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Beyond privacy roles inside organizations, some privacy professionals find themselves energized by a wider reach. They enjoy scaling what they know, shaping the environment others operate in, or exercising authority to protect rights. The paths below are organized by these outcomes.
Make it scale across organizations: Consulting
I moved into consulting after more than a decade in-house and five years leading strategy at a privacy research and technology company. It wasn't a search for variety. It was a decision to take the methods that worked inside organizations and make them usable across different contexts. I had seen too many programs stall because the guidance was abstract or unsustainable once the consultant walked away. My aim was to bring forward what would actually last.
Effective consulting is less about producing ideas and more about making judgment calls: what to prioritize, how much is enough, and what can safely be deferred. The role is to cut through complex, sometimes conflicting requirements, reduce them to a short list of problems, and set out a practical compliance roadmap the client can execute within their resources and risk profile.
Engagements vary widely depending on industry, company size, risk profile and geography. A mid-sized business, for example, might surface three urgent compliance gaps. The consultant's task is to triage them, design a defensible compliance roadmap, and create procedures that fit the company's existing operations. What endures is not a presentation but the workflows, records and training that keep working after the engagement ends.
Who thrives here. People who can tolerate ambiguity and move forward with incomplete information. They enjoy the challenge of translating complexity into practical steps and can run multiple client timelines at once. They communicate in plain language, make decisions under pressure, and calibrate between "good enough" and "must have." Importantly, they also love the business side: marketing their services, managing client expectations, and accepting that income will be uneven.
Make it strategic for the enterprise: Leadership
Privacy is no longer just an advisory or operational role but has become a training ground of sorts for leadership positions. Leadership in practice is pragmatic. It means setting measurable goals, negotiating budgets and headcount, and translating regulatory risk into choices the business can act on. It can also mean reporting in the language of the C-suite: outcomes and trade-offs.
I've seen at least three patterns emerge. Some privacy leaders take the entrepreneurial leap, starting or scaling companies because they know the unsolved problems firsthand. A former state chief privacy officer is now co-chief executive officer of an artificial intelligence firm that raised millions. A security lead at a major platform became CEO of a privacy automation startup within a year.
Others expand their responsibilities inside large enterprises, overseeing artificial intelligence governance, safety, and regulatory affairs under new titles like chief privacy and trust officer or corporate vice president for privacy, safety, and regulatory affairs. A growing number of operations-driven privacy leaders are crossing into VP of operations or chief of staff roles, carrying over the same skill.
Who thrives here. Individuals who tolerate ambiguity yet insist on accountability. They find energy in setting direction when priorities compete and in persuading senior peers to align. Many move naturally into broader mandates like enterprise risk, data strategy, product, or operations because they are energized by the ability to influence organizations and steer them under pressure.
Make it public: Advocacy and nonprofit
Advocacy and nonprofit roles can move the impact from one company to communities and sectors. The work blends research, coalition building, public education, and policy development. It is often slower than corporate life but uses different methods of change: white papers that shift how regulators think, consensus standards that alter procurement, and organized events that create new norms.
A policy director might lead a multi-stakeholder effort to propose model language for children's platforms, publish research on tracking techniques, and brief legislators on realistic technical controls. Success requires translating complex ideas into clear narratives and recommendations that withstand debate.
Who thrives here. People motivated by public purpose who enjoy sustained research, careful drafting, and patient coalition work. They accept trade-offs, exchange smaller paychecks for wider influence, and measure success by shifts in policy, practice, or public understanding rather than quarterly metrics.
Make it enforceable: Regulatory and public service
Working inside a supervisory authority, a state attorney general's office, or a federal regulator is both technical and procedural. Investigations require rigorous evidence handling. Decisions need defensible legal reasoning, and guidance must be clear enough to change behavior without overreach.
A regulator's privacy investigator decides whether an organization followed its promises, whether a practice caused harm, and what remedy will correct it. Remedies often set industry expectations. That combination of detailed fact-finding and consequential decision-making is unique.
Who thrives here. Professionals who value due process and public effect. They methodically work with evidence, draft remedies that last, and think in terms of precedents that others will follow. Many later move to senior private-sector roles or policy organizations, bringing a grounded sense of how enforcement actually works.
Governing AI: A natural and urgent evolution
AI governance does not appear to be replacing privacy roles. If anything, it is multiplying the demand for people who already know how to navigate regulatory uncertainty, technical translation, and cross-functional politics. These are precisely the conditions privacy professionals have been working in for years, while other functions often stayed narrowly focused on their domains.
While some privacy professionals are formally pivoting to AI governance specialties, it is a practical extension of existing responsibilities for many others. I see this shift playing out along at least three visible lines.
First, a natural extension of what you are already doing. Teams add AI-relevant questions to impact assessments and require model inventories and stand-up post-deployment monitoring. Practices that once covered data flows now expand to include identifying and labeling datasets, documenting training processes, and maintaining audit trails for model decisions.
Second, specialization. Organizations create roles for model risk, algorithmic impact assessment, and responsible AI. Professionals pursue credentials such as the IAPP's AI Governance Professional certification. Employers seek professionals who can evaluate model risks, design governance gates for deployment, and translate technical mitigation into managerial checklists.
Third, strategic advising. Executives not only want to know whether a model complies with law but how to deploy it without creating reputational, operational, or regulatory failures. Privacy experience matters here. The instinct to ask the right questions before a system scales, demand evidence, and frame mitigation in business terms is the same instinct this new work requires.
Who thrives here. Professionals who are energized by emerging fields, can tolerate shifting requirements, and find opportunity in building governance frameworks where precedent does not yet exist. Those who need stable rules and established playbooks often struggle. Those who lean into uncertainty, see patterns before others do, and can guide organizations through the fog are the ones who make AI governance a natural extension of their privacy careers.
Your privacy career GPS
After outlining six distinct career paths, one question surfaced repeatedly: How do you actually decide?
What struck me in hearing from professionals is that many people already sensed their direction as soon as the options were clearly named. The messages I received on LinkedIn were not about compensation bands or job titles — they were about resonance. Why does one path feel natural? What is the thread running through my choices so far?
Over two decades of watching careers evolve, a consistent theme has emerged. The people who go on to thrive are not always the most formally credentialed. They are the ones who align their natural energy, skills, and daily work. When that alignment also reflects personal values, it often deepens into a sense of purpose.
A mentor once shared a practice that has stayed with me. For 30 days, track what gives you energy and what depletes it — at work, in conversations, side projects, even what captures your curiosity late at night. The patterns rarely mislead. I have used this exercise at my own inflection points, and I have shared it with others navigating transition.
Over time, I shaped it into a simple framework: notice your energy, study the patterns, match them against potential paths, and test your assumptions with people you trust before you leap.
This is not a formula; it is a mirror. It's a simple framework that may or may not resonate with you. If you find it useful, it may help you see which roles best fit you and which do not.
And the landscape is still expanding. AI governance is just one of the new arenas where privacy skills are finding traction, and others will follow. Privacy careers do not move in a straight line. They branch, intersect and create new openings. The real challenge is not identifying every possible route. It is paying attention to what brings you alive and then choosing the arena where that energy has the most impact.
The question becomes: which path does your own pattern point toward, and what transitions are still unfolding ahead of you?
Teresa Troester-Falk, CIPP/US, is the CEO and founder of BlueSky Privacy.
