Overview
Austin Cowan is a principal in Heidrick & Struggles’ San Francisco office and a member of the global Technology & Services, Cybersecurity, and AI, Data & Analytics practices, focusing on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. He leads highly technical machine learning engineering and cybersecurity projects across AI-native, frontier technology, and growth environments.
Experience
Austin specializes in machine learning engineering, chief AI officer, and chief information security officer (CISO) work. He works with public, private equity-backed, and venture capital-backed companies across the spectrum of high-growth, turnaround, and operationally challenged situations. His sector focuses include AI-native environments, frontier technology businesses, enterprise software, consumer technology, information services, and business services.
Austin helped launch the firm’s Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence buildout capability, conducted numerous searches, and partnered with colleagues to write thought leadership on the evolution of the AI operating partner role in private equity. Austin has placed machine learning engineers and architects at the individual contributor level, heads of AI at the fund level within venture capital firms, and within the companies they support, as well as chief AI scientists in Fortune 50 businesses.
Austin has helped clients hire CISOs for product-driven, highly technical businesses; post-breach environments; IPO-readiness roles; and large, regulated public businesses. He has also helped clients think through CISO succession and talent strategy across the GRC, product security, and security operations functions.
Education
Colgate University, Bachelor’s in Political Science