Fontana to remain Chief Marketing Officer while helping expand iluminr’s impact across human-AI capability, systemic resilience, digital and real-world adaptive intelligence.
SYDNEY AND DENVER, CO — May 14, 2025 — iluminr, the capability engine for critical response, today announced the appointment of Paula Fontana to its Board of Directors, coinciding with a key moment in the company’s evolution toward a new category: Adaptive Intelligence. Fontana will continue to serve as Chief Marketing Officer, leading global growth strategy while also guiding iluminr’s long-term expansion across enterprise ecosystems and intelligence-led resilience.
From Crisis Management to Adaptive Intelligence
Known for transforming traditional preparedness into an immersive, behavior-driven experience across both physical and digital domains, iluminr is now setting its sights on a larger ambition: building the infrastructure to measure, map, and evolve real-world capability across people, AI systems, and complex organizational environments.
What makes this different is iluminr’s ability to generate signal from both simulations and live response, providing a constantly updating picture of organizational readiness. Over time, these signals begin to form what iluminr refers to as a Capability Graph: a live system that helps teams understand where they’re ready to move, where they’re exposed, and how to respond dynamically as complexity unfolds.
Through simulations and emerging AI capabilities such as adaptive coaching, adversarial agents, and contextual feedback, the platform enables teams to not only surface gaps, but also intuit untapped strengths – accelerating smarter, faster decision-making in both routine and high-stakes environments.
Similar conceptually to LinkedIn’s Economic Graph or Waze, the platform aims to map the ever-changing terrain of risk and capability in real time, offering dynamic guidance as conditions shift. As the platform evolves, future AI-enabled features will deepen this insight, supporting the kind of transparency increasingly expected by customers, insurers, investors, and regulators.
“Capability is the new currency.
But without a dynamic way to measure it – across individuals, teams, systems, and interdependent networks – we’re flying blind.
Paula has helped shape this next chapter: a future where capability becomes visible, adaptive, and actionable.”
– Joshua Shields, Cofounder and CEO of iluminr
Toward a New Trust Architecture: Making Capability Visible and Verifiable
As iluminr accelerates its investment in AI, the company is taking a grounded, stepwise approach to help organizations – and their ecosystems – build real readiness.
“When we think about AI, we often think about workflows. But in risk and security, the real opportunity lies in understanding how agents – human and machine – behave under pressure. Where do they get stuck? Where do they adapt? How do they learn together? We’re helping teams build both the muscle (human capability) and the machine (intelligent agents) to accelerate resilience,” said Paula Fontana, CMO and newly appointed Board Director.
iluminr is :
- Capturing Real Behavior: Simulations reveal how teams and systems respond under pressure, providing detailed insights on strengths, gaps, and friction points.
- Introducing AI Support: Adaptive agents guide teams, challenge assumptions, and surface overlooked risks – helping teams improve in real-world context.
- Turning Internal Signals Into External Trust Architecture: What teams demonstrate and learn through response becomes proof of capability for stakeholders demanding transparency – customers, insurers, regulators, and strategic partners.
This model reflects iluminr’s belief that AI should be embedded, explainable, and accountable – empowering organizations to act with greater speed and confidence, even under uncertainty.
Fontana’s Strategic Impact
Since joining iluminr, Fontana has helped architect a strategic transformation, repositioning the company from a crisis response solution to a forward-looking platform for building and measuring critical response capability. She has led award-winning campaigns that reframed risk through a human lens, expanded iluminr’s influence across global enterprise markets, and played a pivotal role in securing analyst recognition and industry validation.
Her work has also influenced the conceptualization of the foundational framework for tracking, analyzing, and evolving readiness across human and AI systems. Fontana’s appointment to the board affirms her role in guiding iluminr’s continued evolution as a category-defining intelligence platform.
“Paula has a rare ability to see both the system and the story – she connects the dots between market momentum, human behavior, and strategic foresight.
Her impact has been foundational to iluminr’s evolution, and her presence on the board ensures we continue to lead with both clarity and ambition.”
– Marcus Vaughan, Cofounder and Chief Growth Officer.
A New Chapter for Adaptive Intelligence
Fontana’s board appointment also reflects her expanding influence in the field of Artificial Intelligence, informed by her ongoing work exploring ethical AI, agentic systems evolution, human skills transformation, and leadership in an era of systemic change.
“We’re at a turning point. AI is changing who acts, how fast, and with what consequence.
But what we lack is a shared language – and a shared infrastructure – for measuring and improving human and AI capability over time.
iluminr is uniquely positioned to provide that. I’m honored to join the board and continue helping shape what comes next.”
– Paula Fontana, Board Director and CMO
As pressure mounts across sectors to prove not just intention, but demonstrated capability, iluminr is building the connective tissue that could define how teams and organizations respond, recover, and adapt together. This evolution has far-reaching implications – not only for operational resilience, but for how insurers underwrite risk, how investors evaluate readiness, and how regulators assess trust and accountability.
About iluminr
iluminr transforms risk into demonstrated readiness. Through immersive Microsimulations, dynamic playbooks, real-time communication capabilities, and critical response analytics, iluminr enables individuals, teams, organizations, and ecosystems to assess and evolve response readiness to change. From cyberattacks to climate-driven disruption, supply chain breakdowns to physical threats – iluminr builds the habits and infrastructure needed to adapt across every risk surface.
