AI Futurist and Industry-leading Consultant Henry Hays Joins Sparkhound as Partner to Lead AI Strategy Practice

Hays' decade of AI transformation work with 200-plus companies joins Sparkhound's 27-year enterprise delivery track record — giving clients a single partner from AI roadmap to production.

BATON ROUGE, La., May 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Most mid-market companies in the Gulf South don't have an AI problem. They have an execution problem — strong strategy with no infrastructure to scale it. Sparkhound, a technology consulting firm with decades of enterprise delivery experience, has named Henry Hays as partner to lead a dedicated AI strategy practice built to close that gap.

Hays AI transformation work has elevated more than 200 companies, including building an AI curriculum at LSU and founding Henry Hays Consulting to serve Gulf South organizations that needed practical, business-grade AI. He has delivered more than 150 keynote presentations to executive audiences on the topics of artificial intelligence and business strategy. He is recognized as one of the most credible voices on moving AI from concept to operating system.

For Sparkhound's customers, the hire addresses a specific challenge: companies that have invested in AI strategy but lack the delivery team, technical depth, and enterprise relationships to put it into production. By combining Hays' advisory work with Sparkhound's implementation capabilities across Microsoft Azure, Azure OpenAI, Copilots, and Microsoft Fabric, the firm can now take clients from readiness assessment through governed deployment without handing off between firms.

"I spent years building AI transformation practices for Gulf South mid-market companies and kept running into the same misalignment — the strategy was solid, but the delivery team, technical depth, and enterprise relationships to scale it too often falls short," said Hays. "Sparkhound closes that gap. For the first time, there's a true AI transformation offering built for this market, by people who understand how business gets done here."

Hays' work is concentrated in the industries that define the Gulf South — energy, banking, healthcare, and family-owned businesses that have operated for decades and now face a technology inflection point unlike anything in their history.

"What excites me most isn't the size of the opportunity — it's the specificity," Hays said. "Old-economy industries. Companies that have been quietly building for 30 or 40 years and are now staring at an inflection point they've never seen before. That's exactly where I've been doing my best work, and now I get to do it with a team that can go deeper, faster."

To learn more about Sparkhound's AI strategy and implementation capabilities, visit sparkhound.com/data-ai.

About Sparkhound

Sparkhound is a technology consulting firm specializing in managed IT services, digital transformation, and data and AI strategy for mid-market and public-sector organizations. For more than 27 years, Sparkhound has helped Gulf South businesses modernize their operations and solve complex technology challenges. Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Learn more at sparkhound.com.

SOURCE Sparkhound