Founding Board Member
- Founding Board — three seats
- Working board, not fiduciary governance
About CRAI
The most consequential technology of our generation is being trained on data that barely includes rural America. Ask an AI system for help running a ranch, a rural clinic, or a Main Street business, and it answers with assumptions built for a big city. At the same time, rural businesses are going invisible: not just to Google, but to the AI assistants people now ask for recommendations. CRAI works on both sides of that gap. We equip rural communities with the tools and capacity to compete in the AI economy and we make sure the people building AI have accurate rural data to build with. We launched in early 2026 — lean, fiscally sponsored, and already putting real products into real communities.
The Role
Help rural America lead in the AI economy — not get left out. The Center for Rural AI (CRAI) is forming its Founding Board, and we're looking for three exceptional leaders to build it with us.
This won't fix itself. The patterns being set in the next three years — whose data trains the models, whose businesses show up in the answers, whose communities are ready to use these tools — will hold for decades.
What we need now is a small circle of leaders to help us open doors to capital, guide strategic partnerships, and accelerate what's working.
Our Portfolio
- ▪Grant Agent — an AI agent, human-in-the-loop, that sources, qualifies, and drafts grant applications. Proven on our own pipeline and now in production with rural nonprofits, lowering the cost of chasing capital so more dollars stay in rural communities.
- ▪Wayfinder — makes rural businesses show up, accurately, in both traditional search and AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Claude. A direct, measurable revenue lever for the small businesses that anchor rural economies.
- ▪CAIR — gives communities a clear read on where they stand with AI and a prioritized path forward.
- ▪Lodestone — a “Rural Memory” that turns scattered public data and local knowledge into 100% citable and traceable, decision-ready intelligence, built to license to the institutions and agencies that serve rural America.
Why Join Now
- ▪This is a working, outcomes-focused board of three — high strategic impact without the administrative drag of traditional fiduciary governance.
- ▪You'll help decide whether rural America co-creates the AI economy or is shaped by it from the outside.
- ▪The payoff is concrete: thriving rural schools, healthier local economies, and a digital future where a zip code never decides someone's opportunity.
Who We're Looking For
- ▪Proven leaders across technology and AI, national nonprofits, rural policy, philanthropy, and higher education.
How to Apply
Express interest and schedule a briefing — reply to boardsearch@ruralai.org.
Email boardsearch@ruralai.org