Will Croushorn is the Product Lead for FreshAi at The Wendy’s Company, where he has led one of the largest real-world deployments of generative AI in commerce, serving more than 45 million guests and processing over 150,000 daily orders across 600+ restaurant locations. FreshAi was named one of Fast Company’s “Next Big Things in Tech” in 2024 and featured on NBC Nightly News for its transformative impact on the quick-service restaurant industry. Mr. Croushorn received the AI Product Launch of the Year award from the Enterprise Technology Association and the Wendy’s Cornerstone Award (2024) for his leadership of FreshAi’s product strategy and mass deployment.
Mr. Croushorn’s work addresses the full product lifecycle of enterprise AI, spanning system architecture and NLU refinement in partnership with Google Cloud and Accenture, to multi-modal integration of voice, vision, and real-time tracking in the physical drive-thru environment. A particular focus of his work has been business change management and enterprise AI adoption at scale, guiding large organizations through the operational, cultural, and behavioral dimensions of deploying AI in high-volume consumer environments. He has developed behavior-based feedback systems refined at the syllable level, drawing on behavioral psychology to optimize agent trust and crew adoption at scale, with a consistent focus on accessibility and inclusive design for customers across diverse speech patterns and languages.
Mr. Croushorn is a speaker on applied AI and enterprise adoption at leading technology and academic forums, including Google Next, Vanderbilt University’s AI Summer School, and the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Prior to his work in AI, Mr. Croushorn co-founded the Global English Language Institute in Zakho, Iraq, the first English language school in the region, expanding educational access to underserved communities.
Mr. Croushorn holds a Master of Business Administration and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations: Politics and Policy. He holds a Google Project Management certification.
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Most AI prototypes never become products. This 12-hour live course is an AI course for product managers, engineering leaders, and technologists responsible for closing that gap. Across eight 90-minute sessions, participants architect and diagnose real AI products, evaluate the failure modes of probabilistic systems, and develop the field research methodology required to ship AI that delivers genuine value. Participants leave with a diagnostic toolkit they can apply to any AI initiative inside their organization — and a pitch refined against that toolkit in a structured capstone with peer and instructor critique.
Most AI prototypes never become products. This 12-hour live course is built for the people responsible for closing that gap. Across eight 90-minute sessions, participants architect and diagnose real AI products, evaluate how probabilistic systems fail in high-consequence environments, and develop the field research methods required to ship AI that delivers genuine value. Participants leave with a diagnostic toolkit they can apply to any AI initiative, and a pitch refined against it in a structured capstone.