What happens to human judgment when AI does the thinking?
The Center for Deeply Human Leadership (CDHL) is an independent research institute investigating what sustained AI-assisted decision-making does to the human brain, discernment, and moral agency.
This is the question no one is studying in an integrated way. We believe the answer will define how the next generation leads, decides, and thrives.
The Gap No One Is Filling
Organizations are investing in AI at an unprecedented pace. The models are scaling, the platforms are deploying and the tools are multiplying.
But almost no one is asking what all of this is doing to the people making the decisions.
For every dollar organizations spend on AI capabilities, less than one cent goes toward understanding how AI environments affect the humans using them. Meanwhile, research from MIT’s NANDA initiative suggests that the vast majority of enterprise AI pilots fail to deliver expected transformation. The technology is not the bottleneck. The human side of the equation is where transformation stalls, and it is the most underserved variable in the system.
The direction and magnitude of AI’s impact on human cognition, discernment, and decision quality is not yet known. That uncertainty is not a reason to wait. It is precisely what makes this research urgent.
The Research Ahead
CDHL is designing a rigorous, phased research program at the intersection of three domains that are typically studied in isolation:
Brain health & neurological activation — what happens to the neural circuits responsible for judgment and independent reasoning when AI absorbs more of our cognitive labor?
Physiological coherence — how do measurable states of coherence (cardiac, neural, somatic) correlate with decision quality and the capacity to override AI recommendations when human judgment says otherwise?
Cognitive autonomy & decision quality — how do we distinguish genuine human authorship of a decision from simple ratification of what an algorithm suggests? And how do we measure whether that distinction is shifting over time?
The research is designed in phases: beginning with controlled environments that compare independent and AI-assisted decision-making, extending to longitudinal organizational studies as AI systems deploy, and ultimately producing evidence-based design principles for human-in-the-loop architecture that preserves executive function and moral agency.
We are in the design and partnership phase now, building the scientific foundation and the coalition of researchers, institutions, and funders who will bring this work to life.
Why This Institute, Why Now
Independent of AI companies. The credibility of this research depends on it being conducted without commercial AI interests shaping the questions, the methods, or the findings. CDHL operates independently, ensuring the objective science that only an independent institute can produce.
Integrated, not siloed. Most existing research examines cognition, or physiology, or decision-making in isolation. CDHL integrates all three, because the human operating system does not separate them, and neither should the science.
Designed to produce actionable principles, not just findings. The goal is not a set of published papers that sit on a shelf. The goal is evidence-based design principles that organizations can use: how to build AI environments that preserve and strengthen human judgment rather than quietly eroding it.
Built by practitioners, not just researchers. CDHL’s founding team brings over 25 years of real-world experience guiding senior leaders through transformation in healthcare, biotech, and complex systems, combined with a track record of building institutional partnerships that compound in value. The research is grounded in the reality of how leaders actually work, decide, and lead under pressure.
Who We Are
Lee Ann Del Carpio, Co-Founder
Lee Ann Del Carpio has spent more than 25 years guiding senior leaders and systems through transformation in healthcare, biotech, and mission-driven organizations. She is known for creating spaces where clarity returns, coherence is restored, and meaningful leadership can unfold.
Lee Ann is also CEO of Deeply Human™ a next-generation leadership and capability-building firm designed for a world being reshaped by AI, complexity, and rapid change. Through the Deeply Human™ Leadership Experience, the Deeply Human™ Leading Lab, and the Deeply Human Leading podcast, Lee Ann helps leaders develop the inner coherence, relational intelligence, and decision-making clarity needed to navigate environments where logic alone is not enough—and where the human nervous system, intuition, emotional capacity, and ability to partner with intelligent systems become strategic advantages.
She has coached or developed leaders from over 50 countries across five continents, working with organizations including Amway, APS, Chevron, Dignity Health, GE, Hershey, Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic, Merck, and Northrop Grumman. Earlier in her career she held senior roles in global leadership development at Avon Products, Inc., Sapient Corporation, and Kaiser Permanente.
Gretchen Terry-Leonard, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy & Impact Officer
Gretchen Terry-Leonard has spent her career building the coalitions and institutional partnerships that move systems. She architected the I’M IN Health Equity initiative, creating 26 Health Equity Fellowships with top-tier academic medical centers and generating over $35 million in strategic value through partnerships that compound.
Her work at the intersection of AI and health equity produced a policy brief with The Economist Impact Group (published 2025) that gave organizations a practical framework at a moment when the field urgently needed one. She has collaborated with the Nobel Women’s Initiative and brings a track record of turning shared conviction into institutional action.
Trained in Nutrition and Dietetics, Gretchen’s clinical science background taught her to look at systems, not symptoms. That lens shapes everything she builds: the insistence on evidence, the refusal to separate human biology from human dignity, and the conviction that the most underserved variable in enterprise AI is the human in the loop.
Shape What Comes Next
We are in the earliest and most consequential stage of this work: building the scientific foundation, forming the partnerships, and assembling the coalition of people who believe this question matters enough to answer it well.
If you see the same gap we see and you believe that the future of human-AI collaboration depends on understanding what AI environments are actually doing to the people inside them, we would welcome the chance to share more about what we are building and how you might be part of it.
Whether you are a researcher, a funder, an institutional leader, or someone who has been thinking about this question from your own vantage point, we would love to hear from you.
CDHL is actively building its funding foundation. If you are interested in learning how to support this work as a founding partner, research funder, or institutional collaborator, we welcome that conversation.