Who I am
Paul Petro
Founder, V7 Leadership · Co-founder, PineWoodsAI
Paul spent twenty years in fintech at a managed service provider, starting as a systems administrator and rising to Vice President, ultimately directing over 70 people and leading the kind of technology migrations that don't allow for mistakes — the ones where a bank's entire operation depends on getting it right the first time.
Somewhere in the last few years of that climb, Paul started noticing a shift: the work wasn't just about managing people anymore. So he did what a self-described Maverick does when something changes — he didn't wait for a playbook. He went and got trained on it directly — AI strategy and transformation at Dartmouth Tuck, AI business strategy at Berkeley — while still running his division, and layered on executive leadership programs at Tuck, Stanford, and Michigan along the way.
That combination — two decades of real, high-stakes leadership, plus a deliberate, early bet on understanding AI from the inside — is what led him to leave and co-found PineWoodsAI, and to build V7 Leadership around a simple belief: leadership isn't being replaced by AI. It's being asked to grow up.
Paul holds a BA in Philosophy from UNC Chapel Hill, an MBA from Michigan Ross, and is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Law at Northwestern Pritzker (paused).
Why now
Why V7 Exists Now
Paul has always believed something simple: everyone is a leader. You're the CEO of your own life, whether you have a title or not. You lead yourself first, and everyone else second.
That belief didn't need AI to be true. But it's never mattered more than it does right now.
Because your team just got bigger, whether you asked for it or not. Somewhere in the last few years, you started leading agents alongside people — delegating to them, trusting them, sometimes over-trusting them — without anyone handing you a manual for it.
V7 Leadership exists because that gap is real, and it's not going away. It's the discipline of knowing what belongs to a person and what belongs to a tool, and getting sharper at that call as the pace of change keeps climbing.
What I write about
Three topics
Leadership
What it actually takes to lead well, especially when the ground keeps shifting under you.
AI
What's real, what's hype, and what leaders actually need to understand to use it well.
Mindset
The internal shifts that make external leadership possible — how you think shapes how you lead.
This site itself runs on AugSite, a PineWoodsAI product — the same shop Paul is building in public.