​Every organization is deploying AI. Most are doing it without governance frameworks, without ethics training, and without asking the hard questions early enough.

​RAP is a four-week Responsible AI Professional certification for people who need to make better AI decisions at work: leaders, consultants, operators, builders, policy people, and teams moving from experimentation into accountable deployment.

​What Participants Say

​“I came in having already studied AI, but I was looking for something deeper on the ethics side, and this course gave me exactly that.” - Brittney Ashley

​“Viewing AI with this new lens has made me think hard about the ethics surrounding AI usage.” - Bruce Ratzlaff

​“The weekly live sessions — lively, honest discussions where people asked real questions and dug in together — made the whole thing feel less like a lecture and more like a group figuring things out side by side.”- Kerris Hougardy

​“If you’re looking for guidance on how to think about AI regulation within your organization, this is a great course to help you get started.” - Manny Minhas

​What's included in this course?

• ​Four live online sessions

• ​Weekly practical exercises

• ​Four portfolio artifacts: AI Inventory, Ethics Assessment, Deployment Checklist, Impact Assessment

• ​A practical grounding in UNESCO, OECD, NIST, IEEE, and other responsible-AI frameworks

• ​A cohort of professionals wrestling with the same deployment, governance, and trust questions

• ​RAP certification recognized by BC + AI Ecosystem

​The syllabus & curriculum.

​Week 1: Foundations: Understanding AI and Its Limits

• ​How AI systems actually work (demystifying the technology)

• ​The confidence-accuracy gap: Why AI sounds right when it's wrong

• ​Hallucinations and confabulation: When inaccuracy is annoying vs. dangerous

• ​Global ethics frameworks: UNESCO, OECD, NIST, IEEE

​Week 2: Core Ethics - Bias, Privacy, and Ownership

• ​Bias & Prediction: Identify algorithmic bias, understand fairness definitions

• ​Privacy: Data collection, consent, surveillance economy

• ​Copyright & Creative Work: Who owns AI inputs and outputs?

​Week 3: Societal Impact - Deployment, Labor, and Environment

• ​Deployment Ethics: When is AI ready? When should it never be used?

• ​Labor & Work: Displacement, augmentation, worker surveillance

• ​Environmental Impact: The carbon cost of computation

​Week 4: The Human Element: Authenticity, Relationships, and

​Meaning

• ​Authenticity: Deepfakes, synthetic media, trust erosion

• ​Social Life: Human-AI relationships, parasocial dynamics, vulnerable populations

• ​The Human Spirit: Creativity, agency, meaning in an AI age

​Who is this for?

• ​Executives and leaders overseeing AI initiatives

• ​Consultants and advisors building responsible-AI services

• ​Professionals who budget for their own development

• ​Product, operations, HR, nonprofit, public-sector, and creative leaders

• ​Anyone who needs to assess AI risks before deployment

​No technical AI experience required. If you're making decisions about AI - budgeting, deploying, governing, communicating, or evaluating - you're qualified.

​Meet your instructors.

​Sarah Downey: Instructor - AI consultant and strategist based in Victoria with 20+ years in nonprofit and social impact leadership. Hosts facilitated conversations for nonprofit leaders on ethical AI governance. Course creator focused on helping mission-driven organizations adopt AI responsibly with her ethos: Stay Curious. Stay Connected. Stay Human. Brings nonprofit sector expertise, facilitation skills, and values-centered approach to AI governance. BC + AI Founding Member #138.

​Martin Lopatka: Curriculum Developer - PhD in Forensic Statistics, M.Sc. in AI. Mozilla alumni with production ML systems experience. Expertise in responsible AI assessment frameworks, model governance, regulatory alignment. Voluntary contribution to curriculum design. BC + AI Founding Member #31.

​Kris Krug: Program Lead - Kris Krüg is a digital strategist and community builder specializing in the intersection of artificial intelligence, creativity, and technology. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Kris leads AI-focused initiatives that bridge technical innovation with practical applications across various industries.

​Responsible AI Capstone Projects

​The first RAP cohort 20 AI professionals produced working responsible-AI governance tools: policies, risk matrices, intake systems, AI-use gates, workforce assessments, and sector-specific governance kits.

​Kerris Hougardy: AI Skill-Displacement Risk & Reskilling Navigator: Watch the capstone walkthrough

​Brittney Ashley: Using AI With Intention - a People-First AI Policy: Watch the capstone walkthrough

​Bruce Ratzlaff: Industrial Sales-Prioritization Governance Matrix: Watch the capstone walkthrough

​The Movement: BC + AI Ecosystem Association

​This meetup is part of BC + AI a member-driven nonprofit where meetups turn into working groups, prototypes turn into shared tools, and community values turn into governance.

​We are building the public-interest infrastructure for AI in British Columbia ensuring that our local-first intelligence outlives its creators and powers the next era of West Coast innovation.

​Vancouver AI was just the start. The ecosystem keeps growing across BC... Surrey, Victoria, Comox, Kelowna, and beyond... each node bringing its own culture, needs, and experiments.