Leading by Design: A leadership profile of Dr. Ann Cavoukian and her passion for privacy

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If you’ve read anything about privacy in the last few years, you’re certain to have come across the name Dr. Ann Cavoukian. And if you don’t recall her name, surely you’ve heard of her concept of Privacy by Design. With all the data breaches we’ve encountered over the last several years and the most recent debacle with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, the value of privacy has never been more clear.

Privacy by Design is the idea that every piece of technology, every website, every tool and process ought to consider how to incorporate concepts of privacy from day one and throughout the entire development process. Historically, many products and services have been and continue to be built such that privacy is an afterthought – once the product or service has been fully developed, people try to figure out how to retroactively apply privacy components. This strategy can easily lead to unnecessary collection of data, awkward programming work-arounds, and privacy policies that are far too complex for regular people to understand. By accounting for privacy from the start, through Privacy by Design, many of these problems can be prevented or simplified.

Ann’s career is impressive. She had Privacy by Design in mind before serving three terms and 17 years as the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, the largest province in Canada. Now, she is a distinguished visiting professor and Executive Director at Ryerson Universities Privacy and Big Data Institute. She is also a Senior Fellow of the Ted Rogers Leadership Centre at Ryerson University, and a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Law, Science & Innovation at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.

Her awards are numerous and include being named one of the Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada, ‘Power 50’ by Canadian Business, Top 100 Leaders in Identity, and was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal by the Governor General of Canada for taking her Privacy by Design concept globally.

What’s inspiring about Ann’s leadership is that she never wavered from her commitment to Privacy by Design. Twenty years ago, digital privacy wasn’t a thing. AOL Instant messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MSN messenger, and LiveJournal existed. Skype showed up in 2003, Facebook in 2004, and Reddit and YouTube in 2005. To the average person 20 years ago, privacy was boring and manifested as physically locked filing cabinets in locked rooms – impenetrable without two keys. Yet Ann had the foresight to realize that planning for digital privacy would become paramount. She’s held strong to this message for more than two decades.

Today, her Privacy by Design strategy has traversed the globe and been translated into 40 languages. In 2010, International Privacy Regulators unanimously passed a Resolution recognizing Privacy by Design as an international standard. As we progress with integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and deep learning with our marketing technologies, we must take care to implement Privacy by Design. Not because regulators say we should, but because Ann has repeatedly demonstrated that it’s the right thing to do.

Ann is a regular loudspeaker and watchdog for consumer privacy concerns. She’s alerted people that personal privacy is affected when hotels integrate voice assistants into the rooms with the intention of enhancing customer experiences. Right now, Marriott International is testing the Alexa voice assistant to allow guests to request room service or adjust the temperature settings. Naturally, the device is always listening even if guests forget or don’t realize that the device is in the room. She’s also alerted people to the dangers of allowing social networks to track your every movement, and DNA services to hold onto your personal health information. Of course, companies that focus on ‘privacy by design’ when building customer experiences, products, and services having nothing to fear.

You can find Ann on Twitter, Linkedin, Wikipedia, at Ryerson University’s Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence where she is the Distinguished Expert-in-Residence, or her foundation Global Privacy and Security By Design.

Annie Pettit, Ph.D. FMRIA
Annie Pettit, PhD, FMRIA is a research methodologist who specializes in marketing and research design and strategy. She is an invited speaker at conferences around the world and has published refereed and industry articles. She won a Ginny Valentine Award, ESOMAR Excellence Award for the Best Paper, MRIA Award of Outstanding Merit, and ESOMAR Best Methodological Paper. Annie blogs at LoveStats, tweets at @LoveStats and is the author of "People Aren't Robots" and "7 Strategies and 10 Tactics to Become a Thought Leader" both available on Amazon.

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