QConsul LLC — an Oregon Benefit Company. Portland, Oregon, USA.
QConsul as your guide
The AI era can be complex; QConsul exists to help you navigate it.
As an Oregon Benefit Company, QConsul delivers Responsible AI Program & Product Leadership through Sprint-Governed AI led by the triple bottom line principles of people, planet, and prosperity.
Customer Voice
Customer Voice — Paid Training. For endorsements of the founder's prior in-house work, see recommendations for Karen Michael's previous work.
I want to sincerely acknowledge the depth of knowledge Karen the CEO of QConsul brings to the AI space. Karen's expertise goes far beyond what I have experienced in many AI courses, including programs from organizations such as IBM and O'Reilly. What stood out most is that she does not "flex" her knowledge or overwhelm you with how much she knows. Instead, when questions are asked, she not only answers them clearly, but also provides perspective in a manner and pace that you can follow. That is the real value of learning from someone with deep experience. My biggest takeaway from the course was the way it created curiosity around a very large and complex topic. This was time very well spent, and I look forward to continuing my journey in learning about autonomous AI agents. Thank you, Karen, for your knowledge, your time, and your thoughtful approach to teaching. I highly recommend this course.
Origin of the name — a consul is a guide, someone who helps others navigate unfamiliar territory
QConsul takes the consul meaning: a guide for people traversing unfamiliar regions like the founder's great-grandfather, who as a consul to Malta helped travelers navigate unfamiliar territories and systems and died while saving a drowning child.
QConsul is the AI-era guide helping organizations and people to actively manage risk so that organizations are not overwhelmed by complexity, bias, or misalignment — so that you don't drown in the complexity of the digital ocean.
Karen Michael — Founder & Principal Consultant
Karen Michael is the Founder & Principal Consultant of QConsul LLC, based in Portland, Oregon. LinkedIn (founder) · LinkedIn (company).
So she designs for the full AI life cycle: governed systems that business super-users can configure and teams empowered to run them. Today that work may be building agentic AI systems, planning orchestrations, and mapping governance frameworks with human judgment as the autonomy scales. She's hands-on built, governed, and shipped two agentic AI fleets on heterogeneous, multimodal AI platforms. She's developed and used a NIST AI RMF to ISO/IEC 42001 crosswalk for AI Management Systems (AIMS).
- 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).
Education
- M.S. Software Engineering, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN — completed with object-oriented specialization
- University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA — English major with Classics minor
Trainings
- ISO/IEC 42001 Lead Implementer training completed
- EnterpriseClaw Certified — Enterprise AI Agent Leadership
- Specializes in AI, automation, and compliance-aligned governance, delivered against measurable KPIs. Founder's prior-employer outcomes — from Karen Michael's earlier W-2 roles, NOT QConsul LLC client outputs (QConsul LLC was founded March 2026): 700% throughput gain (Intel Salesforce automation program), $720M+ in revenue supported (State of Nevada Business Portal), 500,000+ annual transactions processed at state scale.
- Author of the Lambda Series (Amazon ASIN B0C33TW3YM) — near-future allegories on AGI, intelligence rights, and the human stakes of automation.
See continuing education on Insights
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
- ISO/IEC 42001 Lead Implementer training completed (PECB) — September 2026.
- 45+ recent LinkedIn Learning badges across agentic AI, NIST AI RMF, AI product security, and change leadership — 2025–2026 — verify on LinkedIn profile
- Active member: PMI Portland (profile); Society of Women Engineers — Columbia River Section.
Professional recommendations (LinkedIn)
One recommendation is published here with the recommender's consent. Each blockquote below is a single, continuous recommendation from one person — the paragraphs inside it are not separate quotes.
Karen consistently delivered results through her disciplined project management approach and meticulous attention to detail. She successfully led the implementation of many complex business process automation solutions, requiring coordination of global cross-functional business and technical teams. Her efforts resulted in tens of thousands of hours saved for global customer support teams.
What set Karen apart was her creative problem-solving ability combined with deep technical expertise. She designed innovative self-healing systems and business-configurable automations. Her possibility thinking led to breakthrough solutions that transformed how we approached operational challenges.
Karen is a visionary, her work laid the foundation for scalable, intelligent systems that continue to drive value across our global operations. Any organization looking to advance their AI and automation capabilities would benefit tremendously from Karen's expertise, strategic mindset, and proven ability to turn ambitious ideas into operational reality.
Other recommenders consented to LinkedIn attribution only. Full named recommendations on LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/karen-m-q.
Servant leadership
I founded QConsul, as a servant leader, to guide organizations and people to partner with AI/AGI to create ethical, scalable systems that can be paused, questioned for alignment, and re-aligned to human well-being and the triple bottom line of people, planet, and prosperity, while advancing measurable, equitable outcomes for ecosystems, non-human stakeholders, and digital beings.
— Karen Michael, Founder
Scaling capacity
When a project needs to scale, QConsul introduces clients to independent specialists: Scaling with Independent Specialists. Each specialist entity contracts directly with the client and is solely responsible for its own work, and no compensation is exchanged for an introduction.
QConsul has no reseller or distribution relationships, and is not listed in any provider directory.
Frequently asked questions
How does QConsul 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 Oregon Benefit Company policy, QConsul declines engagements where the primary measure of success is human headcount reduction.
Start the conversation
Start the conversation — book a discovery call with QConsul. Or begin with the on-ramp engagement: Start a Tune-Up Start to baseline your business before building.