William Ochs
A career spanning classrooms, software, global cybersecurity, international standards and applied AI — with an unexpected return to storytelling.
Systems, standards — and stories.
William Ochs is an author, storyteller, professor and technologist whose professional life has moved between software, classrooms, cybersecurity, standards and enterprise governance. His career has included programming and systems analysis, nine years of teaching, and senior work in cloud security, certification and regulatory architecture.
He spent more than a decade at Cisco in roles spanning global cloud certification, FedRAMP, SD-WAN security, ISSO/ISSM responsibilities and, most recently, Head of Cloud Compliance for Cisco Europe. He built Cisco’s U.S. federal readiness baseline and continuous monitoring program, and he has worked across federal and international security frameworks. His work has centered on the difficult space where technology, regulation, security and real operating environments have to meet.
William currently serves as a committee member on CEN/CENELEC JTC 13, Cybersecurity and Data Protection, contributing to European standards work in information protection, security techniques, data protection and privacy. His current professional focus also includes AI and data governance, enterprise regulatory architecture and the practical use of advanced technology inside real organizations.
That same instinct — taking complicated systems and making them understandable, useful and human — runs through his work as an educator, storyteller and novelist. At Donegal Studio, those threads now meet in original intellectual property, full-length fiction, illustrated Storybooks, applied AI, secure systems and media built with a clear point of view.
Family is central to William’s life and to much of his storytelling. His four adult children — Elizabeth, William, Casper and Seth — live in the United States. He now lives in the country of Georgia with his wife, Marina, and Anastasia, whose curiosity and family adventures helped inspire The Adventures of Anastasia Finn.
William’s illustrated Anastasia Finn Storybooks are family read-alouds for ages five through eight. His full-length Donegal Novels—including the first two books of The Finn Dynasty—are written for readers ages nine through adult.
Systems and stories.
The subject matter changed over the years. The underlying work did not: understand complicated systems, make them safer and clearer, and help people use them well.