Oumou Ly
Non-Resident Fellow
Oumou Ly is a policy expert and national security practitioner who has shaped cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and emerging technology policy and security at the highest levels of government.
Most recently, she served as the Senior Advisor for Technology and Ecosystem Security at the White House, where she led efforts to strengthen cybersecurity for critical and emerging technologies and improve resilience across the digital ecosystem. She was an architect of the President’s 2023 AI Executive Order and played a central role in developing and implementing the National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy and the National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technologies.
Before serving in the White House, Oumou was a senior advisor at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), where she helped transform CISA into the nation’s leading agency for proactive cyber risk management. As head of policy in the cybersecurity division, she established new authorities to secure federal networks, led the interagency effort to recalibrate the government’s approach to national security related vulnerability disclosures, and shaped the Joint Ransomware Task Force’s strategy to implement a data-driven approach to national cybersecurity.
Previously, Oumou served as an advisor to U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer where she led bipartisan and intra-caucus negotiations on landmark legislation and advised the Leader on national security, foreign affairs, and defense policy.
Oumou was fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center, where she published, represented the Center in media commentary for The Hill, NBC News, and the Financial Times, and co-authored the concept paper for BlueSky Social.
Oumou is a Nonresident Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity and holds fellowships at Harvard University, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and the Truman National Security Project. Oumou holds a B.A. from Notre Dame de Namur University and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She serves on the Board of Trustees at Notre Dame de Namur University.
