Governance is not a constraint on innovation. It is what makes innovation sustainable.
Novara Strategies is a boutique advisory firm focused on AI governance, regulatory strategy, and institutional accountability. The firm works with organizations navigating the growing distance between what AI can do and what they can credibly account for.
That distance is not a technology problem. It is a governance problem. And it requires a different kind of advisory practice to address it.
Built from a specific observation made repeatedly across law, policy, and institutional work.
During research and graduate work at Penn Carey Law, a pattern became clear. Organizations were making substantial investments in AI adoption while treating governance, accountability, and operational readiness as secondary concerns, things to be addressed once deployment was underway.
This is not a failure of intention. Most organizations understand that governance matters. The failure is structural. The frameworks available to them describe what governance should look like. They do not produce governance that functions.
The firm was founded on a conviction that the most valuable contribution to the AI governance conversation is not another framework. It is the ability to translate governance requirements into operational reality inside organizations with competing priorities and existing structures.
Four convictions that shape how Novara approaches every engagement.
These are not principles assembled for a website. They are the intellectual commitments that determined what kind of firm Novara would be, and what kind of work it would refuse to do.
Governance should be operational, not performative.
A governance program that exists to satisfy an audit is not governance. It is documentation designed to produce a favorable outcome. Real governance changes how decisions are made, not how they are recorded after the fact. Novara builds for the former.
Accountability must be assigned, not assumed.
When accountability belongs to a function or a committee, it belongs to no one in particular. Every governance structure Novara builds names specific individuals with specific authority. Ambiguity in accountability is not a governance position. It is the absence of one.
Oversight is a partner to innovation, not a constraint on it.
The framing of governance as a barrier to innovation reflects a misunderstanding of what governance does. Organizations with strong accountability structures are more confident in the decisions they make, because they can defend them. That confidence enables bolder action.
Risk management should enable adoption, not prevent it.
The purpose of governance is not to stop organizations from using AI. It is to ensure they can use it in ways they can stand behind. Organizations that cannot account for their AI decisions will eventually stop making them. That is the actual risk.
Riham Hashi
Riham Hashi's path to founding Novara moved through the United States Senate, state legislative work, cross-sector policy initiatives, and ultimately to Penn Carey Law, where research on AI governance and regulatory systems made the founding problem of the firm visible in precise terms.
Her legislative work gave her direct experience with how accountability systems are built under pressure: the coalition structures, the documentation requirements, the escalation paths that determine whether governance functions when it is tested. She led the advocacy and coalition strategy that contributed to the passage of the Student Basic Needs Act in Washington State. That experience is foundational to how she approaches governance work, not from the outside, but from inside the process.
At Penn Carey Law, that practical background met rigorous legal and regulatory analysis. Her focus on AI governance, emerging technology law, and regulatory systems produced the analytical framework Novara brings to every engagement: governance understood not as a compliance exercise but as an operational function that either works or does not.
She founded Novara because the advisory resources available to organizations facing AI governance challenges were not built for the problem. They offered frameworks when organizations needed infrastructure. She built the firm she could not find.
Not a different approach to the same problem. A different understanding of what the problem is.
Most firms approach AI governance through the lens of compliance: what does the law require, and how does the organization satisfy that requirement? That framing is not wrong. It is insufficient.
Compliance asks whether an organization has met a standard. Governance asks whether an organization can account for its decisions, demonstrate its oversight, and produce evidence that its stated commitments reflect operational reality. These are different questions with different answers and different advisory requirements.
Novara approaches AI governance through the lens of institutional accountability. The question is not whether an organization has the right technology or the right policy. The question is whether the organization has built the internal structures that allow it to govern its technology credibly over time.
The founder has experience inside the regulatory and policy institutions that create the requirements organizations must meet. That is uncommon in advisory practice, and it produces a materially different kind of analysis.
Built for organizations where AI governance has real consequences.
- Healthcare organizations
- Financial services organizations
- Government and public sector
- Technology companies and research institutions
The foundation behind the work.
Novara's advisory practice is grounded in legal training, legislative experience, and sustained engagement with AI governance research and policy. These credentials are evidence of the analytical foundation the firm brings, not the argument itself, but the basis on which the argument is made.
Master in Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Penn Center for Innovation · Wharton Venture Lab
Master's Degree in Public Policy and International Affairs
United States Senate
Student Basic Needs Act (HB 1559)
The Governance Gap: AI Accountability in 2026
The future of AI will not be shaped solely by what technology can do. It will be shaped by what institutions can account for.
The organizations that will be most capable over the next decade are not necessarily those that adopt AI earliest. They are those that build the institutional capacity to govern what they adopt: to make decisions they can defend, oversight structures they can demonstrate, and accountability systems that function when scrutinized.
Novara exists to help organizations build that capacity. Not as a compliance measure. Not as a risk management exercise. As a genuine institutional capability that enables confident, accountable, and sustainable use of AI across every function it touches.
The governance work being done today will determine which organizations are positioned to lead in the decade ahead. That is what this work is for.
If this perspective resonates, the conversation begins here.
Novara works with a limited number of organizations at a time. Every engagement begins directly with the founder. There is no intake process designed to qualify you. There is a conversation designed to understand whether the work is the right fit.
If your organization is navigating a governance challenge that existing frameworks have not resolved, that is precisely where this practice begins.
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