Katie Searle is the ICO’s Director of Children’s Strategy. 

Katie leads the ICO’s work to protect children’s privacy across the digital world. She prioritises regulatory interventions to strengthen how online services treat children’s data using a mix of policy development, supervisory activity and enforcement to drive better outcomes for children. Currently she is focused on driving improvements in children’s privacy protections across social media and video-sharing platforms as well as mobile gaming platforms.

Before joining the ICO, Katie held a senior leadership role at Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, where she built the team tasked with enforcing the Online Safety Act. She oversaw the development of Ofcom’s enforcement strategy and shaped the regulator’s early operational approach to tackling online harms. She now brings this operational and enforcement expertise to the data protection sphere, with a focus on practical, risk‑based regulation and cross‑regulatory coherence.

Katie plays an active role in UK and international discussions on children’s data rights, age‑appropriate design, and the intersection of safety, privacy and platform accountability—supporting efforts across DPAs to deliver consistent, robust protections for children worldwide.