Charla Griffy-Brown

Dr. Charla Griffy-Brown serves as Vice Dean and Professor of Global Digital Transformation at Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. She is an accomplished professor, board member, and consultant who leads transformational change. Dr. Griffy-Brown works extensively in the area of digital innovation, helping organizations leverage new opportunities through analytics, risk evaluation, and emerging technology deployment to achieve their strategic objectives. She also has extensive experience working with executives in information security. Her track record includes working with C-level executives and boards for public and private companies across different verticals, including manufacturing and services industries. Having lived and worked extensively in the Asia-Pacific region, she brings a global perspective enabling her to engage with executives to identify and solve mission-critical problems as well as design strategy. Her published work demonstrates her unique set of skills, expanding perspectives on technology deployment to achieve strategic objectives. She has been recognized as a thought leader for her published work and is distinguished as editor-in-chief of the international journal, Technology in Society, which under her leadership, is now ranked as one of the top three journals in the field.

Dr. Griffy-Brown has a portfolio of global business and academic experience that intersects business leadership, board leadership, and technology development. She has experience across multiple verticals working with organizations to facilitate innovation, considering opportunities to reduce costs, increasing their ROI, and expanding their customer bases. She has trained hundreds of executives in the areas of emerging technology and strategic corporate growth. Importantly, she has extensive experience working as an executive and board member in the area of information systems security and risk as an element of all new technology initiatives. Charla has a strong track record helping executives implement new initiatives in enterprise architecture, AI, and analytics. From 2015 to 2019, working with the principal of Blue Lava consulting, she completed a project involving 80 companies and 200 executives and board members to develop a risk-based approach to information security. This approach was presented at the Pacific Telecommunications Conference, and she has worked with business leaders and executives at Johnson & Johnson, CitiNational Bank, Paramount Pictures, and Nintendo. 

Most recently, Dr. Griffy-Brown has conducted research, consulting, and workshops with companies such as Coca-Cola Reyes, Honda, Hilton Hotels, and Pratt-Whitney Rocketdyne/Boeing. She has worked with CIOs from the U.S. Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FDIC, and NASA, exploring critical success factors for these roles. She continues to be a featured speaker at international conferences, where she often speaks on AI and cyber-risk. Dr. Griffy-Brown graduated from Harvard University, is a former Fulbright Scholar, and holds a Ph.D. in Technology Management from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. She has worked for NASA in programming at the Kennedy Space Center and served as a consultant for the United Nation’s Global Environmental Facility and the European Commission.

In addition to her current work serving as a leader and professor in higher education, she has been a featured speaker sponsored by the U.S. State Department in transitional economies such as Bangladesh and Bulgaria, where she has worked with government advisors and heads of state. She has worked with CIOs from the U.S. Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FDIC, and NASA, exploring critical success factors for these roles. She continues to be a featured speaker at international conferences and workshops, including the Odyssey Conference in Croatia (2023), International Conference on Intelligent Systems in Dubai (2022), the Digital Currency and International Trade Conference in Vietnam (2021), Emerging Technologies and Cyber Risk in Japan (2021), and the Hangzhou Technologies and Digital Technologies Conference in China (2021). Additionally, she co-chaired CyberSecure LA from 2017 to 2019 with SecuretheVillage.org.  Dr. Griffy-Brown graduated from Harvard University, is a former Fulbright Scholar, and holds a PhD in technology management from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. She has worked for NASA in programming at the Kennedy Space Center and served as a consultant for the United Nation's Global Environmental Facility and the European Commission.

Her research has been funded by a Denny Endowment, an SAP University Alliance Grant, the Pacific Telecommunications Council, the Rothschild Research Endowment, and the Graziadio School of Business Funds for Excellence. In 2020, she received the Outstanding Leadership Award at Pepperdine University, and in 2019 she was recognized with the Pepperdine Business School’s highest honor, the George Award, for her work in data privacy and cyber risk. She has been recognized as one of Pepperdine University’s outstanding faculty with the Howard A. White Teaching Award. She has also received recognition from the International Association for the Management of Technology. In 2018, she received special congressional recognition from Representative Mimi Waters, 45th District, California, for her work helping small and medium-sized companies and non-profits address cyber risk.

A former researcher at the Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development, Tokyo, Dr. Griffy-Brown also served as an associate professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. During 2012 she served as a Visiting Fellow at Tsinghua University in China and Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan. In 2017, she was a visiting fellow at Jyväskylä University in Finland. She has lived and worked in Japan, Indonesia, and Australia, with extensive experience in Europe through the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).