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Robots & Pencils Expands Retail and Consumer Goods Leadership with Appointment of Saul Delage as Client Partner 

As AI reshapes how Retail and Consumer Goods businesses compete, Robots & Pencils plants its flag in the vertical and brings in a 30-year industry veteran to lead the charge.

Robots & Pencils, an applied AI engineering partner known for high-velocity delivery and measurable business outcomes, today announced the appointment of Saul Delage as SVP, Client Partner, Retail and Consumer Goods (RCG). Based in Chicago, he brings 30 years of experience building executive partnerships and driving growth across some of the most recognized names in digital transformation. Delage joins a proven leadership team at Robots & Pencils with extensive experience delivering for more than 100 of the world’s most recognized consumer brands, including dozens of Fortune 500 companies.

The appointment is a deliberate move. Robots & Pencils is investing with intention in Retail and Consumer Goods, including CPG, eCommerce, Restaurants & Everyday Essentials, and Retail, an industry under mounting pressure to move from AI experimentation into generative and agentic AI that performs in production and delivers measurable business outcomes. Delage will lead client relationships across the vertical, helping enterprise leaders get more from their AI investments and more from their investments in AWS, while strengthening the company’s presence in key markets and building closer, more embedded partnerships with clients.

The Right Leader for the Moment

“Saul is the kind of leader clients trust before the contract is signed and can’t imagine working without after,” said Len Pagon, CEO of Robots & Pencils. “He has worked alongside some of our team before. He knows how we operate, and he knows this vertical inside out. Retail and Consumer Goods is a large growing industry vertical for us, and we went out and got the right leader.”

A Career Built on Trust and Delivery

Delage arrives with a career forged across Cognizant, Isobar, Havas, Razorfish, and Fry, where he built high-performing growth teams, secured long-term relationships with Fortune 500 companies, and earned a reputation as one of the most technically fluent executives in the industry, equally effective in the boardroom and in the details of delivery.

His hire reflects the company tenet that winning in Retail and Consumer Goods requires leadership with deep business experience, the technical fluency to speak the language of AI, and the delivery discipline to back it up.

“Retail and Consumer Goods businesses have made significant investments in AI, and too many have little to show for it in production,” said Delage. “Robots & Pencils builds enterprise AI systems — generative, agentic, and production-ready — that move fast and tie directly to revenue and customer experience. That is exactly what this industry needs right now, and Robots & Pencils is built to deliver it.”

Built on AWS. Driven by Outcomes.

Robots & Pencils is unabashedly aligned with AWS and is building its Retail and Consumer Goods vertical around that conviction. The goal is helping enterprise leaders drive measurable business outcomes on AWS, from first deployment to full-scale production. For AWS co-sell teams and enterprise leaders who need a partner that moves fast and delivers, that commitment is the differentiator.

Ready to move from AI experimentation to AI execution? Request an AI Briefing.

Robots & Pencils Goes All in on AWS with Appointment of Adrian Bird as Vice President of AWS Partnership 

Bird brings two decades of alliance leadership, including five years inside AWS, to accelerate co-sell engagement and expand enterprise AI delivery with AWS 

 Robots & Pencils, an applied AI engineering partner known for high-velocity delivery and measurable business outcomes, today announced the appointment of Adrian Bird as Vice President of AWS Partnership.  

The timing is deliberate. Bird joins as the company deepens its investment in the AWS ecosystem. He will lead the company’s AWS Partner strategy and execution, expanding joint customer engagement, and strengthening alignment with AWS teams. 

Two Decades of AWS and IBM Partnership Leadership 

Bird brings direct experience from AWS, where he was Partner Sales Leader from 2020 to 2026. In that role, he managed comprehensive channel strategy and partner program initiatives across ISVs, global systems integrators, and technology partners, collaborating with AWS field sellers across regions and industries to support joint go-to-market initiatives. He built partner success frameworks that drove exceptional year-over-year growth in partner revenue, created revenue operations tools adopted across multiple AWS business units, and led initiatives that significantly expanded the security partner ecosystem. He earned AWS’s Innovation All-Star recognition in 2024.  

Prior to AWS, Bird spent fifteen years at IBM in progressively senior partnership and alliance roles. He grew the Watson Media worldwide partner channel from inception to more than a third of business unit revenue within two years, scaled the IBM Commerce partner business several-fold over four years, and led the integration of Sterling Commerce’s partner ecosystem following its acquisition, retaining the vast majority of partners while substantially growing combined revenue. He is a recipient of IBM’s Industry Solutions Successful Partnering Award and the IBM 100% Club. 

Accelerating AWS Partnership Strategy 

“Adrian has spent his career building partner ecosystems that generate real, compounding results,” said Scott Young, EVP of Growth and Strategic Partnerships. “Having led partner strategy inside AWS, he knows exactly how AWS field teams operate and what it takes to be a partner they actively bring into deals. That perspective, combined with his track record of execution, is precisely what we need right now. Clients who need enterprise AI at speed will benefit directly from what Adrian builds.” 

“We are unabashedly all in on AWS,” said Len Pagon, CEO of Robots & Pencils. “We have tremendous traction and momentum. Adrian is another key investment in taking our AWS partnership further, faster.” 

Driving Enterprise AI Adoption and AWS Consumption at Scale 

Bird’s appointment builds on recent company milestones including earning AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner status, selection as one of 11 inaugural AWS Pattern Partners globally, and the launch of its Studio for Generative and Agentic AI in Bellevue near AWS headquarters. The company is also actively engaged with AWS through its collaboration with the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center to support joint enterprise initiatives. Bird’s mandate is clear: align partnership strategy with Robots & Pencils’ ability to deploy AI into production at speed and drive measurable AWS consumption and customer value at scale. 

“Robots & Pencils has built what most companies only claim to have. They have the engineering depth, a proven record of deploying AI into production at speed, and the scale to serve enterprise clients globally,” said Bird. “The AWS partnership is the force multiplier that connects those capabilities to the clients who need them most. My job is to make sure that potential becomes performance, for Robots & Pencils, for AWS, and for the clients we serve together.” 

Request an AI briefing to evaluate how applied AI can deliver velocity and impact within your organization.

Robots & Pencils Brings Enterprise AI Platform Expertise to ASU-GSV Summit Panel

CEO Leonard Pagon joins education industry discussion exploring how leading universities move from AI pilots to enterprise-scale platforms with governance and speed 

Robots & Pencils, an applied AI engineering partner known for high-velocity delivery and measurable outcomes in complex institutional environments, today announced that its CEO, Leonard Pagon, will participate in a panel discussion at the ASU-GSV Summit, a premier global event focused on the intersection of education, technology, and workforce innovation.

As a seasoned operator who has built and scaled technology-driven companies, Pagon will share practical insights on how universities are operationalizing AI across institutional systems while maintaining governance, security, and accessibility.

What Education Leaders Will Learn at ASU-GSV

The panel discussion, “ASU CreateAI Platform. An Enterprise Strategy for Designing AI for Everyone at Scale,” will take place Tuesday, April 14, 2026, from 10:00 to 10:40 AM at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.

Pagon will be joined by Kyle Bowen, Deputy CIO, Arizona State University; Matthew Gee, Director, U.S. Program Data, Gates Foundation; Stephanie Khurana, CEO, Axim Collaborative; and Elizabeth Reilley, Chief AI Officer, University of North Carolina. The panel will be moderated by Lev Gonick, Enterprise CIO, Arizona State University.

The session centers on the real-world mechanics of enterprise AI in higher education, including:

“A lot of AI activity in higher education is happening at the use case level, which creates fragmentation across the institution.” said Pagon. “The real shift is building platforms that bring those efforts together and make AI work inside everyday institutional constraints. The impact shows up when AI moves from pilots into production systems that perform, with the right guardrails in place.”

Scaling AI Across the University with Governance and Control

Robots & Pencils has worked with with Arizona State University since 2019 on cloud-native architecture, platform modernization, and applied AI initiatives that improve the student experience and strengthen institutional operations. This collaboration has produced practical insight into how universities move from small pilots to enterprise AI programs through platforms that support rapid innovation while maintaining strong governance, security, and accessibility standards.

From Experimentation to Enterprise AI

Institutions are increasingly looking to AI to improve student support, reduce manual processes, and extend staff capacity without increasing headcount. The ASU-GSV Summit brings together entrepreneurs, investors, and education leaders who are shaping the future of learning and workforce development through technology.

Higher education leaders are moving quickly to modernize operations, improve student experience, and prepare graduates for an AI-driven economy. Enterprise AI platforms give universities a structured way to design, deploy, and govern AI solutions across departments while enabling faculty, staff, and researchers to use AI in their day-to-day work with security, compliance, and accessibility built in. This approach enables institutions to scale AI in higher education with clarity, control, and speed.

Robots & Pencils team members will be onsite throughout the April 12 through April 15 event. Education leaders attending ASU-GSV can connect with Robots & Pencils to explore how enterprise AI platforms and applied AI solutions scale across institutions, edtech platforms, publishers, and workforce organizations.

Schedule time with the Robots & Pencils team at ASU-GSV.