Speaker Biographies

Speakers

Vera Jourova

Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, European Commission

Ms Věra Jourová is currently European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality.

In 2014, before coming to the European Commission, Ms Jourová held the position of Minister for Regional Development in the Czech Republic. Previous to this, from 2006 to 2013, she worked in her own company as an international consultant on European Union funding, and also was involved in consultancy activities in the Western Balkans relating to the European Union Accession. In 2003 Ms. Jourová was appointed Deputy Minister for Regional Development, a position which she held for three years. Previously she worked as Head of the Department of Regional Development in the Vysočina Region, from 2001, and before that as Secretary and Spokesperson of the Třebič Municipal Office, from 1995 to 2001.

Ms Jourová holds a Degree in Law (Mgr.) from the Charles University, Prague and a Master's degree (Mgr.) in the Theory of Culture from the Charles University, Prague.

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin

Chairwoman, CNIL and Article 29 Working Party **

Ms. Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin graduated in France from the HEC School of Business Management (“Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales”), the National Administration School (“Ecole Nationale d’Administration”) and the Multimedia Institute (“Institut Mutltimédia”).

She first held various posts with the French State Council (“Conseil d’Etat”), as an “auditeur” from 1986 to 1989, a “maître des requêtes” (counsel) from 1989 to 2001 and was responsible of the relations with the print and broadcast media from 1988 to 1991.

Ms. Falque-Pierrotin also served as Deputy Chair of the French Ministry of Culture and French-Speaking World Matters from 1993 to 1995. She became State Counselor (“Conseiller d’Etat”) in November 2001.

After serving as Chair of the Interministerial Commission on Internet Affairs in 1996, she was appointed as an expert adviser for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1997 and as “rapporteur général” of the report of the French State Council on “Internet and Digital Networks” from 1997 to 1998.

From 2001 to December 2010, Ms. Falque-Pierrotin was Chair of the Advisory Board and General Delegate (“délegué générale”) of the French Internet Rights Forum (“Forum des droits sur l’internet”).

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin has been a member of the French Data Protection Authority (“Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés”) since January 2004. Appointed as Deputy Chair of this authority from February 2009 to September 2011, she became its Chair as of 21 September 2011. She was reelected by the members of the Commission on 4 February 2014. She was initially elected Chair of the Article 29 Working Party for a two-year term on 27 February 2014, and was re-elected for an additional two-year term on 2 February 2016.

** Indicates contribution by video message

Adina Valean

Vice-President, European Parliament

Adina Ioana Vălean is the Vice President of the European Parliament, on behalf of the EPP Group, elected for the first two and a half years of the current legislature.

In the 2014-2019 legislative term, she serves as the member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy; and a member of the Delegation for relations with the United States. She also serves as a substitute in the Committee on International Trade. Her work is focused on telecommunications, energy and industry. Her current activity is dedicated to the two big package initiatives of the European Commission: the Digital Single Market and the Energy Union.

As member of the INTA Committee, she has also developed a strong interest in the negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: the benefits of which she has long advocated. With a strong commitment to the internet economy, entrepreneurship and innovation, she has been elected as a member of the steering committee of the European Internet Forum, as well as board member of the knowledge4innovation platform. With a particular interest in securing the competitiveness of the European automotive industry, Adina Vălean is co-chair of the Forum for Mobility and Society.

Kaja Kallas

Rapporteur - Towards a Digital Single Market Act, European Parliament

Kaja Kallas is an Estonian politician. She is currently a Member of the European Parliament elected from Estonia and belongs to the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). She has previously worked as an attorney-at-law and been a Member of the Parliament of Estonia (Riigikogu), where she chaired the Economic Affairs Committee. She is also Vice-Chairman of the Estonian Reform Party. As an attorney, she specialised in European and Estonian competition law.

In the European Parliament Kaja Kallas serves on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and is Vice-Chair of the Delegation to the EU–Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. She is also a substitute for the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and the Delegation for Relations with the United States. She was a rapporteur for the jointly drafted strategic report "Towards a Digital Single Market Act" that calls for ambitious action to remove barriers in the digital world as well as to avoid hindering the technological revolution by overregulating the sector.

Giovanni Buttarelli

European Data Protection Supervisor, EDPS

Giovanni Buttarelli has been European Data Protection Supervisor since December 2014. He was appointed by a joint decision of the European Parliament and the Council on 4 December 2014 for a term of five years. He previously served as Assistant EDPS, from January 2009 until December 2014.

Before joining the EDPS, he worked as Secretary General to the Italian Data Protection Authority, a position he occupied between 1997 and 2009. A member of the Italian judiciary with the rank of Cassation judge, he has attended to many initiatives and committees on data protection and related issues at the international level.

Fanny Hidvegi

European Policy Manager, Access Now

Fanny Hidvegi is Access Now’s European Policy Manager based in Brussels. Previously, Fanny was International Privacy Fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. where she focused on E.U.-U.S. data transfers. For three years Fanny led the Freedom of Information and Data Protection Program of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union where she engaged in strategic litigation with journalists and other NGOs, participated in the fight against the national data retention law in Hungary, and promoted privacy enhancing technologies. There, she gained experience on how to operate as a human rights advocate in a restrictive environment.Fanny also worked as a consumer protection lawyer both in the public and the private sector. She has a law degree from Eötvös Loránd University Budapest and she spent one academic year at the University of Florence.

Shannon Coe

Head of international data transfers sector, Office of Digital Services, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce

Shannon Coe is the Team Lead for Data Flows and Privacy at the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA), Office of Digital Services Industries. In this capacity, she was a key member of the team negotiating the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and is leading the team in implementing and administering the Privacy Shield program. She is also Chair of the APEC Electronic Commerce Steering Group and is working to implement the APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules System. Prior to joining ITA, Shannon was a legal advisor in the Office of Chief Counsel for International Commerce of the Department of Commerce and worked on a variety of international trade issues, including e-commerce and data flows.

Steve Wood

Deputy UK Information Commissioner, UK Information Commissioner Office

Steve Wood is interim Deputy Commissioner and a member of the ICO’s Senior Management team. He is responsible for overseeing the ICO’s policy functions, including representation at the Article 29 Working Party of EU data protection authorities. He also has sign-off responsibility for key FOI decision notices.

Previously he was Head of Policy Delivery, and before that, Assistant Commissioner with responsibility for FOI Policy at the ICO. Steve worked for 6 years as a Senior Lecturer in Information Management at Liverpool John Moores University and has also worked at Her Majesty’s Treasury.

Daniel Pradelles

Director, Global Strategic Engagements & External Relations Privacy Office, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Within the office, Daniel is in charge of maintaining a Privacy global vision and actively supporting key strategic and forward looking initiatives which will help the company and the industry to appropriately implement new technologies and practices while ensuring that personal data protection and privacy of data subject are respected.

Daniel’s responsibilities include ensuring ongoing dialog with Privacy regulators and key stakeholders, identifying and participating in consortia and other organization of strategic importance. Main objectives to heighten Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Privacy Program; maintain collaborative relationship, be aware of new privacy regulatory trends, new technologies & practices and keep abreast of privacy developments.

Daniel is member of the International Association of Privacy Professional (IAPP) and holds CIPP/US certification from IAPP.

Prior to current assignment, Daniel was HP’s EMEA Privacy Officer and held several management positions in HP at local and international levels, in Customer Support, Marketing, International project management, and EMEA Information System Manager. Prior to joining HP he worked in R&D and served as a university professor in Canada.

A native of France, Daniel holds a Telecommunications Engineer degree from ENSEA (France), an MScA in Electrical Engineering from Sherbrooke University (Canada), an MBA from UQUAM University (Canada).

Claus-Dieter Ulmer

Senior Vice President, Group Privacy, Deutsche Telekom

Dr. Claus-Dieter Ulmer, Attorney, Senior Vice President Group Privacy

Dr. Ulmer studied law in Germany with practical studies in Haifa, Israel. He made his doctor of laws in 1994. From 1993 to 1999 he worked for a law firm in Stuttgart, Germany, focused on Corporate Law, M&A and Labor Law. From 1999 to 2002 Dr. Ulmer was legal adviser with international responsibility at debis Systemhaus GmbH, a DaimlerChrysler subsidiary, before he changed to the function of the Data Protection / Privacy Officer for the whole debis Systemhaus Group. From August 2001 to June 2002 he led the Data Protection/Privacy organization of T-Systems International Group, a Division of the Deutsche Telekom Group. Since July 2002 he is Chief Privacy Officer with Deutsche Telekom Group and responsible for the worldwide Data Protection / Privacy policy. In January 2007 the central business unit “Group Privacy” with 70 Data Protection experts was formed which he is leading.
Dr. Ulmer has made many publications in national and international specialized press and published “The Data-Protection-Handbook Telecommunication”. He has been also speaker at several national and international conventions. Dr. Ulmer is lecturer for the Data Protection and IT-Security Academy in Ulm, Germany, which is a training institute for Data Protection and Privacy Officers.

Paul Nemitz

Director Fundamental rights and rule of law, DG JUSTICE, European Commission

Paul F. NEMITZ is the Director for Fundamental rights and Union citizenship in the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission. The free movement of people in Europe, data protection, fight against hate speech and racism and rights of the child are key responsibilities of his Directorate.

Before joining the Directorate-General for Justice, Nemitz held posts in the Legal Service of the European Commission, the Cabinet of the Commissioner for Development Cooperation and in the Directorates General for Trade, Transport and Maritime Affairs.

Nemitz has extensive experience as litigator of the European Commission before the European Court of Justice and has published widely on EU law.

He is visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges.
Nemitz studied Law at Hamburg University. He passed the state examinations for the Judiciary and for a short time was a teaching assistant for Constitutional Law and the Law of the Sea at Hamburg University.

He obtained a Master of Comparative Law from George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., where he was a Fulbright grantee. He also passed the first and second cycle of the Strasburg Faculty for comparative law.

Follow Paul F. Nemitz on Twitter: @paulnemitz
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/index_en.htm

Rosa Barcelo

Head of Sector, Digital Privacy, DG CONNECT, European Commission

Rosa Barcelo works at the European Commission, in DG CONNECT (Unit H4 – Trust and Security Unit) where she leads the sector responsible for digital privacy. Tasks and responsibilities under this role include the ePrivacy Directive (2002/58) and related legislation such as the personal data breach notification (Commission Regulation 611/2013). Specific tasks include monitoring transposition into Member States and working on legislative/policy developments in this area. In addition, Rosa provides legal advice to DG CONNECT colleagues dealing with ICT policies that have a direct impact on privacy and data protection.

Prior to taking up this job, Rosa worked for the European Data Protection Supervisor (2006-2011) and in the Data Protection Unit of the European Commission (2004 and 2005). In both positions she worked on novel privacy issues related to new technologies as well as with aspects related the US Safe Harbour agreement. Rosa has worked as a private lawyer in the Brussels offices of Morrison and Foerster and DLA Piper where she advised clients on European privacy and data protection, electronic commerce and technology law.

She also worked for some years in the academia (University of Namur, in Belgium and University of Balearic Islands. She obtained her PhD in Law with a dissertation on electronic contracts and digital signatures.

Bruno Gencarelli

Head of Unit - Data Protection, European Commission - DG Justice

Mr Gencarelli heads the newly created International data flows and protection unit at the European Commission (DG Justice and Consumers). As the head of the Data protection unit from 2014 to 2016, Mr. Gencarelli represented the Commission in the interinstitutional negotiations with Parliament and Council on the recently adopted data protection reform ("General Regulation" and "Police Directive"). He was also one of the lead negotiators of the EU-US Privacy Shield and of the "Umbrella Agreement".

Mr Gencarelli previously served as a member of the European Commission's Legal Service and as an assistant (référendaire) to a judge at the European Court of Justice after having practiced law in the private sector.

He holds degrees in law and political science, and teaches EU Competition Law at Sciences Po Paris. He is the author of numerous publications on EU law.

Townsend Feehan

CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe

Townsend Feehan is CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe the leading European-level industry association for the interactive advertising ecosystem. Prior to joining IAB Europe, Townsend worked for Microsoft Legal & Corporate Affairs in Brussels and ran EU industry associations in the ICT, consumer electronics and biotechnology sectors. Townsend holds an M. Phil. in European policy from the University of Edinburgh.

Thomas Boué

Director General, Policy - EMEA, BSA | The Software Alliance

Thomas Boué oversees the BSA | The Software Alliance’s public policy activities in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. He advises BSA members on public policy and legal developments and advocates the views of the ICT sector with both European and national policy makers. He leads on security and privacy issues as well as broader efforts to improve levels of intellectual property protection and to promote open markets, fair competition, and technology innovation in new areas such as cloud computing.

Prior to joining BSA, Boué served as a consultant in Weber Shandwick where he advised clients on a wide range of technology and ICT-related policy issues and represented them before the EU institutions and industry coalitions. In this role, he also served as policy and regulatory adviser for both EU and US telecom operators. Prior to that Boué worked for the EU office of the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry where he was responsible for the lobbying activities towards the EU Institutions in the areas of trade, education, and labor, as well as for the organization and running of seminars on EU affairs for SMEs and business professionals.

Boué holds a Master of Business Administration from the Europa-Insitut (Saarbrücken, Germany), a Certificate of Integrated Legal Studies (trilateral and trilingual Master’s degree in French, English, German and European Law, from the Universities of Warwick (UK), Saarland (Germany) and Lille II (France) as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Law from the University of Lille II, France. He is based in BSA’s Brussels office.

Ursula Pachl

Deputy Director General, BEUC

Ms. Pachl has been with BEUC since October 1997, first as Legal Advisor, then as Senior Policy Advisor and presently as Deputy Director General.

BEUC represents 41 independent national consumer associations from 31 European countries. The primary task of BEUC is to act as a strong consumer voice in Brussels and to try to ensure that consumer interests are given their proper weight in the development of all Community policies. Apart from deputising for the Director General, Ms. Pachl is leading BEUC’s work on the consumer legislation acquis and is responsible for horizontal and strategic policy issues.

Prior to working for BEUC, Ms. Pachl worked at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health and Consumer Protection in Vienna and at the Austrian Consumer Information Association as a member of the Consumer Advisory Board.

Ms. Pachl is the author of several articles in consumer policy and law journals.

Jeremy Rollison

Director, EU Government Affairs, Microsoft

Jeremy Rollison is Director of EU Government Affairs within Microsoft’s Corporate, External, & Legal Affairs (CELA) group. Based in Brussels, his work focuses on policy related to the EU Digital Single Market (DSM), with a particular emphasis on data issues and corresponding public policy covering privacy, cybersecurity, cloud policy, and the cross-border provision of online services. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked in the Government Relations team at Nokia in the company’s EU representative office, and was previously Director of the European Digital Media Association (EDiMA) in Brussels. He has over a decade of experience in Brussels at the company, association, and consultancy levels, focusing and engaging with EU stakeholders on issues related to the development and delivery of online services in the Internal Market and corresponding EU regulatory policy.

James Kinsella

Founder, Zettabox

James Kinsella is a high-tech entrepreneur who has developed successful network and network services (OTT) companies, and is most recently the founder of Zettabox, a European startup to offer secure, cloud-based document storage and sharing across the European Union. Previously, he was the Chairman and CEO of Interoute Communications, LTD -- one of the few pan-European technology success stories. During the last decade, Interoute has grown from a start-up to a company with more than €420 million in annual revenues in 2014. The Company is the leading Cloud services platform across the European Union and beyond, from London to Istanbul and Moscow, and from Stockholm to North Africa.

During the last 25 years, he has been involved in some of the world's first online enterprises, in particular as an executive at Microsoft. He was president of the Microsoft/NBC joint venture, MSNBC.com. He has also led teams who successfully turned around enterprises in very difficult markets.

Before launching his first company, Jim worked as a journalist, and he is the author of the award-winning book, “Covering the Plague,” informed in part by reporting in Central East Africa on the outbreak of AIDS there in the early 1980s.

Paul Adamson

Chairman, Forum Europe

Paul Adamson is chairman of Forum Europe and founder and editor of E!Sharp, an online magazine dedicated to covering the European Union and Europe's place in the world. He is also a Senior European Policy Advisor at Covington.

He is a member of Rand Europe's Council of Advisors, sits on the external advisory board of YouGov-Cambridge, a polling think-tank, is a member of the advisory group of the Washington European Society and of the Brussels chapter of Women in International Security (WiiS).
Paul is a Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, a patron of the University Association of Contemporary European Studies (UACES) and a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences.

He founded the consulting firm Adamson Associates, which was sold to Weber Shandwick and The Centre, which was later sold to Edelman.

In 2012, Paul was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to promoting understanding of the European Union”, a part of the Queen's 2012 New Year Honours Diplomatic Service and Overseas List.

Duncan Robinson

Brussels Correspondent, Financial Times

Duncan Robinson is the FT's Brussels correspondent, covering internet and telecommunications regulation, justice, employment and migration as well as Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. He joined the FT from the New Statesman in 2011

Joan Antokol

Managing Partner, Park Legal LLC

Joan Antokol is internationally recognized for her work in privacy and data protection. She is the managing partner of Park Legal LLC, an Indianapolis-based boutique law firm that focuses its practice in the areas of data privacy, information security and records management. Ms. Antokol also owns an online training company and a software company. She assists organizations with many aspects of privacy and security, including healthcare and clinical research, security breaches, international data transfers, enterprise management, and privacy auditing. Joan is a frequent presenter at privacy conferences and has a number of published articles and has written twenty booklets on various aspects of privacy and security. She is the 2011 Chair of the Indiana Security and Privacy Network (InSPN), an organization comprised of about 75 privacy and security professionals, and is also a member of the International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications (IWGDPT), let by Dr. Alexander Dix, the Berlin Data Protection Commissioner.

Prior to launching Park Legal LLC in May 2010, Joan spent three years as a partner at a large Indianapolis law firm and chaired that firm’s privacy and records management practice group. Before that, Joan spent seven years working for Novartis in New Jersey and Switzerland, and served as Vice President and Global Head of Privacy for the Novartis Group companies. Previously, she worked for Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. in New Jersey, and eventually served as the head of product liability litigation for that company, handling litigation matters in the U.S. and other countries. At Roche and Novartis, Joan also handled certain international drug safety and regulatory matters. Joan spent the first four years of her career as a trial attorney at a large New Jersey based law firm (Shanley & Fisher, PC., which is now Drinker Biddle) and simultaneously served as an acting municipal prosecutor in New Jersey for two years.

Joan received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), and a J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law (Newark, NJ), where she was the Business Editor of the Computer & Technology Law Journal.

Hans Graux

IT lawyer, time.lex

Hans Graux is an IT lawyer at the Brussels based law firm time.lex (www.timelex.eu), which specialises in information and technology law in the broadest sense. The team is internationally recognized, being both a Legal 500 Top Tier firm in Information Technology, and a Chambers Europe Recommended Firm for TMT - Information Technology.

Hans graduated in Law in 2002, and obtained a complementary degree in IT in 2003. He worked as a research assistant at the Catholic University of Louvain, before becoming a lawyer at the bar of Brussels in 2005. In July 2007, he co-founded the IT law firm time.lex.

He has led a large number of international ICT policy studies, primarily for the European Commission and various European Agencies. Recent work for the Commission has included projects focused on data protection, eSignatures, electronic identity management, cloud computing and information security. Furthermore, he is a member of the ICT Committee of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), and Member of the ICT Committee of the Order of Flemish Bars. He is also an independent legal expert to the Flemish Supervisory Committee, which supervises data protection compliance in Flemish administrative bodies.

Chris Connolly

Director, Galexia

Chris Connolly is a lawyer, researcher and consultant on privacy. He is a consultant to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) where he has been the lead author of several reports on privacy and cyberlaws. His recent publications include "Data protection regulations and international data flows: Implications for trade and development" (UNCTAD 2016), the Global Cloud Computing Scorecard (BSA / Galexia 2016) and the European and Asia-Pacific Cybersecurity Dashboards (BSA / Galexia 2015).

Chris is also a director of Galexia where he provides specialist consulting services for privacy and cyberlaw projects. He has advised Governments on the development of privacy, cyber-crime and electronic commerce laws in many counties, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Data Protection Leader journal.

Chris has previously held senior roles at the University of New South Wales in Australia where he lectured in the Masters of Law course for over a decade. He was also the founding editor of the Internet Law Bulletin. Chris currently splits his time between Australia and Europe. He is based in the UK.

David Martin

Senior Legal Officer, BEUC

David Martin is a Senior Legal Officer at BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation. BEUC represents 42 independent national consumer associations from 31 European countries. The primary task of BEUC is to act as a strong consumer voice in Brussels and to try to ensure that consumer interests are given their proper weight in the development of all EU policies.

David is part of BEUC’s Digital policy team, where he focuses on privacy, data protection, copyright and competition. He has been working on digital and ICT issues since 2006. Prior to joining BEUC in May 2015, David worked at the Public Affairs consultancy Burson-Marsteller and the EU Regional Office of Murcia in Brussels.

A Spanish national, David is fluent in English and French. He studied Law at the University of Murcia (Spain) and holds a Master’s Degree in European Law from the University of Luxembourg, as well as a Postgraduate Degree on Economic and Legal EU Studies from the Collège Miguel Servet / Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.

He can be contacted at dma@beuc.eu