Straight answers to the questions we hear most.

We help campus leaders make better decisions about AI: adoption, training, budgeting, tool selection, policy, and implementation. Our flagship engagement is the AI Assessment and Blueprint, which turns what's actually happening inside a department into a practical, unit-specific plan for what to do next.

Around that, we advise, we build, and we offer lots of free insights into AI adoption in higher ed: the State of AI, a monthly newsletter, and regular webinars and workshops.

Higher education leaders and the people around them: presidents, cabinets, trustees, provosts, CIOs, deans, and directors. We also work with the committees and working groups navigating AI governance and policy, and with the operational and academic staff exploring practical AI use.

Community colleges looking for grounded, low-pressure guidance are a particularly good fit.

Yes. Colleges and universities are all we do. We don't split our attention across industries, so the patterns we recognize, the policies we track, and the workflows we map are specific to your world rather than generic corporate best practices. When we talk about committees, governance, enrollment, advising, or accreditation, we're speaking your language.

Tailwind was built from the ground up around modern AI rather than as a traditional consultancy that bolted it on after the fact. That shapes the tools we ship, the way we run our own operations, and the advice we give. We use the technology daily, so our guidance comes from practice, not theory.

Tailwind was founded by Devin Golets and Davie Lee. Devin spent more than a decade inside higher education, including five years at Western University in admissions, recruitment, and career counseling. Davie is a serial entrepreneur who has spent more than a decade building AI-powered products at scale; his previous company was acquired by a private-equity firm.

One came up through higher education, the other from the frontier of applied AI. They meet in the middle to deliver systems campuses can trust.

We've worked with institutions and associations in both Canada and the United States, including Holland College, Delta College, Arkansas Community Colleges, the Association of Florida Colleges, and TechAlliance. Engagements run remotely or on campus depending on what the work calls for: webinars are virtual, and workshops often happen in the room with your team.

An AI Assessment is a set of structured conversations across a unit. They surface how AI is already being used, how people feel about it, where work is getting stuck, and where opportunities may exist.

We then add benchmark context: what we hear is compared with patterns from other colleges and departments, so you can separate local signals from broader trends.

The Blueprint is what the assessment turns into: a clear, team-specific view of how AI is already showing up, where it could create value, what your people are ready for, and what to do next. It identifies priorities for training, tools, workflows, investment, change leadership, and next steps, and it's specific to your unit rather than a generic roadmap.

A Blueprint for the unit, plus the organizational picture behind it. The assessment places each person on a five-level capability ladder, gives them an engagement persona (Driver, Quiet adopter, Pragmatist, Curious, Doubter, or Bystander), and layers both onto your existing org chart. A leader can read the spread of a division at a glance: who is ready to build, who needs guidance, and where the quiet adopters and doubters sit.

Every person in the assessment lands on one of five levels:

• L1 Learner: needs guidance to use AI productively and safely
• L2 Task User: completes useful, bounded tasks with AI
• L3 Workflow Practitioner: runs reliable, role-specific workflows, with checks
• L4 Prototyper: independently turns an idea into a working prototype
• L5 Systems Builder: makes it deployable, secure, and maintained

Mostly not. Much of the AI conversation in higher education is focused on teaching, assessment, academic integrity, and student use. Our work sits on the other side of campus: operations. How can AI help teams create capacity, improve how work gets done, and make better use of the people they already have? Think advising, the registrar's office, student affairs, IT, and the cabinet room.

No. The aim is capacity, not headcount: reduce administrative burden so your people can spend time where it matters. Leaders are being asked to improve outcomes with teams that are already stretched, and limited budgets make adding people difficult. AI is one way to create room, and we help you bring staff into the process from the start rather than doing it to them.

A conversation, not an exam. We listen first and ask questions about how work actually gets done and where it gets stuck. The capability level and persona each person receives are planning inputs: they tell a leader who needs guidance, who is ready to build, and what kind of support fits.

With a free AI Consult. Tell us what you're trying to figure out, where AI is showing up today, and what challenges or opportunities you're working through. You'll leave with concrete, prioritized recommendations, free resources for your situation, and a clear sense of where to start. There's no pitch and no pressure to commit.

No. There's no prerequisite for working with us and no framework you have to adopt before we can be useful. Whether you already have an AI committee and a draft policy in hand, or you're just starting the conversation, we start from where your campus actually stands.

Most engagements start with an AI Assessment that becomes a unit-specific AI Blueprint. From there it can be an ongoing advisory relationship, a workshop for your team, or hands-on support for a specific pilot. We shape the scope, pace, and budget around your goals, not a rigid retainer.

It depends on the scope, and we'd rather size it with you than quote a package. The first conversation is free. Most engagements begin with a focused first phase you can review with leadership before deciding whether to go deeper, so the commitment grows with the value you're seeing.

It depends on the size of the unit and how many conversations it takes to get a clear picture. Engagements are phased and reviewable: a focused first phase, a review with leadership, then a decision about what comes next. We'll set the timeline with you in the consult.

Everything is built to align with your policy, privacy posture, and committee process. We understand the constraints campuses operate under: committees and governance, tight budgets, accreditation and privacy obligations, and the very human anxieties that come with any change to how people work. Every recommendation is meant to be technically sound, realistic about data and privacy, and built to last beyond the initial pilot.

Yes. We run webinars, workshops, and conference sessions, including Practical AI Leadership Training, and we've appeared with Arkansas Community Colleges, the Association of Florida Colleges, and TechAlliance. Upcoming sessions, and a recording of a recent one, are listed on the homepage.

Our picture of where campuses are with AI, drawn from published campus surveys, a national cohort of about 73,000 community college students, and 2,574 documented campus use cases: how many people use AI and how often, what worries them, where guidance and training fall short, and how far campus projects have got. It's free to read.

One email a month, written for the people making AI decisions on campus. Each issue covers what changed in AI, what it means for campuses, and what's worth doing about it. No hype, and you can unsubscribe any time.

Yes. The State of AI, the blog, and the newsletter are free for anyone on campus, with no contract required. We'd rather be useful first.

Ollie is the owl you'll see around our tools and resources: the friendly guide who makes AI feel approachable instead of intimidating. Wise, calm, and always happy to explain things twice.

Two ways. Book a free AI Consult directly through the scheduler on the contact page or at the bottom of most pages, or send us a message and we'll reply within one business day.

Yes. AI assistants and agents can read a plain-text overview of Tailwind, its services, and its pages at /llms.txt, and the sitemap lives at /sitemap-index.xml.