Fabio Correa, DBA

AI Transformation Leader | Director of Business Analytics, Microsoft

Director of Business Analytics at Microsoft leading AI transformation for a 25-person advanced analytics organization. The mandate is end-to-end: set the multi-year AI and analytics strategy, redesign the work so AI removes steps instead of adding tools, and deliver measurable operating outcomes, including higher project quality and throughput at stable headcount, analyst time cut 94% through production AI, and platform costs cut by at least 50%. Underneath, the work runs on methodology plus technology: a methodologist who builds the infrastructure, data platforms, and AI systems that several methodologists and their analytics programs run on. Microsoft's survey portfolio (all customer, partner, and employee surveys: 3.5M invitations per year on Qualtrics XM, analytics across 45+ languages) is the current operating context and proof of scale, not the boundary of the expertise. Author of The Defensible Decision and Loop Engineering, and creator of AIRS-16, a 16-dimension AI readiness assessment validated in a research program (N=523).

Experience

Director of Business Analytics

Microsoft Corporation (2021-09 - Present)

Accountable for AI transformation strategy and operating outcomes across advanced analytics in Microsoft's GCX Data Operations US organization: which work gets automated, which quality standard it must meet, and how throughput improves without adding headcount. Methodologist and infrastructure leader supporting several methodologists with data platforms and AI. Direct team of 25 (data engineers, data scientists, AI specialists, project managers, tech leads), with engineering execution extended through an outsourced Capgemini delivery team.

Own Microsoft's entire survey portfolio (all customer, partner, and employee surveys) on Qualtrics XM: 3.5M survey invitations per year, with data feeds and dashboards serving product divisions and timezone leadership worldwide, and individual insights reaching 30,000+ employees.
Built the survey contact-management infrastructure that matches the right contact to the right survey for in-the-moment feedback, then migrated it from a SQL-based platform to Microsoft Fabric, reducing infrastructure costs by at least 50% and cutting some processing times from hours to minutes. Layered Viva Insights engagement telemetry on top to profile the full respondent journey.
Pioneered Azure OpenAI and LLM integration for quantitative and qualitative survey analytics; the LLM interview-analysis system produces standardized executive summaries at 95% analysis accuracy, cut vendor costs, and helped reduce analyst time by 94% through production AI.
Piloting AI-assisted project intake with M365 Copilot and Work IQ: intake calls are processed to generate Business Requirements Documents (BRDs) and Technical Requirements Documents (TRDs) and to create Azure DevOps work items automatically, cutting the time Product Managers, Project Managers, and Technical Leads spend on routine intake and documentation work by 80%, with the saved time reinvested in value-added work and quality verification.
Leading AI-driven survey localization across the 45+ language portfolio, a program now gaining momentum across the survey operation.
Built Crisis Copilot, a multilingual AI experiment that helps Customer Success Account Managers respond to customer crises without language barriers.
Architected enterprise predictive analytics and BI programs reaching 30,000 sellers and 175,000 commercial customers; consolidated technical teams across three vendors into one operating model; set multi-year analytics and AI strategy with C-suite and cross-functional leaders.
Leading a platform modernization that removes steps from survey and analytics processes rather than adding AI for its own sake, applying Six Sigma methods to find and eliminate waste.

Founder & Principal Investigator

AI Readiness Scale (AIRS) Research Program (2024-08 - Present)

Founded and led the AIRS research program during doctoral studies: designed, validated, and deployed a 16-item psychometric instrument measuring organizational readiness for AI adoption across N=523 enterprise respondents.

Founded and led multi-year research program producing AIRS, a psychometrically validated diagnostic instrument for measuring enterprise AI adoption readiness.
Designed 10-phase validation protocol: split-sample EFA/CFA, structural equation modeling, multi-group invariance testing across roles, sectors, and AI tool maturity.
Delivered N=523 validation study with CFI=.975, R²=.852 (16-item instrument); key finding: Price Value (β=.505) dominates AI adoption decisions, challenging 30+ years of UTAUT research.
Extended UTAUT2 framework with AI-specific constructs; the instrument is offered free to individuals as the AIRS Enterprise assessment (airs.correax.com), with hundreds of individual users.
Conducted as part of doctoral research at Touro University Worldwide (DBA 2026).

Adjunct Professor, AI and Machine Learning

Kaplan Business School (2021-07 - 2025-01)

Graduate-level instruction in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and business analytics applications.

Designed and delivered graduate AI/ML curriculum with applied business analytics case studies for international student cohorts
Modernized the graduate business analytics course by introducing low-code and no-code alternatives to traditional programming-heavy approaches

Senior Business Program Manager, Data Scientist, Customer and Partner Experience

Microsoft Corporation (2016 - 2021-09)

Created churn and satisfaction prediction for Microsoft's top commercial customers and modernized the company's customer and partner satisfaction measurement strategy for the CEO and his direct reports.

Created churn and satisfaction prediction for Microsoft's top 57,000 commercial customers using AI and machine learning across 37 internal and external data sources; performed the program management, technical PM, data scientist, BI engineer, and coding roles hands-on before earning sponsorship to build a team.
Modernized Microsoft's customer and partner satisfaction measurement strategy and tooling for the CEO and his direct reports (the 'One Microsoft' view), with accountability frameworks behind the 'Customer Obsessed' culture reaching 80,000+ employees.
Featured in Harvard Business Review (December 2018), 'A Look into Microsoft's Data-Driven Approach to Improving Sales.'
Led Power BI adoption and data storytelling across a 400+ person organization.

Business Program Manager, Worldwide Licensing & Pricing

Microsoft Corporation (2013-09 - 2016)

Led customer experience programs for Microsoft's volume licensing business ($35B+ revenue), with design principles for product and volume licensing programs adopted company-wide.

Led customer experience programs for Microsoft's volume licensing business ($35B+ revenue); design principles for product and volume licensing programs adopted company-wide.
Built the rhythm-of-business (ROB) process to triage customer issues with corporate vice-president level participants; raised volume licensing customer satisfaction by 10 points.

WW Customer & Partner Experience Lead, Microsoft Premier Services

Microsoft Corporation (2011-01 - 2013-09)

Led customer experience and Voice of Customer analytics programs across Microsoft Premier Services worldwide.

Increased Office 365 customer satisfaction by 135 points in 2 years through quality program design
Increased customer loyalty to Office 365 Dedicated service by 50 points
Landed Premier CPE field execution guidance across 3,000+ headcount in 13 geographies
Led monthly leadership calls with 40+ SMSG and BG/PG leaders to drive quality improvement using VOC
Drove cross-BG collaboration across Premier, MCS, Cloud Vantage and EPG

Earlier Microsoft Roles, Latin America & US

Microsoft Corporation

Progressive analytics, sales-excellence, and customer-experience roles spanning Latin America and US enterprise organizations at Microsoft.

Business Development Manager, Regional Alliance & Sales Excellence: Managed Dell, SAP, Nortel, Intel, and Cray alliances; established Latin America partner sales models; key competitive wins vs. IBM, Cisco, Google, Oracle, Linux, VMware
WW Enterprise CPE & Partner Satisfaction Lead, EPG: Created executive-level customer insight program; designed feedback system used with top 142 global C-level executives; received four corporate top awards for performance excellence
Enterprise CPE & Security Lead, EPG: Improved Microsoft Latin America security perception by 10 points after 4 consecutive years of decline; trained 85 Six Sigma Green Belts and 3 Black Belts; generated $7.5M in savings

Consultant

Independent Consulting (Microsoft Market Research)

Customer-experience and market-research consulting for Microsoft's enterprise support and Office 365 organizations.

Redesigned Microsoft's enterprise support and consulting CSAT measurement trackers (~30M transactions annually, 35 surveys)
Consulted with Office 365 and OEM Premier Support teams on quality strategy
Developed survey design manual for Microsoft Services market research department
Helped revamp Microsoft's customer and partner listening posts and market research strategy

Education

Touro University Worldwide: Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) - Human-AI Collaboration and Future of Work - 2026-04
Northwest University, Kirkland: Master of Science - Data Analysis & Research Psychology - 2022-05
Northwest University, Kirkland: Bachelor of Arts - Interdisciplinary Studies (Business Management and Sciences) - 2021
MIT Sloan Executive Education: Executive Certificate - Management and Leadership
Southern Methodist University, Cox School of Business: Certificate - Short Executive MBA Program
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil: Bachelor of Science - Electrical Engineering

Research

AI Readiness Scale (AIRS) Research Program: Founded and led multi-year research program producing a psychometrically validated diagnostic instrument for measuring AI adoption readiness in enterprise contexts. Extended UTAUT2 framework with 10-phase validation including split-sample EFA/CFA, SEM, and multi-group invariance testing. Offered free to individuals as the AIRS Enterprise assessment (airs.correax.com), with hundreds of individual users.
Alex ACT ONE: 60-skill personal AI agent toolkit (critical thinking, data visualization, code review, research pipelines); intellectual property fully owned. A personal project used to augment my work at Microsoft and my side research and projects, applied across 200+ projects in my professional and personal GitHub repositories.
Alex Cognitive Architecture: Biologically-inspired memory architecture for AI assistants: procedural, episodic, and semantic memory systems with synaptic connections, cross-project knowledge transfer, and a living identity layer.
Artificial Critical Thinking (ACT): Reasoning discipline for AI agents that imports hypothesis testing, falsifiability, and calibration from the human-reasoning literature into how AI systems think. Operationalizes the methodological bridge as runtime cognitive machinery: 27 always-on behaviors covering critical thinking, hypothesis-driven debugging, knowledge coverage, memory formation, and ethical reasoning.