About Annie
Annie Searle, Principal of Annie Searle & Associates (ASA), helps companies build world-class risk programs. An internationally known expert in operational risk management with extensive experience in the financial, IT, and emergency services sectors, Searle thrives on complex challenges. She has spent the last decade teaching the next generation of risk and cybersecurity leaders at the University of Washington’s Information School (iSchool) while using her risk practice to write, speak and publish through the ASA Institute for Risk and Innovation.
Earlier in her career, Searle was co-founder and CEO of Delphi Computers & Peripherals for 15 years, delivering custom hardware and solutions to companies as diverse as Vulcan Ventures, Harborview Medical Center, Boeing Aerospace, Longacres Racetrack, and Seattle Mystery Bookstore. For her work at Delphi, she won the 1992 Northwest Woman Entrepreneur Award as well as a Matrix Table “Woman of Achievement” award in 1994. She sold Delphi and moved to Washington Mutual Bank (WaMu) in 1999.
She spent 10 years at the bank, most of them as a senior executive reporting jointly to the CIO and the CRO, with enterprise-level responsibility for business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management, technology risk and compliance, and some elements of information security, including threat analysis and root cause analysis. Washington Mutual loaned Searle to national financial services project efforts in the area of international financial infrastructure resiliency, including pandemic readiness, cyber threats, and biological restoration. With ASA she expands her reach.
At the same time she founded ASA, Searle was appointed an affiliate instructor in the University of Washington’s Information School, where she spent 14 years. She is a former University of Washington faculty senator and Elected Faculty Council member for three years; the co-creator of the iSchool’s iTeach initiative (2021-2023); and chair of the iSchool’s Women’s Caucus (2022-2023). She retired from teaching in June of 2023 as an Associate Teaching Professor Emeritus.
Searle is affiliated with The Tautegory Project, a network of scholars, students, and teachers devoted to developing and sustaining spaces for intellectual collaboration and critical communication.
Searle is a lifetime member of the Institute of American Entrepreneurs and an inaugural inductee of the Hall of Fame for the International Network of Women in Emergency Management and Homeland Security (inWEM). Her current professional affiliations include membership in ISACA, InfraGuard, the Global Association of Risk Partners (GARP), the Region X Infrastructure Security Group (CISA) and the Seattle Disaster Management Committee.
Searle (second from right, second row) was honored in 2011 at ceremonies in Las Vegas for the new Hall of Fame for Women in Homeland Security and Emergency Management. © 2011 inWEM
Books
Speaking & Media Appearances
From appearances at the National Press Club and in front of federal financial regulators to present findings on pandemic readiness in a blue-ribbon commission report, to seven years of participation at New York University’s international public-private preparedness summits, to over 50 conference presentations across the country, Annie Searle believes in sharing her research and presenting the findings.
Contact her directly if your organization or firm is interested in a presentation. What follows is a list of speaking engagements since 2008.
The ASA Institute for Risk and Innovation has been publishing research notes since 2011. All six volumes are available through Amazon in a series titled Reflections on Risk.
Annie Searle has herself written two books, one for a general audience — Advice From A Risk Detective — and the other a compilation of her writings over a five-year period of time, titled Risk Reconsidered. Both these books are also available from Amazon.
Searle is also the author of a chapter in Conduct Risk: A Practitioner’s Guide, edited by Peter Haines and published by Risk Books in 2018.
Searle has also written a monthly column for ASA News & Notes since the winter of 2009.