The Upper School AI Club recently hosted Arika Madouros Prime, a senior full-stack and AI engineer at Accenture Federal Services. After beginning her career in museums and later leading engineering teams at Juilliard and the Museum of Science, Boston, Arika returned to RCDS to teach Computer Science before moving into her current role in federal AI systems with Accenture.

Arika gave club members an inside look at how AI works in high-security environments. She broke down retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases, open-weight models, and the realities of operating in zero-trust, air-gapped systems, places where nothing can touch the open internet. Students also learned that the hardest part of the job is not always building Large Language Models (LLMs). The greatest challenge, rather, can be safely moving and updating data across siloed systems while protecting sensitive information. 

Arika closed her session offering advice to our aspiring technologists: understand how things work without AI so you can use AI tools well; build genuine experience early, even through internships; and stay curious about older technologies because they often give you an edge in modern computing.

Her visit spoke to the heart of the AI Club’s goals, which are exploring the future of AI, understanding the ethics and responsibilities behind LLMs, and learning from leaders who are shaping the next generation of intelligent systems. 

A practical window into real-world AI engineering and career planning, Arika’s visit underscored how meaningful it is for students to learn from professionals who not only shape the field today but open doors for those who will shape it tomorrow.

Thank you, Arika, for returning to RCDS to share your insights and expertise with our students.

Arika’s visit was a perfect reflection of where we’re headed as a school with AI, which is grounded in ethics, informed by real-world practice, and focused on helping students to use AI responsibly. Hearing from someone who is building secure, human-centered AI systems for the public sector reinforced our RCDS AI strategy that AI should deepen human insight, strengthen critical thinking, and enhance the way we learn and work.

–Dr. Daren Khairule