About Zak
I’m a Calgary-based AI strategist, founder of ORKA AI. I was born in Tanzania, East Africa, and Calgary has been home since I was four months old.
That beginning shaped how I see business. I respect what people have built, but I do not assume the familiar way is the only way. I also do not treat a new tool as progress until it improves the work.
I help business leaders decide where AI belongs, what deserves budget and ownership, and how to turn that decision into a roadmap their organization can use.
Based in Calgary. Working across Alberta and Western Canada, with national and virtual engagements available.
I help leaders decide what deserves to be built
AI is already appearing inside most organizations through ChatGPT, Copilot, meeting recorders, CRM features and employee-built workflows. The activity is visible. The full picture usually is not.
I map the tools, workflows, data, owners and risks first. Then I rank the opportunities and help leadership decide what should move forward, what needs guardrails and what should be left alone.
That work can lead to an AI Readiness Audit, an executive roadmap, a governance framework, a workshop, workflow automation or a focused AI agent system. The sequence depends on what the organization can support and what result is worth pursuing.
More than a decade of building before AI
Before AIwithZAK and ORKA AI, I spent more than a decade building businesses, digital platforms, media, campaigns and community projects from Calgary.
That experience gave me an operator’s view of how organizations actually work. I saw tools purchased before the process was understood, knowledge held by only one or two people, handoffs nobody fully owned and systems that created more administration than they removed.
My path into AI strategy grew from that work. AI created new ways to improve those systems, but it also made judgment more important. Someone still had to decide what was worth changing, what information needed protection and what the business should expect in return.
That is the work I do now.
Speaking, workshops and executive sessions
I deliver keynotes, board briefings, executive sessions, association presentations, municipal briefings and workshops across Alberta and Western Canada, with national and virtual bookings available.
Sessions are built around the decisions facing the room. That may mean understanding AI risk, choosing the first workflow, preparing a leadership team, protecting institutional knowledge or developing a 90-day implementation direction.
Why Alberta history shapes how I read a business
I have always been pulled toward the history of the West: the railways, ranches, irrigation canals, grain elevators, oil booms and towns that grew or emptied out depending on what was built nearby.
Each shift was carried by technology, but the outcome depended on infrastructure, economics, human behaviour and who adapted.
I see AI through the same lens.
When I walk into a business, I look at what the company built over twenty or thirty years that deserves to carry forward. I want to know which knowledge lives only in the heads of a few people, which process has outlived its original purpose and which supposedly outdated practice is still doing its job for a good reason.
A grain elevator, a rail siding or a process someone set up a decade ago usually exists for a reason. Sometimes that reason is gone. Sometimes it remains. I want to understand which before recommending that anything be automated.
That is also why I care about capturing what a retiring estimator, superintendent, rancher or operations manager knows before it leaves with them. AI can help preserve that institutional memory and make it useful to the next person responsible for the work.
I would rather be known as the strategist who understands what deserves to carry forward than the one chasing whatever tool launched this month.
Work with ZAK
Tell me what your organization is trying to solve, what has already been tried and where the decision is stuck. From there, we can determine the next step worth taking.
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