Nuala O’Connor Named President & CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology

The Center for Democracy & Technology’s (CDT) Board of Directors 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, 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.