The Catalyst Role
SPO AI Catalysts Group · Roche SPO
What Is a Catalyst?
A Catalyst is an AI ambassador embedded within an SPO chapter. Catalysts aren’t a central team. They’re colleagues working alongside their chapter every day, who take on additional responsibility for helping their teams adopt AI effectively.
Think of Catalysts as the link between the SPO AI strategy and what actually happens on the ground in each chapter.
What Catalysts Do
Catalysts are expected to:
| Activity | Description |
|---|---|
| Enable | Help colleagues discover and apply AI tools and approaches in their day-to-day work |
| Educate | Run informal sessions, workshops, and office hours within their chapter |
| Automate | Build or co-create lightweight automations and workflow improvements |
| Connect | Bring chapter insights and reusable solutions back to the broader Catalysts network |
| Model | Demonstrate responsible, practical AI use and show what good looks like |
Catalysts aren’t expected to become AI engineers. The focus is on practical enablement, not deep technical delivery.
What Catalysts Don’t Do
Catalysts are enablers, not a support desk or delivery team. They do not:
- Take over ownership of team workflows or processes
- Act as a helpdesk for operational AI questions
- Build and maintain production-grade systems on behalf of their chapter
- Work outside Roche governance or enterprise guardrails
The principle is simple: help teams become more capable themselves, rather than creating dependence on the Catalyst.
How Catalysts Fit In
Each Catalyst is part of two communities at once:
- Their SPO chapter — where they do the day-to-day enablement work
- The Catalysts Group — a cross-chapter network that shares learnings, patterns, tools, and support
This is what makes the model work. Insights from one chapter flow to others, and no chapter has to figure things out alone.