Michele was our opening Critical Conversations keynote speaker in May 2018. Her first person accounts of being on the inside of CIA operations in unnamed countries kept the audience spellbound. She shared personal stories not usually heard through the filtered media, as well as personal feelings about what kept her faith strong in the midst of out-of-control circumstances
Michele Rigby Assad
Former Intelligence officer in the CIA, International Security Consultant, Author of Breaking Cover and Keynote Speaker
Fee Range
$20,000Travels From
Merritt Island (Near Orlando), FL
Michele Rigby Assad
Biography
Michele Rigby Assad is a former undercover intelligence officer who spent a decade working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). She dedicated her life to Christ as a child and committed to walk wherever God led her. Her calling has been an unconventional one taking her to counterterrorism work in war zones and other hot spots. She has repeatedly looked fear in the face to follow God off the beaten path, knowing that His plans are so much greater than her own.
Since leaving the CIA, Michele has served as a trainer, corporate consultant, and keynote speaker. Her best-selling book My Secret Life in the CIA and What it Taught Me About What's Worth Fighting For (Tyndale Momentum 2018) has opened doors for her to share inspirational messages all over the world.
Michele is on a mission to communicate that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when their faith is greater than their fear. You don't have to trust or believe in yourself, but you must believe in the God who made you. He knows better where he can take you and what he can accomplish through you, if you keep your eyes on Him.
Michele is a powerful storyteller who uses experiences from the CIA to illustrate a variety of themes designed to meet the objectives of her audiences, whether they are the Disney Institute, Baltimore Ravens, Google, Morgan Stanley or faith-based groups. A few of her faith-based themes include (but are not limited to):
How to Face Your Fears and Thrive
Following Your Faith Through the Unknowns
Tips on Finding Your Calling
How to 'Get Off the X' (Get out of your comfort zone)
My Unconventional Calling (Eyes Up!)
The Plight of the Persecuted Church and What We Can Do to Help
In addition, Michele and her husband Joseph, a persecuted Christian from Egypt, often share together about their experiences as a couple in the CIA and the plight of the persecuted Church.
Michele Rigby Assad
Featured Videos
Michele Rigby Assad
Featured Keynote Programs
God's Looking for the Ordinary
This is a presentation on Breaking Cover in which Michele discusses how ordinary people can do extraordinary things when their faith in God is greater than their fear. From small town Central FL, to the frontlines of the war on terror, Michele shows how critical it is to trust God more than you trust yourself. When you place your faith fully in him, He'll take you to places you didn't even know existed.
Defying ISIS
The story of how a small group of committed Christians heeded the voice of God, and in months saved persecuted Christians from ISIS in Northern Iraq. Michele’s and her husband, Joseph’s counterterrorism, counterintelligence and operational skills honed in the CIA were put to use in the service of others after they left their 10 year careers in the agency. This event was covered by ABC’s 20/20 in an hour long special about the evacuation of 149 people from Northern Iraq to Slovakia. (December 2015)
Christian Persecution and the Roots of Terrorism
This is about Michele’s husband’s life story of being a persecuted Christian in the Middle East and how God is now using that experience to rescue persecuted Christians fleeing ISIS in Iraq and Syria. (Her husband, Joseph has an amazing story of how God brought him out of a bad situation. He grew up in Assiout, which at that time, was the center of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. The roots of al-Qa’ida emerged from Assiout, and many of Joseph’s classmates were terrorists. Talk about bullying in school—that’s a whole other kind of bullying!)
The Courage to Find Your Calling
Michele uses the story of how she found and figured out her calling to help others do the same. How do you determine which direction to move in? How do you make decisions about your future? These are the things no one tells you about finding your way in life—i.e. the blueprints for God’s calling on your life are in your DNA. God made you a specific way to carry out very specific purposes in your life. We are tools and each tool is made for specific tasks. And He will give us exactly what we need to make decisions, even if it’s just the next step and not the entire 5-year plan laid out in front of us.
Michele Rigby Assad
Featured Book
Breaking Cover
by Michele Rigby Assad
A real-life, can't-put-down spy memoir.
The CIA is looking for walking contradictions. Recruiters seek out potential agents who can keep a secret yet pull classified information out of others; who love their country but are willing to leave it behind for dangerous places; who live double lives, but can be trusted with some of the nation's most highly sensitive tasks.
Michele Rigby Assad was one of those people.
As a CIA agent and a counterterrorism expert, Michele soon found that working undercover was an all-encompassing job. The threats were real; the assignments perilous. Michele spent over a decade in the agency--a woman leading some of the most highly skilled operatives on the planet, secretly serving in some of the most treacherous areas of the Middle East, and at risk as a target for ISIS. But deep inside, Michele wondered: Could she really do this job? Had she misunderstood what she thought was God's calling on her life? Did she have what it would take to survive?
The answer came when Michele faced her ultimate mission, one with others' lives on the line--and it turned out to have been the plan for her all along. In Breaking Cover, Michele has at last been cleared to drop cover and tell her story: one of life-or-death stakes; of defeating incredible odds; and most of all, of discovering a faith greater than all her fears.
The CIA is looking for walking contradictions. Recruiters seek out potential agents who can keep a secret yet pull classified information out of others; who love their country but are willing to leave it behind for dangerous places; who live double lives, but can be trusted with some of the nation's most highly sensitive tasks.
Michele Rigby Assad was one of those people.
As a CIA agent and a counterterrorism expert, Michele soon found that working undercover was an all-encompassing job. The threats were real; the assignments perilous. Michele spent over a decade in the agency--a woman leading some of the most highly skilled operatives on the planet, secretly serving in some of the most treacherous areas of the Middle East, and at risk as a target for ISIS. But deep inside, Michele wondered: Could she really do this job? Had she misunderstood what she thought was God's calling on her life? Did she have what it would take to survive?
The answer came when Michele faced her ultimate mission, one with others' lives on the line--and it turned out to have been the plan for her all along. In Breaking Cover, Michele has at last been cleared to drop cover and tell her story: one of life-or-death stakes; of defeating incredible odds; and most of all, of discovering a faith greater than all her fears.