Rachel Fischer has spent 17+ years building enterprise risk programs across financial services institutions — combining regulatory fluency, hands-on technology acumen, and board-level advisory presence. She has built ERM frameworks aligned to ISO 31000 and COSO spanning cybersecurity, data governance, model risk, vendor risk, fraud, BSA/AML, and audit, and led model risk and data governance programs at Columbia State Bank and Umpqua Bank. Her approach treats risk governance as a business enabler: she consistently translates complex frameworks into measurable outcomes — cleaner exams, faster vendor onboarding, stronger security postures, and boards equipped to make better decisions.
Rachel has architected AI governance frameworks from the inside — designing governance committees, authoring responsible-use standards, and partnering with Engineering and IT to translate risk tolerance into enforceable technical boundaries in the cloud. She has deployed enterprise-wide usage monitoring, audit logging, and Microsoft Purview DLP to prevent sensitive data from flowing into external AI models, and led cloud migration risk strategy that drove security posture scores from the low 30s to a sustained 80 — tracked as a quarterly board metric.
Across multiple institutions Rachel has built governance architecture — risk taxonomy, risk appetite statements, KRI frameworks, risk registers, and committee structures — alongside modern tooling including GRC platforms, Power BI dashboards, and automated compliance repositories. As interim Data Governance Officer at Columbia State Bank she overhauled the function, chaired the Data Governance and Model Risk Committees, and built a three-year roadmap for data privacy infrastructure. Her model risk expertise spans DFAST, CECL, and AML/fraud model implementation developed over nearly a decade.
Rachel is a faculty member at the Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State University and a speaker at the Atlanta Federal Reserve, Tennessee Bankers Association, RMA Model Risk Management Summit, and Tennessee Society of CPAs. She served as Board Member and ERM Chair of the Risk Management Association's Portland Chapter and has been published in The RMA Journal and Nursing Economics. She holds dual certifications as FRM (GARP) and CERP (ABA), an M.S. in Economics from Portland State University, and a B.S. in Chemistry cum laude from Eastern Washington University.
Build AI governance frameworks, strengthen enterprise risk programs, and turn regulatory readiness into strategic advantage.
Request a Private Advisory Session