The International Association of Privacy Professionals announced Baker McKenzie consultant Elizabeth Denham, Norton Rose Fulbright Partner Anna Gamvros, CIPP/A, CIPT, FIP, Cisco Vice President and Chief Privacy Officer Harvey Jang, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPT, and Mastercard Chief Privacy Officer Caroline Louveaux, CIPP/E, CIPM, were appointed to its 2022 board of directors.
The IAPP also announced its executive committee for 2022. Chair of the International Regulatory Strategy Data Committee for the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation Vivienne Artz was appointed chair. Vodafone Global Privacy Officer Mikko Niva will serve as vice chair, McKesson Corporation Chief Privacy Officer and Vice President Faith Myers, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, FIP, is now treasurer, while eBay Chief Privacy Officer Anna Zeiter, CIPP/E, CIPM, takes on the role of secretary. Pfizer Chief Privacy Officer Patrice Ettinger, CIPP/US, is past chair.
“With the evolving privacy landscape, there is an increased need, globally, for insights regarding new, and uncharted territory,” Artz said. “We’re pleased to welcome these well-versed leaders to help guide our strategic efforts. We look forward to working together to provide leadership to the global privacy field.”
Denham, who joins the board following a five-year term as the U.K.’s Information Commissioner and after serving as chair of the Global Privacy Assembly, said that with the Cambridge Analytica revelations and implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, privacy became a dinner-table conversation. Four years later, she said, “there’s truly never been a better time to be a privacy professional.”
“Now that thinking about online privacy has gone mainstream, and with the increasing power of tech, our field can only grow in the years ahead. I feel very excited about the future of our profession,” she said. “As an IAPP board member, I want to give credit and inspiration to people working in privacy roles. Our profession used to be confined to a backroom, back-office function. Today, data is the principal asset. In the 21st century, privacy professionals find themselves suddenly out front, in the spotlight, because we work at the intersection of society, law, and technology.”
Gamvros, who is Norton Rose Fulbright’s Head of Data Protection, Privacy and Cybersecurity for Asia Pacific, is based in Hong Kong and Australia and has experienced Asia’s development in the privacy space over the past 20 years.
“It’s been incredible, transformational, in fact,” she said, including the growth of “some very complex” privacy regimes and more on the way. “It’s really an exciting time for the Asia-Pacific region. I’m hoping to bring my experience and insights from being positioned in those two parts of the world to the board.”
As the privacy field grows both in number of professionals and its mission, Jang said he’s interested in taking a “macro level” look at helping the profession at large, and IAPP operations.
“What we’re responsible for as a privacy pro now is far beyond what we were when we started out,” he said. “Looking at the macro level as our profession grows and evolves, how do we keep pace with the needs, with the skills that we have, and we’re seeing, too, a lot of opportunity to leverage what we’ve done in privacy in other new areas, like artificial intelligence, machine learning work and data ethics.”
As new privacy and data laws are being adopted around the world, and with new technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing raising challenges and opportunities, Louveaux said the privacy world “has never been more exciting.” She said privacy is also evolving from a “compliance burden into a brand differentiator” and new business models are emerging with privacy at the core.
“With excitement comes also a huge sense of responsibility,” she said. “We must create solutions that enable data to be collected, used and shared in a privacy-centric way. This is the kind of responsible innovation that we owe to ourselves and to the generations to come.”
IAPP President and CEO J. Trevor Hughes, CIPP, said the IAPP 2022 board of directors and executive committee members are “globally respected leaders who bring extensive knowledge of the privacy field.”
“We look forward and are grateful for their guidance as we follow new and ongoing developments, to continue to provide our members the best content, services and resources available,” he said.