Independent AI Advisor · Behavioral Data Scientist · Doctoral Researcher

 

Most organizations know what AI can do. Very few know what it's actually doing.

 

Maria Alice Maia works at the exact intersection where human decision-making and AI behavior collide: the place conventional audits miss, where emergent risk accumulates silently, and where the cost of misplaced trust compounds before anyone notices.

 

She is not a software vendor. Not a framework consultant. She's an independent advisor whose combination is rare: behavioral data scientist trained at UC Berkeley, doctoral researcher in AI and organizational behavior at FGV EBAPE, and a decade of executive leadership at Itaú, Stone, ABInBev, and Ambev, where she saw from the inside what happens when the pressure to adopt outpaces the capacity to understand.

 

She also collaborated with researchers at Oxford and HEC Paris, and presented at CERALE–FGV EBAPE 2026. Her current research focuses on how organizations are represented in generative AI search, and whether that representation can be governed.