Preparation for the Certified Chief Quantum Officer Capstone
Quantum technology has moved from the research budget to the operating plan, and most organizations have no one whose job is to decide what to do about it. The work is split across people who each own a piece of it. A CIO owns infrastructure, a CISO owns the migration away from RSA and elliptic curve cryptography, a head of R&D owns whatever pilot happens to be running, and nobody owns the portfolio. We built this program for the executive who takes that ownership, whether or not the title exists on the org chart yet.
The program covers quantum technology as a whole, with computing, networking, and sensing on the opportunity side and post-quantum cryptographic migration on the risk side. The through line is judgment about a portfolio rather than depth in any one technology, because the decisions an executive actually faces are what to fund, what to defend against, what to pilot, and what to leave alone for another three years.
This program sits above the certification tracks rather than beside them. Where PQCM Training teaches a manager to run the cryptographic migration and CQTP Training teaches a professional to work with the technology, this program teaches the layer above both, setting the portfolio those programs execute, funding it, governing it, and answering for it to a board. Assessment is an independently marked capstone rather than a written exam. The competence being certified is a plan defended under scrutiny, not recall under time pressure.
Course Outline
Module 1 — Reading the Field
What has been demonstrated, what has merely been announced, and how far apart those two things usually turn out to be. Physical against logical qubits, error correction, and the difference between a roadmap and a result. Computing, networking, and sensing as three markets moving at three different speeds. Building the habit of asking a vendor the question their press release was written to avoid.
Module 2 — Where the Value Is, and Where It Isn’t
The problem classes quantum computing plausibly addresses and the current evidence for each. The honest state of quantum advantage as it stands rather than as it’s marketed. Evaluating a vendor claim, a pilot proposal, and an internal business case without needing to check the mathematics yourself. Recognizing when a use case is real, when it’s premature, and when it is marketing wearing a business case.
Module 3 — Quantum Readiness as an Operating Capability
Talent, partnerships, cloud access, and pilot design. What separates a pilot that produces a decision from a pilot that produces a press release. Build, buy, and wait as three defensible positions, and the conditions that make each one the right call. Structuring readiness so the organization can move when the field does, without spending as if it already had.
Module 4 — The Risk Side: Post-Quantum Migration
Harvest now, decrypt later, and why the confidentiality clock is already running. The migration to ML-KEM and ML-DSA and what the published deadlines require of your organization specifically rather than of organizations in general. What a CISO needs from an executive sponsor, what a cryptographic inventory costs in time and money, and why this is a multi-year program rather than a patch cycle. The sponsor’s side of the migration the Post-Quantum Certified track teaches practitioners to run.
Module 5 — Governance, Funding, and the Board
Steering structures that survive contact with a budget cycle. Procurement and supply chain exposure. National strategies and export controls as they bear on commercial planning. Presenting quantum to a board that has either heard too much about it or nothing at all, and building the reporting cadence that keeps sponsorship alive after the first budget approval.
Module 6 — Capstone Workshop
Participants present their capstone work to the cohort and the instructors, take live critique on it, and refine before submission. The final session runs as a working review rather than a lecture, and the gap before it is reserved for capstone work.
Format and Delivery
This program runs as a live cohort. Current cohorts and prices are in the booking section below. Private cohorts for a single organization are available and quoted per engagement. There’s no on-demand edition. The program is built around live critique and a cohort of peers.
Sessions run on Saturdays, six sessions of four hours, 24 contact hours in all, from 15:00 to 19:00 Central European Time, which is 09:00 to 13:00 in New York. The cohort is timed for Europe and the Americas East, and participants further west should expect an early start. The program fits around an executive calendar rather than requiring a week away from one. Places are limited to keep the cohort small enough for every participant to present their capstone work and take live critique in the final session.
Prerequisites
- None
No prior certification is required. The program assumes executive seniority rather than technical background, and the engineering is deliberately not taught here. Participants who want the technical depth are pointed at the certification tracks that cover it, and several of our credential holders take this program alongside one of those.
What Comes Next
Assessment is a capstone project and there’s no written exam.
You build a quantum strategy and three-year roadmap for a simulated multinational that we supply. It comes with a sector, a balance sheet, a regulatory position, an existing technology estate, and a set of internal politics that will feel familiar. You decide what it should adopt, what it should defend against, how the work gets funded and governed, and how you would defend that plan to its board.
We never ask for anything confidential. Participants are not asked to submit material about their own employer, and the capstone is built so that no such material would help.
The brief and the marking rubric go out at enrollment rather than at submission. A participant who knows how the work will be judged produces better work. Submissions are due two weeks after the final session.
Two assessors from our board of instructors mark each submission independently against the published rubric. Neither of them taught your cohort. Where they disagree, a third assessor settles it. Results come back within ten business days of submission. A clarification round is available where an assessor needs a point expanded, and using it pauses that clock. One resubmission is included if the work does not pass.
Passing awards the CCQO credential. It is valid for three years and maintained under the standard Quantum Academy terms, and US$149 a year covers every credential a holder holds.
Pricing
| Option | Price |
|---|---|
| Live online cohort (all-inclusive) | US$8,499 |
| In-person cohort (all-inclusive) | US$9,499 |
| Private executive cohort | Custom quote |
All prices are in US dollars. The fee includes the six live sessions, the capstone assessment, and the CCQO credential. There is no separate examination or assessment fee.
Who this program is for
Executives and senior leaders accountable for quantum in some form and working without a map. Chief technology officers and chief information officers who have been handed quantum alongside everything else, CISOs who own the migration and need to make the case above them, heads of strategy and innovation weighing where quantum belongs in a capital plan, and board members and general managers who have to approve a number and then defend it. It is also appropriate for senior advisors who guide boards and executive teams through those decisions.
What you’ll be able to do afterward
- Separate demonstrated results from announced roadmaps and evaluate vendor claims without checking the mathematics yourself
- Set a quantum portfolio position across computing, networking, sensing, and security, with reasons that survive scrutiny
- Sponsor a post-quantum migration program, knowing what it needs from the executive layer, what it costs, and how it sequences against the published deadlines
- Design governance and funding structures for quantum work that survive contact with a budget cycle
- Assess organizational readiness across talent, partnerships, cloud access, and pilot design, and choose between build, buy, and wait deliberately
- Present a quantum strategy and three-year roadmap to a board and defend it under questioning
What you leave with
You leave with the course handbook, the full program written out with the instructor notes in place, so it reads as a book rather than a deck. All three Quantum Academy reference texts are included at no extra cost, Quantum Ready, Quantum Systems Integration, and Quantum Sovereignty, along with the capstone brief and marking rubric issued at enrollment. The handbook is yours to keep and yours to share inside your leadership team.
On a pass, you hold the CCQO credential and a verifiable badge at ccqo.pro that an employer or a board can check.
Where this sits in your path
CCQO sits at the top of the Quantum Leadership Track and has no prerequisite. It complements the certification tracks rather than replacing them. An executive can take this program while their leads take PQCM or CQSI, and the CISO running the migration day to day is served by the Post-Quantum Certified track, with this program as the sponsor’s counterpart to it. Executives who want a shorter first step can start with our executive briefings and return here when the portfolio question lands on their desk.
Why we teach this
The program is built by practitioners who have held the seats it trains for. Our faculty has run security and technology practices inside the world’s largest enterprises, held CTO and CISO roles, founded quantum technology companies. The program is vendor-independent, because its whole subject is judgment about vendors, and our credibility depends on that independence.
