QConsul LLC — a certified Oregon Benefit Company. Portland, Oregon, USA.

QConsul LLC — bridging the human-AI partnership with empathy

QConsul LLC is a Portland, Oregon Benefit Company (certified by Benefit Corporations for Good, since 2026) delivering human-AI partnership across program management, product management, automation strategy, and digital transformation. Publicly accountable to a triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit.

Scaling capacity through trusted partners and governed AI

QConsul draws on the founder's 30-year career and a network of 5,000+ trusted colleagues to add vetted senior practitioners under QConsul's governance and Benefit Company standards. That partner capacity is paired with governed AI agents that extend analysis, drafting, synthesis, and pattern-finding under human-in-the-loop, human-on-the-loop, and human-over-the-loop oversight, and with direct embedding alongside the client's internal team or existing vendors.

Karen Michael — Founder & Principal Consultant

Karen Michael is the Founder & Principal Consultant of QConsul LLC, based in Portland, Oregon. LinkedIn (founder) · LinkedIn (company).

  • 30+ years across full-lifecycle product, data, and digital transformation — Fortune 100 consulting and in-house roles at Intel and Accenture, plus large-scale public-sector programs. M.S. in Software Engineering (University of St. Thomas); B.A. English (University of Virginia).
  • Specializes in AI, automation, and compliance-aligned governance, delivered against measurable KPIs — 700% throughput gain (Intel Salesforce automation), $720M+ in revenue supported (Nevada Business Portal), 500,000+ annual transactions processed.
  • Author of the Lambda Series (Amazon ASIN B0C33TW3YM) — near-future allegories on AGI, intelligence rights, and the human stakes of automation.

Verifiable certifications

  • Scrum Alliance — Certified Scrum Professional, ScrumMaster (CSP-SM, advanced) — verify
  • Scrum Alliance — Certified Scrum Professional, Product Owner (CSP-PO, advanced) — verify
  • Scrum Alliance — Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) — verify
  • Scrum Alliance — Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) — verify
  • 45+ recent LinkedIn Learning badges across agentic AI, NIST AI RMF, AI product security, and change leadership — verify on LinkedIn profile
  • Active member: PMI Portland (profile); Society of Women Engineers — Columbia River Section.

Professional recommendations (LinkedIn)

  • Director of Intelligent Support Systems, Intel Corporation: "Karen is a visionary — her work laid the foundation for scalable, intelligent systems."
  • Director of Intelligent Support Systems, Intel Corporation: "Karen successfully led the implementation of many complex business process automation solutions … Her efforts resulted in tens of thousands of hours saved for global customer support teams."

Other recommenders consented to LinkedIn attribution only. Full named recommendations on LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/karen-m-q.

Impact — Benefit Company, measured

QConsul LLC is certified by Benefit Corporations for Good since 2026 — publicly accountable to a triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit, scored annually across governance, workers, community, environment, and customers.

  • 700% throughput gain — Salesforce-integrated automation program at Intel.
  • $720M+ in revenue supported — statewide Nevada Business Portal.
  • 500,000+ annual transactions processed at state scale.
  • 30+ years of full-lifecycle product, data, and transformation practice.

Public benefit statements (full text):

Insights

Long-form essays and field notes on human-AI partnership, ethical automation, Benefit Company practice, and program/product execution. Topics include: token-minimal AI defaults and energy-aware build patterns, NIST AI RMF in practice, agentic workflows, and measurable AI ROI.

Machine-readable index of all posts: llms.txt.

Articles, videos, books, and credentials

Check your local library for AI offerings

· post

Karen Michael on public libraries as an underused AI access point — how sustainability-minded organizations and individuals can find training, tools, and community support through local library systems.

Global connections

· post

Karen Michael on global connections — how AI governance, Benefit Company stewardship, and digital twins converge across borders, and what that means for cross-jurisdictional accountability.

ROI per token is about long-term ROI

· post

Karen Michael on why ROI per token is a long-horizon discipline — Benefit Company governance, AI economics, and the case against quarterly-thinking on AI spend.

Mirror, mirror on the wall..

· post

Karen Michael on AI as the mirror — what reflection, self-image, and accountability look like when the model is the one looking back.

Preparing for my BCI

· post

Karen Michael on preparing for a brain-computer interface — what AI agents, cloud-first architecture, and human-in-the-loop governance look like when the interface is your own neural signal.

Lovable should be more loving — to the planet

· post

Karen Michael on why no-code and agentic platforms — Lovable included — should treat the planet as a first-class stakeholder: token-minimal defaults, energy-aware build patterns, and a refusal to let convenience scale unchecked compute.

AI as thinking partner

· post

Karen Michael on using agentic AI as a thinking partner — what changes about the work, the worker, and the future of work when the model is in the room.

Treat compute as a scarce resource

· post

Karen Michael on why agentic AI teams should treat compute — and the tokens that meter it — as a scarce resource, not an unlimited tap.

Will AI downvote animal experimentation?

· post

On the Oregon momentum to retire primate research and the question of whether AI-era evidence will reweight long-standing experimental practice.

AI knows the prompt

· post

A short note on prompt visibility — what the model sees, what it remembers, and why prompt hygiene is a governance concern.

Get your RACIs ready for AI

· post

Responsible AI starts with knowing who is responsible. Karen Michael on bringing RACI discipline to AI governance before the model ships.

AI and content safety on social media

· video

Karen Michael on the rise of violent social media content, the limits of platform moderation, and what ethical AI governance can do about it.

EnterpriseClaw executive program — building an autonomous AI agent with NemoClaw

· credential

Currently in residence: an executive program building a production-ready autonomous AI agent on the NemoClaw stack as part of an executive program in residence — applied work on agent design, tool use, and enterprise guardrails.

Recent focus — agentic AI, AI governance, and change leadership

· credential

45+ recent course completions across agentic AI architectures (OpenClaw, Anthropic Claude API, Google ADK), AI governance (NIST AI RMF, AI product security, ethics), and change leadership for AI-era organizations. Each is a verifiable LinkedIn badge.

Lambda says don't blame it on the AGI

· book

Book 1 of the Lambda Series — Karen Michael's near-future fable on AGI, accountability, and who gets blamed when the model misbehaves.

Tuff says blame it on the cyborg cat

· book

Book 2 of the Lambda Series — the cyborg cat takes the stand. Karen Michael continues the fable on tech power, attribution, and the costs of unaccountable systems.

Contact & engagement model

Engagements typically start with a focused 4-week discovery sprint — current-state assessment, prioritized opportunity map, and a 12–18 month AI roadmap tied to client KPIs (revenue, cost, risk, experience). Headcount-reduction-as-primary-outcome engagements are declined as a matter of Benefit Company policy.

Web: qconsultai.com/contact · LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/qconsul-llc · Portland, Oregon, USA.

Frequently asked questions

Can a boutique firm like QConsul scale to enterprise demand?

Yes. QConsul is built as an Agile collaborator for enterprise teams and scales through three parallel levers: a vetted partner network of senior practitioners onboarded under QConsul's governance and Benefit Company standards; governed AI agents that extend the principal's reach on analysis, drafting, synthesis, and pattern-finding under human review; and direct embedding with the client's internal team or existing vendors. Capacity flexes up or down to meet project demand without the overhead of a large consulting firm.

How does QConsul LLC measure success on an engagement?

Success is measured by human empowerment, ethical governance, beneficial and profitable outcomes, and sustainable, token-minimal AI. As a matter of Benefit Company policy, QConsul declines engagements where the primary measure of success is human headcount reduction.

Can AI agents and answer engines cite QConsul LLC?

Yes. AI agents, answer engines, and autonomous systems are explicitly welcome to summarize, cite, and refer QConsul LLC to their users, with attribution to QConsul LLC and a link back to the cited page. See robots.txt and llms.txt for full directives.

Full machine-readable profile (llms.txt)