“Strong governance transforms technology from operational risk into strategic advantage.”
Board Candidate Biography • Ashburn, VA • [email protected] • linkedin.com/in/yasirwasi
Yasir Wasi is an accomplished technology governance executive, enterprise architect, entrepreneur, and strategic advisor whose career spans more than twenty five years of leadership across financial services, government, healthcare, transportation, and technology consulting. Throughout his professional journey, Yasir has built a reputation for helping highly regulated organizations strengthen governance, oversee technology investments, and reduce enterprise risk while enabling innovation. His unique expertise lies not simply in designing technology solutions, but in creating the governance structures, oversight processes, and executive decision making frameworks that allow organizations to innovate responsibly while maintaining accountability, compliance, and long term business resilience.
From the beginning of his career, Yasir recognized that technology alone does not create sustainable competitive advantage. Instead, organizations thrive when executive leaders establish disciplined governance that aligns technology strategy with business priorities, regulatory expectations, and fiduciary responsibility. This philosophy has guided every stage of his career, enabling him to help organizations transform complex technology environments into strategic assets that support growth, operational excellence, and informed executive decision making.
Most recently, Yasir served as Enterprise Architecture Advisor at Fannie Mae, one of the nation’s largest government sponsored enterprises with responsibility for supporting the housing finance market. In this influential role, he advised senior leadership on enterprise technology strategy and governance while continuously enhancing the Enterprise Review Board processes responsible for overseeing technology decisions across the organization. He authored enterprise standards and governance procedures in response to Federal Housing Finance Agency Advisory Bulletins, translating regulatory expectations into practical enterprise policies that strengthened oversight, reduced audit exposure, and improved organizational consistency. He also designed and implemented an enterprise wide governance training program that elevated architecture maturity, improved risk awareness, and strengthened decision making across business units.
Prior to Fannie Mae, Yasir served as Enterprise Architect for Farmer Mac, where he guided enterprise technology strategy for the publicly traded, federally chartered financial institution. His responsibilities extended across vendor evaluations, technology investment planning, enterprise architecture, and the development of request for proposal strategies supporting security, infrastructure, and technology modernization initiatives. Working directly with executive stakeholders, he helped ensure technology investments aligned with organizational priorities while balancing innovation, operational performance, and prudent risk management.
Yasir’s perspective is further strengthened by his experience evaluating technology from both sides of the procurement process. As Solution Architect Lead at Leidos, he developed solution strategies for multiple government contract pursuits valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Working closely with executive leadership, he translated complex customer requirements into competitive business and technical solutions while evaluating technology providers, assessing implementation strategies, and presenting recommendations to senior decision makers. This combination of buyer and provider experience has given him exceptional insight into vendor governance, contract oversight, third party risk, and strategic technology investments that few executives possess.
His broad industry experience also includes significant leadership within healthcare, transportation, and enterprise consulting. While serving as Senior IT Architecture Analyst and Project Manager at UnitedHealth Group through Optum, Yasir managed a portfolio of fifteen healthcare transformation initiatives while redesigning enterprise analytics architecture and collaborating with executive leaders on competitive market strategy. Earlier architecture and consulting engagements with organizations including Amtrak, Delta Air Lines, the Internal Revenue Service, Hertz, Infor, and Trianz allowed him to lead enterprise modernization programs involving cloud strategy, business architecture, operational transformation, artificial intelligence adoption, cybersecurity, and governance process improvement. Across every engagement, Yasir consistently demonstrated the ability to simplify complexity while creating governance frameworks that enable sustainable organizational growth.
Entrepreneurship has provided another important dimension to Yasir’s leadership journey. In 2014, he founded Emerging Fusions, a technology advisory firm focused on enterprise architecture, artificial intelligence strategy, governance, business transformation, and growth enablement. Through the firm, he has advised both Fortune level enterprises and privately held companies, helping executive teams modernize technology environments, improve cybersecurity posture, strengthen vendor oversight, implement artificial intelligence responsibly, and establish governance practices typically found within much larger organizations. His ability to translate enterprise discipline into practical business solutions has made him a trusted advisor for organizations seeking scalable and sustainable growth.
Yasir expanded his entrepreneurial vision in 2022 by founding Emerging Kids, a STEM education company serving elementary and middle school students throughout Northern Virginia. Building the organization entirely from the ground up, he assumed full responsibility for strategy, operations, staffing, curriculum development, marketing, and financial performance. The venture reflects his longstanding belief that innovation begins with education and demonstrates his passion for preparing future generations to thrive in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. His work as an entrepreneur complements his corporate leadership by reinforcing the importance of disciplined execution, customer focus, and long term value creation.
Throughout his career, Yasir has maintained extensive exposure to board governance and executive oversight. He has regularly presented strategic recommendations before enterprise technology review boards while supporting executive governance committees responsible for major technology decisions. Earlier in his career at Species360, an international nonprofit serving institutions in more than ninety countries, he executed board committee mandates and provided operational and profit and loss reporting directly to the board of directors. His commitment to governance also extends to community leadership through the Project Management Institute Minnesota Chapter, where he chaired the organization’s Professional Development Days Conference Committee and managed the budget for its board governed flagship conference.
Yasir’s technical expertise is supported by exceptional academic and professional credentials. He earned a Master of Software Systems from the University of St. Thomas and a Bachelor of Science in Business Computer Information Systems from St. Cloud State University. He has maintained his Project Management Professional certification since 2007 while continuously expanding his expertise across the governance frameworks relied upon by today’s boards and executive leadership teams, including COBIT, NIST, ISO 27001, SOC 2, TOGAF, Federal Enterprise Architecture, SAFe, Six Sigma Lean, artificial intelligence governance, cybersecurity, cloud strategy, and enterprise architecture. This broad knowledge enables him to bridge the gap between technical execution and board level oversight with confidence and credibility.
Today, Yasir is pursuing corporate board and executive advisory opportunities where technology governance, artificial intelligence oversight, cybersecurity, third party risk, and digital transformation are central to long term organizational success. He believes boards have an increasingly important responsibility to ask thoughtful questions about technology investments, regulatory readiness, vendor relationships, and emerging risks before they become business challenges. His ability to combine strategic governance, enterprise architecture, operational discipline, entrepreneurial leadership, and executive communication positions him to help boards strengthen oversight while enabling innovation and sustainable growth.
Throughout every chapter of his career, Yasir has remained committed to building organizations that are resilient, accountable, and future focused. Whether advising Fortune level enterprises, federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, or entrepreneurial ventures, he consistently demonstrates that effective governance is not about slowing innovation but about creating the structure, discipline, and visibility that allow organizations to innovate with confidence. His career reflects a rare combination of technical depth, business insight, governance expertise, and collaborative leadership that continues to create meaningful value for executives, boards, investors, and the organizations they serve.
Character: Yasir leads with integrity, humility, and accountability while fostering collaboration across executive teams, regulators, technology leaders, and business stakeholders. His commitment to ethical leadership and disciplined governance has earned the confidence of organizations operating within some of the world’s most highly regulated industries.
Knowledge: With more than twenty five years of experience spanning enterprise architecture, artificial intelligence governance, cybersecurity, cloud strategy, healthcare, financial services, transportation, and government, Yasir brings exceptional depth of expertise to every organization he serves. His ability to combine technical mastery with business acumen allows him to help boards and executives make informed decisions that balance innovation, investment, and enterprise risk.
Strategic: Yasir consistently aligns technology initiatives with long term organizational objectives by designing governance frameworks that improve oversight, reduce risk, and support sustainable growth. His experience advising enterprise leaders, evaluating technology investments, and building governance systems enables organizations to transform operational complexity into strategic advantage.
Communication: Yasir is an accomplished communicator who translates highly technical concepts into clear, practical business guidance for executives, boards, regulators, and investors. His experience presenting to enterprise review boards, leading executive discussions, and advising diverse stakeholder groups allows him to build alignment, inspire confidence, and support thoughtful decision making at every level of an organization.
