President
Software & In formation Industry Association (SIIA)
Kenneth Wasch is the president of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the leading trade association for the software code and information content industry. The Washington, D.C.-based organization represents 1,400 leading high-tech companies that develop and market software and electronic content for the global business, education, consumer, Internet and entertainment markets.
Wasch’s involvement in SIIA is based on personal and professional interests. His long term interest in computers and software, coupled with the industry’s need for a central trade association, led him, with an initial group of 25 software firms, to establish the Software Publishers Association (SPA) in 1984. Since then, Wasch led the association from its infancy to its merger, in January 1999, with the Information Industry Association, leading to the formation of SIIA.
Prior to founding SPA, Wasch spent eight years as a staff attorney for the U.S. Department of Energy, where he was involved with price regulation. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics and International Relations from LeHigh University, and his law degree from SUNY Buffalo, New York.
Wasch was recently awarded the Computer Law Leadership Award for significant contributions to the international legal and regulatory systems relating to the computer industry. A popular speaker, Wasch appears regularly at Japanese, American and European gatherings of software executives. He speaks on a broad range of topics covering issues such as intellectual property, software piracy, trends in the high-tech industry, and competition. He is fluent in Spanish.
He and his wife Lesley, an intellectual property attorney, live in Annapolis, MD and Washington, DC.