Professional Membership Body – Director of AI

The Brief

The International Bar Association (IBA) were looking for a new, and their first, Director of AI to lead the launch of their new AI Institute. 

The brief required a leader capable of shaping global dialogue on AI governance, ethics, and policy. This was a role designed to sit at the intersection of the legal profession and the wider world, connecting international bodies, governments, technology companies, and academia. 

Crucially, the IBA were clear that:

• This was not a technical or legal specialist role, but one requiring deep, senior-level expertise in AI’s societal impact
• The individual must be ready to operate credibly at UN, government, and Big Tech level
•  The role would act as a bridge between the IBA’s global membership and external stakeholders, shaping both policy and practitioner response

This created a fundamentally non-traditional hiring challenge: a leadership role with no direct comparator in the market.

The Challenge

Several factors made this a particularly complex search.

Firstly, the nature of the role itself. The IBA were not looking for a traditional legal leader. They were deliberately seeking an external perspective, someone with deep expertise in AI and its wider implications. That meant looking well beyond the usual talent pools and mapping individuals across policy, global governance, technology, media and academia.

Alongside this sat a second challenge around balance. Candidates needed the credibility to operate at the highest international levels, engaging with bodies and, at the same time, they needed to bring fresh thinking, a degree of independence from legal world, and the ability to connect and convene across very different disciplines.

Additionally, it was the geographical scope. The IBA is, as the name suggests, international and so was the scope of the search. Without diluting the precision of the search, it was important to include talent from a wide range of territories, focusing first on experience and skills rather than proximity to the IBA HQ. 

Our Approach

Working closely with the IBA team, Inspired Search:

• Translated the JD into clear assessment criteria
• Clarified what “credible global AI leadership” looked like in practice
• Positioned the role as a strategic, outward-facing leadership platform

From here, we led a phase of global market mapping of 150+ individuals across sectors with experience from: 

• Government and public policy
• Big Tech and global organisations
• Academia and think tanks
• Corporate and advisory environments

Focussing on profiles who demonstrated: 

• Depth of AI expertise vs recent “pivot”
• Policy-level engagement, “advising up” rather than solely influencing down through an organisation 
• Credibility and independence of voice 

Through targeting c. 35 of these profiles, we qualified and interviewed potential candidates to arrive at a shortlist of candidates with experience engaging UN bodies, regulators, or international forums, who demonstrated the ability to translate complex AI issues into actionable framework and carried a strong personal philosophy on responsible AI and human judgement.

The Outcome 

The IBA interviewed five from the shortlist, taking three to final stage. Through this process, Inspired Search successfully supported the appointment of Dr Farzana Dudhwala as the IBA’s first Director of AI and, with that, came the launch of the IBA’s Artificial Intelligence Institute.

As Tim Huges, Deputy Executive Director of the IBA reflected:

“We gave Inspired Search the challenging brief of filling a new kind of job - of finding a candidate whose CV could demonstrate substantial experience in, and a proven contribution to, the global dialogue about AI, on safety, policy, regulation, and ethical development.  We expected the candidate’s expertise would come from the corporate sector, government or academia. Inspired Search delivered a candidate with expertise from all three.”  

Inspired Thoughts

As AI continues to reshape industries, organisations are creating roles that did not exist even two years ago.  Leadership appointments are now, perhaps more than ever, so much more than the Search itself.  They are about defining the role, mapping the market differently, and guiding both client and candidates through ambiguity with confidence.

If you’d like to discuss AI leadership appointments, AI literacy in leadership teams or indeed leadership appointments more generally, and would like a confidential discussion then please do get in touch with the MD of our executive search division, Abigail Barclay.