Helena Almeida was on the frontlines of Automatic Data Processing’s technology and artificial intelligence initiatives before generative AI burst onto the scene in late 2022.   

As an attorney on the payroll processing giant’s legal team, Almeida has long grappled with the many issues that AI in all its iterations has presented for both the company and its users. But it was only in 2025 that such challenges became part of her title as AI legal officer; and then again on July 1 her title changed to chief AI legal officer. She is also a vice president, managing counsel at ADP. 

In her new role, Almeida’s professional remit will expand to include responsibilities in more areas related to product compliance, in addition to her existing remit that has dealt with developing and managing the company’s initiative on responsible AI. As the technology has evolved, she has noticed an increased interest and more questions coming from finance teams. 

“It’s an interesting evolution. At first when people started really asking more questions about AI and the tools, it started with IT,” Almeida told CFO Dive in an interview late last month. But in the last two to three years, “it’s become something that’s very important for HR leaders and finance leaders.” 

CFO Dive recently spoke with Almeida about AI and how finance leaders are approaching and incorporating it in their companies. The following Q&A was edited for brevity and clarity.

CFO Dive: What are the main questions you’re fielding these days from CFOs and finance teams? 

Helena Almeida: One of the things we’re talking a lot about is…human in the loop. That became a little bit of a buzzword. We’re talking a lot about how to make that meaningful. Because, human in the loop could be somebody who is sitting there and clicking on their mouse when the AI prompts them to take an action. But what we’re thinking about doing is, how do we actually build a meaningful human moment that matters in our workflow?

Human in the loop isn’t the same thing as meaningful human judgment. So when you think about what matters to finance people, payroll practitioners, HR people, they’re not looking for human oversight as a box to check...We all know that AI can look very polished and persuasive and everything, but the goal is where we’re designing a system that really encourages humans to say, ‘hey wait a minute,’ to look at what they’re seeing and see if it makes sense. 

CFO Dive: Payroll is so important, what are the questions and the pain points around applying AI that CFOs need to know about?  

Helena Almeida: One of the challenges is building trust at scale...There’s a tension that a lot of companies are feeling about building AI into their workflow versus concern about moving too quickly. Part of the magic, and one of the things I’m very proud of that we’re doing at ADP is making sure that we’re developing at the speed of trust. Sounds a little buzzwordy, but it’s really the foundation. Responsible AI is not a constraint on innovation, it’s what allows us to innovate and scale with trust.  

CFO Dive: Can we pivot to your role as a legal officer at ADP and what you’ve accomplished in that role?  

Helena Almeida: We have a very robust governance system at ADP that pulls in subject matter experts from privacy teams, security teams, data teams, product teams and HR and ethics groups to make sure we’re thinking about all these important perspectives when we’re developing our AI. So every time we’re putting AI into a product that will be client facing, every time we’re putting AI into an internal tool for our associates to use, we are talking to finance and HR and product leads to make sure we’re doing it in a way that actually solves a problem…We have hundreds of ideas that are being considered every week and we have to think about which problems we need to solve. 

CFO Dive: How has AI reshaped ADP’s payroll processing platform? 

Helena Almeida: We have a phenomenal product called ADP assist, so all of our client-facing AI offerings are in the ADP assist umbrella and we have different capabilities that we’re offering. One of them for example is looking at payroll variances and missing tax IDs. We know people don’t always appreciate the wide variety of things that are triggered by hiring a new worker or going into a new jurisdiction and one of the things we’re doing is trying to make that process easier and less likely to result in issues that can be avoided through technology and workflows.

CFO Dive: Do you have any advice for finance teams looking to incorporate AI in their systems, payroll and otherwise? 

Helena Almeida: Don’t look to layer AI over existing processes. It’s an opportunity to look at your full work flow and to get to the real issues and obstacles that are relevant for your company.

There’s definitely a place at the table for HR, there’s definitely a place at the table for finance, these leaders really need to lean in and not feel like they have to know how to develop an AI agent or code. It’s not necessarily a technical expertise that they bring, but the finance focus on the controls and accuracy and the HR focus on how these workflows show up for the people in the businesses is really important...And frankly, getting those things right is what increases adoption at companies.