2 Day Responsible AI Professional Certification: Vancouver October 27 &28
Lead with ethics in an AI-first world.
October 27–28, 2026 | 9:00 AM–4:30 PM each day | Vancouver
Our first in-person RAP cohort, just before Futureproof Festival.
AI is already inside your organization. The decisions about how to use it responsibly are landing on your shoulders.
You'll leave with a map of the AI already running in your organization, a method for assessing any system for bias, privacy and ownership, clear criteria for deciding what to deploy and what to refuse, and a governance position in your own words that you could hand to a board or your agents.
Earn your Responsible AI Professional certificate by completing the assessments, practical exercises, and final capstone.
We finish Wednesday at 4:30, a few hours before Futureproof Festival opens.
Standard registration: $1,500 CAD. BC + AI members: $750 CAD.
Use your member access code to unlock the member ticket. Need a code? Email rap@bc-ai.ca before booking. Not a member yet? Join BC + AI for $340 CAD/year.
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, Founder, Creative Dynamics
“Viewing AI with this new lens has made me think hard about the ethics surrounding AI usage, and how I now look at developing tools.” - Bruce Ratzlaff, Sales & Operations Leader
“RAP gives you a zoomable drone's-eye view of the entire AI ethics and governance landscape.” - Daniel Bashaw, Learning-experience Designer
“Great theory, but more importantly, tools I can use immediately: a Personal AI Inventory, an Ethics Assessment, a Deployment Checklist.” - Jacquie Harder, Arc Nova Consulting
RAP Certification for AI Professionals & Practitioners
RAP (Responsible AI Professional) is a two-day in-person certification for leaders, executives and practitioners who need to understand, implement and govern responsible AI practices.
You'll work through real scenarios. Apply global frameworks (UNESCO, OECD, NIST, IEEE). Build 4 artifacts you'll use in your work, and walk out with a Personal AI Governance Statement you wrote yourself.
This is practical training. You'll build practices you can use in your work right away.
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.
Kerris Hougardy: Instructor. HR and people-strategy leader who partners with executives to build resilient, high-performing organizations, with expertise across leadership development, organizational culture, and talent strategy through change at scale. She's especially focused on the future of work: as technology reshapes organizations, Kerris sees HR leaders playing an essential role in navigating the relationship between humans and intelligent machines. A self-described "humanist in a technological age," she's passionate about enabling thoughtful, responsible Human + AI collaboration. RAP alumna.
Christabel Shaler: Facilitator. Christabel teaches high school Psychology in Vancouver and facilitates AI literacy learning for teachers and parents. She led Deep Learning in the Age of AI, a professional development day for teachers, and runs the What The Tech? parent workshops through Westside Family Place. Before teaching, she spent 15+ years in digital marketing and was one of the first social media strategists in Canada. She brings that inside knowledge of how attention systems are built into every room she facilitates, and helps people think clearly inside them.
Kris Krüg: 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 Professional Certification Commitment Timeline
Your commitment
9:00 AM to 4:30 PM on Tuesday October 27 and Wednesday October 28, at 1000 Parker St in Vancouver. An hour for lunch.
Before class, we'll send the required readings, one reflection prompt, and a short pre-course survey. Budget 2–3 hours for the pre-work.
Roughly 16 hours of focused effort all in.
Syllabus
Day 1: Foundations and core ethics
Morning: Foundations. Understanding AI and its limits
How AI systems actually work
The confidence-accuracy gap: why AI sounds right when it's wrong
Hallucinations and confabulation: when inaccuracy is annoying, and when it's dangerous
Global ethics frameworks: UNESCO, OECD, NIST, IEEE
Artifact: Personal AI Inventory. Your systems, and the accuracy risks sitting in them.
Afternoon: Core ethics. Bias, privacy and ownership
Bias and prediction: spotting algorithmic bias, understanding fairness definitions
Privacy: data collection, consent, the surveillance economy
Copyright and creative work: who owns AI inputs and outputs
Artifact: Ethics Assessment, worked from a real case study in table groups.
Day 2: Societal impact and the human element
Morning: Societal impact. Deployment, labor and environment
Deployment ethics: when is AI ready, and when should it never be used
Labor and work: displacement, augmentation, worker surveillance
Environmental impact: the carbon cost of computation
Artifact: Deployment Checklist, readiness criteria for a system you use.
Afternoon: 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
Capstone: Personal AI Governance Statement; for yourself, your business, your board, your agents.
Where you stand, what you'll commit to, and decisions you'll make differently when you're back at your desk.
You're in the right place if you:
Lead AI initiatives: You're overseeing AI deployments and need governance frameworks that actually work, not just policy documents that sit in a drawer.
Budget for your own development: You're an executive or senior professional who invests in capability building. You're not waiting for your employer to figure out what training matters.
Are in career transition: You have severance funds earmarked for upskilling, or you're pivoting into AI governance, or you're differentiating yourself as an AI practitioner who understands ethics.
Want to build a practice, not just get a credential: You're here to walk away with frameworks, artifacts, and ways of putting what you've learned into practice right away.
What You'll Walk Away With
1. RAP Certification: Completion of all assessments, practical exercises, and final capstone. Globally applicable, grounded in multiple frameworks (not just one jurisdiction or perspective).
2. Four Practical Artifacts:
Personal AI Inventory (your landscape map)
Ethics Assessment (your analysis methodology)
Deployment Checklist (your readiness criteria)
Personal AI Governance Statement (your capstone)
3. Alumni community: Stay connected with other RAP participants and the BC + AI ecosystem. BC + AI membership includes weekly Office Hours, community channels, and member event rates.
Responsible AI Capstone Projects
The first RAP cohort of 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
See the full capstone showcase playlist
BC + AI member pricing
Standard registration: $1,500 CAD.
BC + AI members: $750 CAD.
Individual membership: $340 CAD/year.
Join before booking and membership plus RAP totals $1,090 CAD, saving $410 CAD compared with the standard RAP ticket.
Join BC + AI if you are not already a member.
Enter your member access code on this event page to unlock the $750 member ticket. Member registrations are subject to approval.
Need a code? Email rap@bc-ai.ca before booking.
Membership includes weekly Office Hours, coworking, working groups, community channels, and member event rates. See membership details.
The Movement: BC + AI Ecosystem Association
This program is offered by 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.