About the IAPP

Harriet Pearson is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Hogan Lovells, where her practice focuses on privacy, data security, and cybersecurity. She advises companies and boards of directors on legal risk assessments and mitigation strategies; enterprise-wide governance and compliance programs; security incident responses and remediation; investigations and enforcement; cross-border data transfers; regulatory compliance; and legislative, regulatory and self-regulatory processes.

Harriet joined Hogan Lovells in 2012 from the IBM Corporation, where served as Vice President, Security Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer and was responsible for global information policies and practices affecting over 400,000 employees and thousands of clients and vendors.

Harriet currently co-chairs the Georgetown University Cybersecurity Law Institute and serves on the ABA President's Task Force on Cybersecurity and on the advisory boards of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Future of Privacy Forum. She previously served on the CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency and the executive committee of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership. A founding and long-serving board member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), she conceived of and spearheaded the founding of the IAPP's Pro Bono Privacy Initiative.

Dubbed by one legal publication as the First Lady of Privacy, Harriet is one of the first and longest-serving chief privacy officers in the Fortune 500 and an internationally-recognized data privacy and security pioneer. In 2007 the IAPP presented Harriet with its highest honor, the Vanguard Award, awarded annually to the individual professional who best demonstrates outstanding leadership, knowledge and creativity in the field of privacy and data protection. In 2012 the Executive Women's Forum presented her with its Corporate Practitioner Woman of Influence award for cybersecurity, privacy and risk management.

Harriet is an honors graduate of the UCLA School of Law (Order of the Coif) and Princeton University.