The Center for Democracy & Technology’s (CDT) Board of Directors today announced that Nuala O’Connor has been named President & CEO, effective January 21, 2014. O’Connor will succeed Leslie Harris, who is stepping down after leading CDT for nearly nine years.

O’Connor is an internationally recognized expert in technology policy, particularly in the areas of privacy and information governance. O’Connor comes to CDT from Amazon.com, where she served both as Vice President of Compliance & Customer Trust and as Associate General Counsel for Privacy & Data Protection. Previously she served as the first Chief Privacy Officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At DHS, O’Connor was responsible for groundbreaking policy creation and implementation on the use of personal information in national security and law enforcement.

Beyond her experience at Amazon and DHS, O’Connor has also worked in consumer privacy at General Electric, and as Chief Counsel for Technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She also created the privacy compliance department at DoubleClick and practiced law at Sidley Austin, Venable, and Hudson Cook.

 

O’Connor, who is originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, holds an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.Ed. from Harvard University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She currently serves on numerous nonprofit boards, and is the recipient of a number of national awards, including the IAPP Vanguard Award, the Executive Women’s Forum’s Woman of Influence award, and was named to the Federal 100, but is most proud of having been named “Geek of the Week” by the Minority Media & Telecom Council in May 2013. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area with her three school-aged children.

Source: https://www.cdt.org/pr_statement/nuala-oconnor-named-president-ceo-center-democracy-technology