Press Kit

Jill Heinze helps product leaders make smarter AI decisions through strategic intelligence and ground truth research. As founder of Saddle-Stitch Consulting, she brings 20 years of user research and competitive intelligence experience to help organizations navigate AI uncertainty, revealing what competitors miss and avoiding expensive mistakes before they happen. She serves as Responsible AI Program Director for The American College of Financial Services and hosts Responsible Tech Talks on LinkedIn Live.

Jill Heinze helps product leaders make smarter AI decisions through strategic intelligence and ground truth research. As founder of Saddle-Stitch Consulting, she reveals the gap between what organizations assume about AI and what users actually experience, helping them spot opportunities competitors miss and avoid expensive mistakes before they happen.

With 20 years of experience in user research, competitive intelligence, and digital product strategy, she's worked with Fortune 500 clients across financial services, healthcare, and technology. As Research Director and Lead of the Data and AI Research team at a major consultancy, she built an AI evaluation framework that guided high-stakes implementations and founded the firm's first executive AI governance committee.

Her approach combines market research rigor with practical implementation experience, bridging strategy and execution to help organizations navigate AI uncertainty with confidence.

She serves as Responsible AI Program Director for The American College of Financial Services, is a member of the AI Leadership Institute, and hosts Responsible Tech Talks on LinkedIn Live.

Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, Jill enjoys local wineries, sci-fi shows, cake decorating, and cat wrangling.

Jill Heinze helps product leaders make smarter AI decisions through strategic intelligence and ground truth research. As founder of Saddle-Stitch Consulting, she specializes in revealing the gap between what organizations assume about AI and what users actually experience, identifying opportunities competitors miss and risks that could derail launches before they become expensive lessons.

With 20 years of experience in user research, competitive intelligence, and digital product strategy, Jill has worked with C-level executives across financial services, healthcare, publishing, and technology to build products that solve real problems for real people. Her career began as an academic librarian, where she developed a commitment to connecting people with the information they need, which is a foundation that continues to drive her work helping organizations understand the human reality behind their technology decisions.

The public launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 catalyzed her focus on AI product strategy. As Research Director and Lead of the Data and AI Research team at a major digital consultancy, she built a responsible AI evaluation framework that Fortune 500 clients in high-stakes industries used to pilot generative AI with confidence. She also founded the consultancy's first executive AI governance committee and shaped its foundational AI policies, creating structures that enabled innovation rather than blocking it.

Today through Saddle-Stitch Consulting, she provides strategic intelligence that turns ground truth into competitive advantage. Her approach combines market research rigor with anticipatory design practices, helping organizations navigate AI uncertainty by surfacing what others overlook. While most focus on either pure strategy or technical implementation, she bridges both by translating user reality into decisions that create business value and stakeholder trust.

She serves as Responsible AI Program Director for The American College of Financial Services's Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics in Financial Services and was an Expert in Residence supporting the Nuelor AI Governance and Literacy Fellowship Program. She's a member of the AI Leadership Institute, has mentored emerging leaders through All Tech is Human, and hosts Responsible Tech Talks, a LinkedIn Live series featuring practitioners building production-grade tech with empathy.

When not working, Jill enjoys exploring Charlottesville, Virginia's local wineries, watching sci-fi shows, decorating cakes, and keeping her two cats out of mischief.