Women leaders in privacy tech: a directory

Adria Sherman

Adria has been in product development in a variety of industries, primarily in the healthcare and privacy space. She believes trust and respect are the foundation for any successful team and product. As Sr. Product Manager at Ethyca, Adria is passionate about empowering product development teams to create solutions that bake in user empathy and respect from the get-go.

Alexandra Ross

Alexandra Ross is the founder of The Privacy Guru and Senior Director, Senior Data Protection, Use & Ethics Counsel at Autodesk, Inc. where she supports Autodesk’s global privacy, security, data use and ethics programs. That’s only the beginning of her leadership – visit her website to learn more.

Caroline McCaffery

Caroline McCaffery is a former corporate securities lawyer who is the founder and CEO of ClearOPS. ClearOPS is a technology company that hosts private and public data that customers can repurpose to perform mundane privacy and security tasks: responding to security questionnaires, conducting PIAs, or vendor monitoring.

Carey Lening

Carey Lening is a data protection and security consultant at Castlebridge, where she helps organizations meet data protection and security challenges and proactively adapt to future regulatory, governance, and security risks around the world.

Catherine Smith

Catherine is a privacy engineer at Ethyca, brewing up code for data pseudonymization, consent management, and beyond. Previously, she worked as a marketing data analyst, where she experienced first-hand the complexity and risks in the advertising industry, particularly when dealing with massive amounts of customer data.

Debbie Reynolds

Debbie Reynolds is a world-renowned technologist, thought-leader, and advisor handling global Data Privacy, Cyber Data Breach response, and complex cross-functional data-driven projects. She is also an internationally published author, highly sought speaker, and top media presence about global Data Privacy, Data Protection, and Emerging Technology issues.

Debra Farber

Debra J. Farber is a globally-recognized Privacy, Security and Ethical Tech Advisor and CEO of Principled LLC. Through Principled, she works with early and growth stage startups to craft go-to-market messaging that resonates with privacy, security, and data governance executives.

Deven McGraw

Deven McGraw is the lead for Data Stewardship and Data Sharing at Invitae. Previously, she co-founded Ciitizen, a platform for patients to gather their health information. From 2015-2017, she served as Deputy Director, Health Information Privacy at the HHS Office for Civil Rights and CPO (Acting) of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.

Emerald de Leeuw

Emerald leads the global privacy and data protection compliance efforts at Logitech in her role as the Global Head of Privacy. Previously, she founded privacy-tech company; Eurocomply for which she won European Young Innovator of the Year in 2017 and a 30 under 30 award. She is passionate about closing the funding and pay gap for female entrepreneurs and leaders.

Ginny Fahs

In her role as Associate Director of Product R&D for Consumer Reports’ Digital Lab, Ginny oversees a team working to build and launch innovative tools and services for digital consumer protection. Her division drives innovation in consumer protection technology and brings new products and services to market.

Heidi Saas

Heidi is the former Practice Manager of a National Consumer Rights Law Firm where she supervised over 200 attorneys, and the law firm’s operations in all 50 states. Today, she works primarily in the data privacy and technology areas as an outside Chief Privacy Officer (oCPO), and as counsel for start up founders and small business owners. I regularly advise SMEs and start ups working in a wide variety of industries, on a global scale.

Hessie Jones

Hessie Jones is a Strategist and Venture Partner advocating for human-centred AI, education and the ethical distribution of AI in this era of transformation. As a Venture Partner at MATR Ventures, she seeks to power the underestimated founder through capital and connectivity. Hessie also co-founded MyData Canada, and is a board member with Technology for Good Canada.

Jennifer King

Dr. Jennifer King is the Privacy and Data Policy Fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. An information scientist by training, she is a recognized expert and scholar in information privacy. Her research examines the public’s understanding and expectations of online privacy as well as the policy implications of emerging technologies.

Jessica B. Lee

Jessica is the Co-Chair of Loeb & Loeb’s privacy practice group. Jessica helps companies, market and monetize their digital products and content. She advises on everything from interest-based and addressable advertising, data analytics, location-based tracking, smart devices and wearables, to the use of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, VR and AR, and facial recognition.

Katrina Ingram

Katrina is the Founder and CEO of Ethically Aligned AI, a company focused on helping organizations to drive better outcomes in the design, development and deployment of AI systems. A seasoned executive, Katrina has over two decades of experience running both not for profit and corporate organizations in the technology and media sectors. She is a member of DAMA, IEEE, and volunteers with several AI ethics organizations.

Kay Lee

Kay Lee is a Senior Counsel at Rad Power Bikes, North America’s largest ebike brand. Kay oversees Rad Power Bikes’ compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and applicable federal and state laws related to privacy. Kay leads Rad Power Bikes’ global privacy program, which builds and implements privacy compliance processes, policies and procedures.

Melanie Ensign

After managing security and privacy communications for some of the world’s most notable brands, including Facebook, Uber, and AT&T, Melanie Ensign founded Discernible to help more organizations adopt effective communications strategies to improve risk-related outcomes. She counsels executives and technical teams how to cut through internal politics, dysfunctional inertia, and meaningless metrics.

Patricia Thaine

Patricia Thaine is the Co-Founder & CEO of Private AI, a Microsoft-backed startup, is also a Computer Science PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto (on leave) and a Vector Institute alumna. Her R&D work is focused on privacy-preserving natural language processing, with a focus on applied cryptography and re-identification risk. She also does research on computational methods for lost language decipherment.

Sheila FitzPatrick

Sheila FitzPatrick is President and Founder of FitzPatrick & Associates, a strategic global data privacy and protection compliance consulting firm. She has over 38 years’ experience in global data privacy, data protection and sovereignty compliance, and provides expertise and hands-on experience in areas such as global data protection compliance, data sovereignty, and cybersecurity.

Teresa Quintel

Teresa Quintel is a Senior Lecturer at the Maastricht European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity, which she joined in July 2021. Prior to her appointment, Teresa worked at the University of Luxembourg and Uppsala University as PhD candidate, where she was also engaged in teaching and moot court activities. Apart from her research and teaching activities, Teresa worked in different projects on EU- and Council of Europe-level.