WEALTH February 28, 2026 0 Comments

Unlock the Future: How One AI Education Pioneer is Shattering Limits and Redefining Success for the Next Generation of Innovators

So here’s the million-dollar question: when is walking away actually the first step to coming back stronger? Ian Dodson thought he’d closed the book on education after selling the Digital Marketing Institute, a powerhouse that shaped the marketing world with over 75,000 grads across 135 countries. But just as he stepped back, Artificial Intelligence crashed the party—and boy, did it shake things up. Dodson wasn’t just another bystander; unimpressed by the sea of subpar AI courses flooding the market, he rolled up his sleeves and launched AICertified. His mission? To carve out a gold standard in AI education, much like what DMI did for digital marketing. And guess what? He didn’t just build it alone—he got tech giants from OpenAI to Google in the mix, bringing expertise that breathes credibility into his curriculum. It’s a bold play in a world scrambling to understand how AI will reshape every industry, job, and conversation. Ready to see how this education veteran is schooling the AI landscape? LEARN MORE

Ian Dodson walked away from education after selling the Digital Marketing Institute — “and then AI came along.” Unimpressed by the quality of courses being offered in this rapidly evolving area, he went about setting up AICertified. He tells George Morahan how he got some tech heavy-hitters on board to help develop his course material

Ian Dodson thought he was done with education. As co-founder of the Digital Marketing Institute (DMI), Dodson helped to establish a global certification benchmark in marketing that has produced upwards of 75,000 graduates in 135 countries.

The Limerick man retained a shareholding and a board seat with the company after it was acquired by Boston-based Spectrum Equity for a reported €26m in 2017. He exited after it was sold again to the UK’s BPP Education Group for an undisclosed sum two years ago.

Following the BPP sale, Dodson “stepped away from education” despite interest from other companies and investors seeking his expertise. None of the topics held any interest for him, and he knew it would be difficult to recreate the confluence of events that had made DMI a success 15 years ago.

“In DMI, we caught a wave of a new technology emerging out of an economic downturn. You couldn’t have picked a better time to launch a certification programme to the market,” he explains.

“I was always aware that there’s a lot of planning and a lot of hard work that goes into the business, and you control the factors that you control, but what you don’t control is the global economy.

“What you don’t control is the marketplace you’re selling into. So I very much looked at different things, thinking there’s a confluence of events that need to be in place for something to work.

“And then AI came along.”

For the past 18 months Dodson has been researching artificial intelligence, seeking a better understanding of the technologies that have swallowed trillions of dollars from investors on the promise of transformative innovations in science and business across human society.

His verdict? “Pretty crap,” he says, pointing to AI’s regular hallucinations, short memory and an inability to multitask, although he concedes there have been some “key leaps forward” by various AI engines. Regardless of the state of the art at present, Dodson said he now sees AI as “the Industrial Revolution kind of change that it is”.

“If there was anything that’s going to tempt me back into the certification space, the amount of change that AI is going to [cause] is way past what the internet did and way past what digital marketing has done.”

Dodson is unimpressed by the “abundance of poor-quality courses” that have sprouted up since AI’s big coming out moment in late 2022, and the economic uncertainty of the past couple of years has convinced him the stars are aligning once more.

Last May, he founded AICertified with the intention of doing for AI education certification in the knowledge economy what DMI did for digital marketing, as the industry seeks to “grow up” and “clear out the cowboys”.

“The drive to create a certification programme that people could coalesce around is the exact same drive I felt in 2009. No one has defined what it means to learn or teach or know AI,” Dodson says.

“There’s a whole lot of information, alot of noise, there’s a whole bunch of supposed experts out there, but no one has defined it for education.”

In early January, AICertified raised €1m from Enterprise Ireland and Oyster Capital, Belfast entrepreneur Bill McCabe’s EdTech investment vehicle, ahead of the launch of its first online course on March 1 and a postgraduate diploma later this year.

In developing the course, AICertified approached 18 subject matter experts across Ireland, the UK, Europe and the US to validate the curriculum. Dodson wasn’t looking for Sam Altman to look over course content, but he used LinkedIn to reach out to technologists who are building AI products.

The AICertified website spotlights OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Meta and Microsoft, and while he would not be drawn on their identities, Dodson confirms that members of the company’s industry advisory council work for firms of that calibre.

Regarding the course development progress, Dodson says some experts would suggest it was either too complex or too easy, too focused on ChatGPT or that more Google Gemini shouldbe featured.

“What you do is, you weigh up and you balance out all of those competing views. You arrive at a programme that is good for all seasons, that will bring a level of AI literacy to people who are studying at that level over a typical 30-hour professional diploma level programme,” he says.

AICertified courses are validated by the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which is aligned with the European Qualifications Framework. The Professional Diploma in AI launching in March, which Dodson believes will account for 90 per cent of AICertified’s enrolments, will be worth 24 European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) credits.

In a nutshell, the 12-week course has 10 modules on subjects such asthe origins and impacts of AI, working with large language models and chatbots, agentic AI and automating work, governance and ethics, and business strategy.

There are also sector-specific electives on offer for sales and account management, marketing and CRM, finance and accounting, supply chain and operations, human resources and talent management.

The Professional Diploma is“priced competitively” at €2,350while the planned EQF Level 8 Postgraduate Diploma in AI in Business (60 ECTS credits) will cost €7,600 to enrol from September.

All courses are online, self-directed and made up of micro-credentials for students to choose from. They can also select single, three-hour micro-credentials to study for €350.

With its courses, AICertified is targeting graduates, working professionals, management and business owners across startups and C-suites alike, although Dodson will not be drawn on how many people have enrolled to date.

“We had the same profile of people coming, and if I could put them all under one heading, [this] was the most common thing I heard back then: ‘I want to be able to have an intelligent conversation about AI and understand the impact it’s going to have on me, my job, my business, my industry,’” he says.

“That’s where everyone is at right now. Everyone is in the same boat trying to work out, ‘how is it going to impact us?’”

The courses will be subject to continuous updates and Dodson expects the curriculum to change by 5 per cent to 15 per cent every year, although the content is not so ‘bleeding edge’ that it will become irrelevant quickly. “For someone to invest in a programme of education, the content has to persist,” he says.

In addition to selling directly to students and through employers, who will buy access to the company’s course content library, AICertified is also planning to announce partnerships with universities next month. Its courses will be taught in 15 countries by the end of 2026.

Ian Dodson. Picture Conor McCabe Photography

With the new funding, Dodson expects to grow AICertified’s headcount from eight to 16 this year and 32 by the end of 2027 as the company hires in product, marketing, student support and management.

Over the next three to five years, he hopes to have 150 partner universities in 40-50 countries. He’s confident that AICertified can achieve the same critical mass as DMI.

“We did it with DMI 10 years ago and people looked at us like we were mad, saying, ‘But you can’t define a standard.’ Why can’t we?” he asks.

“It’s about gathering the industry, educators and students around a particular standard and agreeing that as we move forward, if we have really good mechanisms for staying up todate and staying credible, keeping on top of where the industry is at, we can gather a global group of people to define a standard.

“We were able to do it in DMI, and we’re fully confident we can do it in AICertified as well.”