

GEMS Education

Lead product and AI across a portfolio of more than twelve home-grown platforms serving 140,000 active users. Lifted digital adoption by 40 percent and student retention by 18 percent by replacing fragmented tools with unified journeys. Created the AI governance practice that governs safe AI use across the network.

2014 — 2019
Dubai, UAE

Product Launch Manager

Etisalat

Ran national go-to-market for telecom and digital services. Cut time-to-launch across regions and lifted first-time-right delivery to 95 percent through tight cross-functional execution.

2013 — 2014
Kuala Lumpur, MY

Technical Solution Consultant

Haastra Consulting

Designed and pitched enterprise telecom and insurance solutions for regional clients, with a focus on cutting post-deployment defects and lifting adoption.

2009 — 2013
Chennai, IN

Associate Test Lead

Maveric Systems

Led large-scale quality assurance for major telecom programmes and stood up early test-automation frameworks that reduced delivery risk and cost.

The constant across every role has been one thing. Take technology that is hard to trust and make it dependable for the people on the other side of the screen.

Research & frameworks

I build the frameworks, not just opinions about AI.

Doctoral research at SP Jain, with peer-reviewed publications in IEEE and Emerald on AI governance and responsible AI in education. These are the named frameworks behind that work.

PETAI

Consent-first human and AI teaming for personalised education.

Emerald · 2025
TRUSTED

Seven-pillar AI governance framework with a Trustworthy Compliance Index.

IEEE · Accepted
WellScan

Predictive student-wellbeing model for UAE K-12, the empirical anchor of the doctorate.

Doctoral study
Pedagogical Hallucination

A study of the failure modes of AI tutoring and how to detect them.

IEEE · Forthcoming
The Forgetting Curriculum

A Persistence Score framework for what learning actually survives AI assistance.

IEEE · Forthcoming
FAIR · PEACE · INTEGRATE

Early frameworks for fairness, ethics and transparency in education AI.

Foundational

Six peer-reviewed papers and counting, across IEEE and Emerald. Two more, on pedagogical hallucination and on retained learning, are with IEEE for publication.

Google Scholar ↗
Speaking & recognition

On stages, panels and in the work of founders.

Misk Launchpad & Sber

Startup mentor to 50+ founders across Saudi Arabia and Russia

OutSystems Low-Code AI Summit

Panellist on AI in low-code development

Digital Confex, Dubai

Speaker on the future of education and responsible AI

Dubai AI & Web3 Dialogue

Roundtable on AI governance and smart cities

CXO Roundtable

Cloud cost optimisation and AI governance

State of AI in 2025

Panellist on AI beyond the hype
Let's talk

If you are serious about building AI well, we should talk.

Open to senior product and AI leadership roles in the UAE. Based in Dubai.