Candice Bryant
AI Advisor, Strategist, and Former CIA & Google Leader in Washington, DC.
AI Advisor, Strategist, and Former CIA & Google Leader in Washington, DC.
Candice Bryant is an advisor, strategist and trusted voice on narrative and AI. She spent nearly 20 years at the CIA, where she rose from analyst to senior leader, and was later recruited by Google. She took what she learned from both and built AI Tradecraft™, her proprietary approach to consulting and training for enterprise and government clients.
Candice is an Editorial Advisor for PRISM: The Journal of Complex Operations at the Department of War's Irregular Warfare Center. She regularly speaks at universities and national security forums, including the Defend the Homeland Symposium and the Narrative Strategy Symposium, on AI's impact on information operations, critical infrastructure, and soft power competition.
Candice has appeared on TV and radio as a tech expert, her insights have been featured in The Hill, The Cipher Brief, and Federal News Network, and she has been profiled in Business Insider.
She holds a Master's from the American University School of International Service and a Bachelor's degree in political science from Towson University. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area.
Most AI advisors focus on what the machine can do. Candice focuses on what you can do.
To cut through the exhaustion of chasing every new software release, she designed an AI Tradecraft™ system that builds true AI stamina across three distinct layers: daily habit with her mobile app, Cello™; cognitive discipline with her Mindful Prompting™ course; and analytic rigor with her flagship AI Tradecraft™ course. Designed to work together, they put human judgment at the center of AI training.
| Most AI Advisors | Candice |
|---|---|
| Focus on the machine — what can it do? | Focuses on you — what can you do? |
| Teach features: prompt hacks, new updates | Teaches you to catch blind spots, biases, and assumptions |
| Goal: speed — automate everything | Goal: stamina — keep human judgment alive |
AI Tradecraft™ brings the structured analytic techniques used by CIA analysts to teams working with AI. The same discipline that has shaped decades of intelligence analysis now sharpens how teams evaluate, verify, and defend AI-assisted work. The machine brings data and scale; we bring judgment and tradecraft.
Ideal for corporate training and team offsites.
Our minds have predictable failure modes. Intelligence analysts have trained in cognitive psychology for 40 years to recognize them. Mindful Prompting™ brings that same training to teams working with AI — to notice how perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and groupthink get in the way.
Pair with AI Tradecraft™
Stop treating AI like a junior assistant. Start treating it like a thinking partner. Cello™ delivers strategic insights and practical prompts daily to help individuals build baseline AI stamina through daily practice. Free on iOS and Android.
Mindful Prompting™ browser extension — the practice, built right into your daily workflow.
Candice sits at the rare intersection of policy and product, translating powerful technology for decision-makers and everyday people.
Read This Week in AI for the nonpartisan policy analysis trusted by founders, policymakers, and builders.
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"You're an AI policy analyst AND a tech founder?"
And Suddenly is Candice Bryant's first book — a candid account of her first year as a founder after leaving Big Tech to build on her own terms. It's a book about leaps of faith, the moments that arrive without warning, and what it actually takes to turn conviction into a company.
Equal parts memoir and field guide, And Suddenly is for anyone standing at the edge of their own next chapter, wondering whether to jump.
Tell me a little about your group and I'll follow up personally at hello@candicebryant.com.
Be first to know when the Mindful Prompting™ browser extension launches.
Four modules that build cognitive discipline into how our teams work with AI.
Imposter syndrome · Automation bias · Dunning-Kruger Effect
The same human tendencies and cognitive biases we've always had show up when we work with AI. If we don't recognize them, we can't work well with it.
In this module we'll explore the psychology behind:
Illusion of progress · Sunk-cost loop of over-prompting simple tasks · Jagged frontier
Thinking we're making progress when we're not, doubling down on approaches that aren't working, doubting our own skill compared to others. We bring all three with us when we work with AI.
In this module we'll explore the psychology behind:
Algorithm aversion · Blame avoidance by delegation (CYA) · Verification burden
Questions of accountability are a persistent challenge in group dynamics. Now the group includes the machine.
In this module we'll explore the psychology behind:
Algorithmic monoculture · Convergence to the middle · Illusion of diversity of thought
We've all noticed that emails and drafts are starting to sound the same. But when everyone preps for meetings with the same AI, there's also a risk that everyone walks in with the same ideas — a new form of groupthink.
In this module we'll explore:
A brief preview of the core concepts covered in the AI Tradecraft™ flagship course. Buy as a companion course.
Four modules that teach teams to think like AI, detect its deceptions, apply structured analytic techniques, and defend AI-assisted work.
Think Like AI
In intelligence, red hat means putting yourself in someone else's shoes. We need to do the same with AI to use it effectively.
In this module we'll learn:
Hallucinations & Algorithmic Bias
AI doesn't lie — it has no intent. But it hallucinates facts, URLs, and citations, and it learns and amplifies bias.
In this module we'll learn:
Structured Analytic Techniques
In intelligence analysis, structured analytic techniques (SATs) like Devil's Advocacy, Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, and Key Assumptions Check are used to expose weak assumptions and logical flaws. We'll explore the research-backed AI equivalents, grounded in forty years of applied cognitive psychology and intelligence tradecraft.
In this module we'll learn:
Defend & Simulate
In intelligence, the briefing is where analysts present their work to the customer and defend it under questioning. With AI-assisted work, we need to do the same — be the briefer.
In this module we'll learn:
