About the IAPP

• Ms. Harman-Stokes is the Acting Director of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties (OPCL). The Office supports the Department’s Chief Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer (CPCLO) in fulfilling statutory and other duties. OPCL is responsible for ensuring the compliance of the Department’s 42 components with existing laws, regulations and policies protecting privacy and civil liberties. The Office also plays a central policy-making role in the Department’s development and evaluation of legislative, regulatory, and other policy proposals affecting privacy, both domestically and internationally. She and her team review and comment each day on international policy documents, e.g., UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions, ICCPR proposals, G7 and G20 ministerial statements, and Freedom Online Coalition statements.

• Ms. Harman-Stokes has directly participated in working groups and international negotiations designed to harmonize high standards for protection of privacy and civil liberties, including when governments access personal data for law enforcement, national security and other public interest purposes. Among others, she has participated in the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, the OECD Declaration on Government Access to Personal Data Held by Private Sector Entities, and Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention (“Budapest Convention”) Second Additional Protocol.

• Her office is providing administrative support to the new Data Protection Review Court (DPRC), the second layer of a two-layer independent and binding redress process, a critical pillar in the new EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

• Earlier in her career, she was the Chief Privacy Officer at a U.S. financial regulator, a consultant to multiple multinational companies, a corporate officer and Associate General Counsel at a company collecting sensitive biometric and other data in 110 countries, and was an attorney at a top tier DC law firm. She received her law degree at the University of Virginia School of Law, and her undergraduate degree at American University’s School of International Service. 

• She is an IAPP Certified Information Privacy Professional-US and Government (CIPP/US, CIPP/G).