Workshops

Most people have opened an AI tool, typed something in, gotten a mediocre answer and quietly decided it was overhyped. That's a reasonable conclusion to draw from a bad first experience. It's also fixable in about an hour.

The difference between a useless answer and a genuinely useful one is almost never the tool. It's how the request was written. That's a teachable skill, and it's what this workshop teaches.

Roughly 39 percent of core workplace skills are projected to change or fall out of use within five years, according to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report.

Skills turn over faster than most training budgets do. An hour spent teaching your team a method they can reapply is worth more than a subscription to a tool that'll look different by next month.

This works as a single half-day session, a fuller day built around your team's own work, or a full series. Start with The Prompt Primer if your team needs the basics, move into The Prompt Practicum once the fundamentals stick, or commit to the full AI Finishing School series if you want this to become how your organization actually works.

Each workshop series is fully customizable to what your organization needs.

Sample Workshop

Prompt Primer

A single half-day session that teaches your team to get real work out of AI •A repeatable framework for writing prompts that return usable work, not filler •At least one real task from their own job, done in the session, with the prompt saved to reuse •A take-home toolkit of prompt templates they can adapt •A clear-eyed sense of what these tools shouldn't be trusted with •A shared vocabulary, so your team can talk about this work with each other after I leave What people actually build in the room: Unchanged — already reads naturally with no contraction candidates. Concrete examples across sectors — this is what makes a retail owner or an office manager see themselves in it. •A shift handoff summary that takes four minutes instead of 20 •A first draft of the monthly board or funder report, pulled from your own notes •A vendor email that says no clearly without burning the relationship •A job posting and interview questions for a role you're struggling to fill •A troubleshooting script a new hire can follow on their second week •Product descriptions or a seasonal promotion, in your store's voice rather than generic ad copy How it runs First bullet reworded to flag this as the single-session Starter option and point toward the Deep Dive and series below it — otherwise unchanged. •Length: Half day — this is The Prompt Primer, the single-session starter. See The Prompt Practicum and the AI Finishing School series below for what comes next. •Format: in person for Lenawee County and southeast Michigan, or remote if further away •Group size: recommend 8 to 25 so everyone can practice •Setup: participants need a laptop and a free AI account. I send a one-page setup guide in advance so no one spends the first 15 minutes on logins.

Three Ways to Bring This In

Most organizations start with The Prompt Primer above. Where you go from there depends on how ready your team is to take on more.

The Prompt Primer — 1 session

The flagship Built-In Strategist workshop on its own: the CSCAE framework, applied to a real task from the room. The right call if your team's starting from zero, or if you want to test the fit before committing to more.

The Prompt Practicum — 3 sessions

This is the deep dive: The Prompt Primer fundamentals, paired with two sessions that put them to work — Write Like You Mean It, so the writing your team produces with AI still sounds like them, and Your Organization's Memory, so what gets built in the room doesn't disappear the day I leave. Teams walk out with a method, a writing habit, and a working system for holding onto what they know.

AI Finishing School — 6 Sessions

The complete curriculum, delivered as a series so there's room to practice between sessions. This is the option for organizations that want AI literacy to become part of how the team works, not a one-time event. Every session on the menu below can be part of the sequence, built around what your team actually needs.

Want to learn more? Workshop pricing varies depending on group size and session length, but typically I charge between $1,500-$3,500 per session. Schedule a time to chat with me, and we can fine-tune the details.

Book a Consult

A menu of workshops, not a single session

Organizations usually start with the flagship session above and add others as the team's confidence grows. Every session below is built for people with no technical background and no interest in acquiring one — and every session ends with something the team actually made, not a slide deck they'll forget by Friday. Below are some of my standard topics but I'm happy to customize a workshop for your organization's needs.

Write Like You Mean It --- Business Writing in the AI Age

For teams that write reports, proposals and client emails. Plain, direct writing habits --- short paragraphs, active voice, no buried jargon --- paired with a repeatable way to use AI as an editor rather than a ghostwriter, so the writing stays honest and still sounds like the person who sent it.

Know What Not to Trust --- Building Your AI Use Policy

What generative AI actually does under the hood, in plain language: why it can sound confident and still be wrong, what a hallucination is, and where the technology has real limits. Grounded in that understanding, the session moves into drafting the outline of your own internal AI use policy.

From Inbox to Action --- Gemini for Google Workspace

Hands-on with Gemini inside Gmail and Sheets: summarizing long threads, drafting replies, cleaning up messy data, building formulas and pivot tables without a spreadsheet background. Built for the office manager or bookkeeper doing six jobs at once.

Your Organization's Memory --- Gemini Notebook and Claude Cowork for Record Keeping

For the deeper, ongoing side of the work: turning your own documents into something the whole team can query instead of hunting through a shared drive. Gemini Notebook turns meeting notes, policies, and reports into a searchable knowledge base that answers questions grounded only in what you gave it. Claude Cowork handles ongoing, multi-step recordkeeping alongside a real folder of files. Teams leave with a working knowledge base built around a real task from their own operation.

Vibe Coding for Everyone --- Build Your First Agent with GEAR

Show, Don't Just Tell --- AI Design for Small Teams

For teams ready to move past one-off prompts toward something that runs on its own, no engineering background required. Vibe coding means describing what you want in plain language and letting the tool do the technical work: anyone who can explain a task clearly can build a custom Google Gem, a simple app or a custom Claude Skill. Using the GEAR framework, teams scope, build and test one of these around a real task from their own workday, then leave with something ready to use.

Turn a training manual, a customer FAQ, or a project recap into something people will actually watch or read. Teams choose the tool that fits the task: AI video tools for a short training or recap video, or Canva AI for a polished flier, social post, or one-page handout --- either way, no design or editing background required. Built for teams that know their audience would rather see it than read a memo.

Why Me

Christy Mesaros-Winckles

Ph.D. and 15-plus years teaching people at every technical level --- from 19-year-old undergraduates to working professionals --- to communicate clearly in professional settings
Google AI Professional Certificate
Anthropic Certifications in Claude, CoWork and AI Fluency, Framework & Foundations
Google Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Certified
GEO & SEO Fundamentals
Google certificate in AI for small and medium-sized businesses, focused on scaling business operations by combining generative AI foundations with Gemini-led automation
Launched one of the first college-level AI literacy and prompt engineering courses in the country, fall 2023
Based in Adrian, Michigan