Tasha (TC) Cooper, Esq.

TC advises leaders and organizations on AI governance, AI readiness, and responsible AI adoption, and brings more than a decade of direct experience coaching and developing senior leaders inside a federal agency. Her expertise is grounded in more than 25 years of legal, governance, and executive leadership experience spanning Wall Street, corporate America, and the federal government, where she has worked at the intersection of innovation, regulation, emerging technology, and organizational risk.

TC began her legal career at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, an Am Law 100 firm, before serving as Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Secretary of Movado Group, Inc. (NYSE: MOV). She then spent more than 16 years at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), where she coached, mentored, and developed senior leaders for more than a decade, first as Managing Associate General Counsel for Privacy/FOIA and later as Chief Privacy Officer and Senior Agency Official for Privacy. In this capacity, she built and grew the Privacy Office, and regularly partnered with executives across the agency to align priorities, resolve conflict, and strengthen team performance and effectiveness. She led tabletop simulations and red-teaming exercises in privacy and incident response across all divisions of the agency, and she designed and delivered innovative approaches to training to ensure full compliance agency-wide. She also built the onboarding, workplan, and incident-response processes that modernized the Privacy Office’s operations. Long before AI governance became a headline issue for organizations, she was addressing the legal, governance, and privacy implications of emerging AI systems and the responsible collection, use, and protection of data.

She is the Founder and President of UpwardAction® Advisory, where she partners with organizations to build the governance, leadership, and workforce capabilities needed to adopt AI with confidence. She is the creator and developer of two proprietary assessments used in her coaching practice: Human Intelligence Value Mapping™, which enables leaders to identify what should remain uniquely human before deciding what to automate, and Unique Human Contribution™, which can be applied in both individual executive coaching and team-level engagements to support goal development and action planning around human value and decision-making.

TC holds the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential through the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional (AIGP) certification, and the Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM) certification, both through the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

At the heart of TC’s work is a simple belief. Technology moves fast, but successful AI adoption depends on people. The decisions that determine whether AI succeeds inside an organization are ultimately human ones. She partners with leaders to move from AI awareness to operational readiness and confident execution, ensuring that people, not just policies, are prepared to lead in the age of intelligent systems.

TC is a member of the Reston (VA) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated, the Fairfax County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, and the Junior League of Washington.

Incorporated the Fairfax County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, and the Junior League of Washington.