Autumn Shirley, Business Development Director at Ozarks Small Business Incubator (OzSBI), has earned the AI Workflow Expert (AIWE) Black Belt certification from the AI Performance School for Economic Developers. The certification recognizes her mastery of advanced AI workflow design and her ability to deploy AI tools that directly support small business development and organizational accountability.
OzSBI, operating under Downtown West Plains, Inc., serves entrepreneurs across a seven-county region in the Missouri Ozarks, providing mentoring, training, capital access support, and workspace services. Shirley’s new AI capabilities position the organization to deliver higher-quality support while maximizing limited staff capacity.
“Autumn’s certification work demonstrates exactly what we hope to see from AIWE graduates—workflows that solve real operational challenges,” said Katie Milton Jordan, Founder & CEO of SimpleEDO.ai and the AI Performance School for Economic Developers. “Her business plan generator and impact reporting systems aren’t theoretical exercises. She applied her Black Belt workflow directly to OzSBI’s 2025 annual report production.”
Through the AIWE program, Shirley developed three production-ready AI workflows:
- A Research-Backed Business Plan Generator that produces lender-ready plans with market research, financial projections, and professional formatting
- An Annual Impact Report + Dashboard Blueprint system with KPI definitions, methodology documentation, and privacy protections
- A Multi-Expert Annual Report Production Workflow featuring specialized AI personas for data evaluation, storytelling, design planning, and executive communications
Each workflow incorporates quality controls including explicit assumption tracking, confidence-level indicators, and user checkpoints that ensure human oversight of AI outputs.
The AI Workflow Expert certification is a flagship track within the AI Performance School for Economic Developers. The three-belt progression trains economic development professionals to design sophisticated AI systems that augment organizational capacity while maintaining the credibility and accountability standards the profession demands.
