No New Money, No New Team, No Excuses: Leading Through the AI Shift

Inga Dobrijevic
PSPC

Inga Dobrijevic is a public service executive, AI and transformation leader, and self-described fixer. She specializes in walking into complex environments, figuring out what is really going on, and making things work.

An immigrant and self-made leader, Inga did not follow a conventional path into executive leadership. Her career has spanned finance, audit, operations, technology, innovation and large-scale transformation, giving her a somewhat unusual perspective: she understands the numbers, the business, the technology—and what it takes to get people to actually deliver.

Throughout her career, Inga has been trusted with complex and sometimes challenging initiatives where the answer is rarely obvious. She audits, evaluates, challenges assumptions, identifies what is not working and builds a practical path forward—with cost, risk and delivery always in view. She has worked with startups and emerging technologies, as well as some of government’s most complex transformation environments.

That mindset is also what shapes her approach to AI. At Public Safety Canada, Inga built an AI and transformation portfolio from the ground up, moving beyond AI as a concept and into practical experimentation and solutions in production. Her approach is grounded in pragmatism: start with the problem, not the technology; test what can work; understand the risks; and then deliver.

For Inga, AI leadership is not about being the person in the room who knows the most about AI. It is about being the executive who can recognize where AI can create real value, ask the difficult questions, make informed choices about risk and investment, and create the conditions for teams to move from an idea to something people can actually use.

As an immigrant, mother, trailblazer and unconventional leader, Inga brings a perspective shaped by building rather than waiting for permission. She is passionate about creating more space for women and other unconventional leaders in technology and executive leadership—and about proving that you do not have to come from the traditional mould to lead major change.

Her guiding principle is simple: don’t stop at diagnosing the problem. Fix it. And don’t stop at talking about AI. Identify where it can create real value, then turn that potential into results.