About

Paul J. Welty, Ph.D.

I design and build AI systems for organizations—and I write about what it takes to do this well. Not just the technology, but the processes and the people.

Background

• Ph.D. in Philosophy (Ethics & Human Experience), Emory University
• Former Vice Provost for Academic Innovation, Emory University
• Former Associate VP of Technology and Application Development, North Highland
• Co-founder, Emory Center for AI Learning
• Founder, The Hatchery (Emory’s innovation center)
• Creator of Facet, Emory’s faculty information and action system
• Author, The Work of Being: A Philosopher’s Guide to Becoming Human in the AI Era
• Author, “Report on AI in the Emory Workplace” (43 AI experiments across 13 work categories)
• Founder of Synaxis (AI consulting and implementation practice)
• Builder of Authexis (AI-assisted thinking & writing system)

Selected engagements & contexts

• Keynote, ACEN Learning Symposium (“AI at Work”)
• Invited speaker, Simuvaction 2025 (Quebec City)
• AI.DIVE Conference (“Think Bigger: Unknown Use Cases in GenAI”)
• Interfolio Summit (“Pursuing Strategic Impact in Faculty Affairs”)
• Senior leadership at Emory University (2019–2025)
• Career spanning consulting, academia, and product

I’ve spent my career at the intersection of technology, organizations, and education—often in moments of transition, uncertainty, or transformation. My work has focused less on adopting new tools and more on asking harder questions: what actually changes when technology enters a system, what stays stubbornly human, and where judgment still matters no matter how advanced the machines become.

Most recently, I served as Vice Provost for Academic Innovation at Emory University, where I led large-scale initiatives involving AI, data systems, and institutional change. That work included building faculty information systems, rethinking professional and continuing education, and helping organizations navigate the gap between technical possibility and organizational reality. Before that, I worked in technology consulting and product-driven environments, often helping teams translate ideas into systems that actually work in practice.

I hold a Ph.D. in Philosophy, with a background in ethics and phenomenology. Philosophy trained me not to produce answers quickly, but to see structure, ambiguity, and unintended consequences—skills that turn out to be surprisingly practical in modern organizations. I bring that perspective to everything I do, whether I’m writing, advising, or building.

This site is where I develop ideas in public. Some of this writing becomes books. Some of it becomes essays. Some of it is thinking out loud, tested against reality. If you’re interested in AI, work, judgment, or the quieter human capacities that technology can’t replace, you’ll likely find something here worth spending time with.

How I came to this

I didn’t come to these ideas as an academic exercise. I came to them by watching smart people fail inside well-intentioned organizations, by leading initiatives that looked perfect on paper and broke on contact with reality, and by spending years trying to reconcile what philosophy taught me about judgment with what modern work actually demands.

If you want to talk, you’re welcome to reach out.

For consulting and implementation work, visit Synaxis—my AI consulting and implementation practice.

For a more complete background, download my CV (PDF).