Leadership

James E. Malackowski

Chairman & Founding Director

James E. Malackowski brings four decades of leadership at the intersection of intellectual property, finance, and technology. As Chairman and Founding Director of AIQA Global, he leads the development of the AIQ™ Score — the first proprietary methodology for rating enterprise AI governance quality.

Mr. Malackowski serves concurrently as Chief Intellectual Property Officer (CIPO) of JS Held LLC, a 2,000-person global consulting firm, where he shares direct responsibility for the firm’s artificial intelligence strategy — providing hands-on operational experience in AI governance, deployment, and risk management that directly informs AIQA’s scoring methodology.

He is the co-founder of Ocean Tomo, a J.S. Held company, where he created the Ocean Tomo 300® Patent Index (NYSE: OTPAT) — the first major equity index to select companies based on intellectual property value — and the patented OTR™ PatentRatings system (U.S. Patent No. 6,556,992). Over its first decade, the OT300 outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 1,600 basis points.

Mr. Malackowski was inducted into the IP Hall of Fame in 2022 (alongside Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer) and received the LES Gold Medal in 2025 — the highest honor in the global business of intellectual property. He is only the seventh individual in history to hold both distinctions. He is Past President of both the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) and LES USA & Canada.

Mr. Malackowski is a participant in the inaugural 2025 cohort of Georgetown University’s Master’s in AI Management program — the first accredited graduate degree of its kind. He holds a BBA, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Notre Dame with majors in Accountancy and Philosophy, and is a Registered CPA (Illinois), CFF, ABV, and Certified Licensing Professional.

He serves as a director and advisor to several AI-centric companies including Positive Growth Ventures LLC, encant.ai, and Berg Health LLC, and has served as a testifying expert in leading AI/ML copyright cases including Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence and New York Times v. Microsoft/OpenAI.

Chase J. Malackowski

Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer, Head of Product

Chase J. Malackowski is AIQA Global’s Co-Founder and Managing Director, bringing contemporary fluency in machine learning, data governance, and AI ethics to the firm’s methodology and product development.

He is currently completing graduate studies at Georgetown University in Artificial Intelligence Management (AIM) as part of the program’s inaugural 2025 cohort, and is an alumnus of the University of Southern California Iovine & Young Academy — USC’s interdisciplinary entrepreneurship program. He previously founded Career Capture, an AI-powered video recruiting platform.

Joel Lutzker

Managing Director & General Counsel

Joel Lutzker is the Managing Director and General Counsel of AIQA Global. A registered patent attorney with over 40 years of experience in intellectual property law, he previously served as Managing Director, General Counsel, and CIPO at Ocean Tomo.

Joel has been a pivotal force in the support and expansion of the Ocean Tomo PatentRatings® system, the industry’s first market-validated platform for objectively assessing patent quality. His expertise in the statistical methodology of patent valuation is evidenced by his role as a co-inventor on the foundational ratings patent application, which established new standards for identifying and commercializing IP assets.

Joel has extensive experience representing high-tech companies in complex IP matters, including multi-billion dollar M&A transactions, licensing negotiations, and federal court litigation. He holds a B.A. in Physics from New York University and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

Maria Ross

Chief Operating Officer, Insurance Market Segment Leader

Maria Ross is a transformational executive and operating leader with nearly three decades of experience driving growth, modernization, and enterprise performance across consulting, financial services, and global insurance. She has built, scaled, and optimized global businesses through AI, digital innovation, and operational excellence. As Chief Operating Officer of AIQA Global, she leads the company’s commercial operations, client delivery, and operating execution, while also spearheading go-to-market strategy for the insurance sector as the company expands its leadership in AI trust, governance, and quality assurance.

Maria has a proven track record of building new capabilities, scaling enterprise functions, and delivering measurable results for Fortune 500 organizations and multinational clients. Across her career, she has led large-scale initiatives spanning AI enablement, automation, operating model redesign, customer experience, and data-driven transformation, delivering more than $1 billion in quantified business value.

Prior to joining AIQA Global, Maria held senior leadership roles at Chubb and MetLife, where she built and scaled global transformation, AI, and automation capabilities. She led multi-million-dollar transformation portfolios across operations, technology, finance, and product in more than 50 countries and 40+ markets, accelerating speed-to-market, improving customer experience, and establishing governance models that enabled sustainable growth.

Earlier in her career, Maria was the first U.S. hire at WDScott Consulting, where she built and scaled the firm’s U.S. transformation and value consulting practice. Following its integration into FTI Consulting, she continued in a senior leadership role advising clients across financial services, healthcare, public sector, and multinational industries throughout North America, Europe, and APAC.

Known for combining strategic vision with disciplined execution, Maria brings a unique blend of technology, data, and operational leadership that helps organizations translate innovation into scalable, trusted, enterprise-grade results. She holds advanced degrees in Management & Information Systems and English Literature, is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish.