Andreea Șerban

Privacy and AI Analyst for Global Privacy, FPF

Andreea Șerban is a Global Privacy and AI Analyst, supporting the Global Privacy team on the EU AI Act and its interplay with the GDPR, covering also AI and data protection legislation around the globe. A PhD candidate from the University of Iasi ‘Alexandru Ioan Cuza’ in Romania, Andreea is a researcher on data protection in international commercial law, holding a Law Degree and a Master of Laws in European Law from the University of Iasi and a Master of Arts in European Political and Governance Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. Before joining FPF, Andreea was a Bluebook trainee, working at the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Supervision and Enforcement Unit, a teaching assistant at the University of Iasi ‘Alexandru Ioan Cuza’ and a Legal Officer at the Romanian North-East Regional Development Agency in Brussels.

Lucas Anjos

Postdoctoral Researcher at SciencesPo & Data Protection Specialist in the International Affairs Unit of the Brazilian Data Protection Authority (ANPD)

Lucas Anjos is a Postdoctoral research fellow in the New Digital Rule of Law project and Coordinator of the Digilaw Clinic, at Sciences Po Paris’ École de Droit, with a focus on algorithmic transparency and AI regulation from a Global South perspective. Data protection specialist at the Research and Technology Unit of the Brazilian Data Protection Authority – ANPD. Affiliated researcher at JurisLab, at Université libre de Bruxelles. Associate Professor in the Law Department of Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora. Lucas holds a Ph.D in Law from Université libre de Bruxelles and Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, under joint supervision. He is also the founder and was a scientific advisor of the Institute for Research on Internet and Society – IRIS, specialized in internet governance, digital jurisdiction and technology regulation.

Laura Caroli

Former Senior Policy Advisor, European Parliament

Laura Caroli is a former Senior Policy Advisor at the European Parliament where she has worked since 2014 for MEP Brando Benifei (S&D), on whose behalf she has led negotiations on the EU AI Act at technical level. Experienced in Internal Market, AI, digital affairs as well as foreign affairs, defence and human rights. She previously worked at the Italian Parliament and the Italian think tank “Italianieuropei” in Rome. She holds a PhD in Geopolitics from the University of Trieste.

Rob van Eijk

Managing Director for Europe, FPF

Dr. Rob van Eijk serves as the Future of Privacy Forum’s Managing Director for Europe. In this role, van Eijk implements FPF’s agenda in Europe. He oversees its day-to-day operations. He built and manages a small team in the Brussels office and manages relationships with stakeholders.

Prior to serving in this position, van Eijk worked at the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) as Senior Supervision Officer and (Lead) Technologist for nearly 10 years. He represented the Dutch DPA in international meetings such as the Technology Expert group of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and twice as a technical expert in court (ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2016:14088). He also represented all European Data Protection Authorities, assembled as the Article 29 Working Party (WP29), in major multi-stakeholder negotiations concerning digital privacy standards.

His background is rooted in technology: he earned a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, an M.Sc. from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science and a Ph.D. from Leiden Law School , where he delved into online advertising, how browsers work, and real-time bidding. From 2021 to 2023, van Eijk expanded his horizons as a guest professor at Leiden University, sharing his insights on Explainable AI at the Leiden Centre of Data Science and contributing to the Leiden Legal Technologies Program.

Learn more about Rob’s work by reading Rob van Eijk Discusses Trends in European Privacy Discussions. Occasionally, you can find him on Mastodon or LinkedIn.

Maryant Fernández

Head of Digital Policy, The European Consumer Organization (BEUC)

Maryant is a lawyer and Head of Digital Policy at BEUC – The European Consumer Organisation, where she represents 45 consumer associations from 31 countries on digital policy. She coordinates and manages BEUC’s work in the fields of platform regulation, privacy, data protection, the data economy, telecommunications, cybersecurity, digital health, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. She is also a Board member of Women AT Privacy and a member of the European Commission’s expert group on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Previously, she worked at European Digital Rights (EDRi), was the EU digital committee Chair of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue, an advisory board member of the ‘Data Protection On The Ground Chair’ Board at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and a member of the European Commission’s Trade Expert Group and the NetCompetition Alliance Steering Group.

Maryant received her education from the CEU San Pablo University, the Université Catholique de Lille, the Instituto de Empresa and the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. She holds an LLM in Law in a European and Global Context. Maryant is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Chiara Giovannini

Deputy Director-General, Senior Manager Policy & Innovation, ANEC - the European Consumer Voice in Standardisation

Chiara Giovannini works for ANEC since 2002, first as Programme Manager and presently as Senior Manager, Policy & Innovation and Deputy Director General. Apart from deputising for the Director General, she leads ANEC’s works on Accessibility and Digital Society and is responsible for horizontal and strategic policy issues. Prior to working for ANEC, Ms. Giovannini worked at the Swiss Consumers Organisation. She holds a Master degree in European Law. Ms Giovannini represents ANEC at high-level events, committees and research Advisory Boards. For example, she was a member of the European Commission High Level Group on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics and now a Sherpa of the High Level Forum on standardisation. ANEC is the European consumer voice in standardisation. ANEC defends the European consumer interest in the creation of technical standards and European laws and public policies making use of standards.

Gloria González Fuster

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) 

Prof. Dr. Gloria González Fuster is a Research Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)’s Faculty of Law and Criminology, and Director of the Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS) Large Research Group. She holds a research position on the theme ‘Digitalisation & a Europe of rights and freedoms’. She lectures on privacy and data protection law at VUB and at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. She also a member of the EUTOPIA interdisciplinary Learning Community ‘Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in Data Processing’ (FATE). She is the Principal Investigator of the project Articulating Law, Technology, Ethics and Politics: Issues of Enforcement and Jurisdiction of EU Data Protection Law under and beyond the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (ALTEP-DP). González Fuster is member of Academic Board of the AI For The Common Good Institute (FARI), and of the European Commission’s Multistakeholder Expert Group to support the application of the GDPR.

Lorelien Hoet

Director of EU Government Affairs, Microsoft

Lorelien Hoet is Director of EU Government Affairs at Microsoft. In this role, she deals notably with European questions regarding privacy, law enforcement, content regulation and telecommunications policies. Before joining Microsoft in 2018, she worked as a legal executive at Proximus, holding different positions including Head of Legal Consumer business, and at Orange where she worked as Director of Regulatory Affairs. She holds an LL.M from KU Leuven and was also active as attorney at the bars of Brussels and Stockholm.

Adriana Iamnitchi

Professor, Chair of Computational Social Sciences, Maastricht University

Adriana Iamnitchi is Professor, Chair of Computational Social Sciences at Maastricht University. Her research spans different aspects of data and computer science, with a particular focus on social media forensics, network science, and distributed systems.  Until recently she has been professor of computer science in the United States, where her work was funded by the National Science Foundation, Office for Naval Research, and DARPA.  She holds a PhD in Computer Science from The University of Chicago and is an ACM Distinguished Member, IEEE Senior Member, and recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award.

Bárbara Lazarotto

PhD researcher, Law, Science, Technology and Society Research Group (LSTS) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

Barbara Lazarotto is a PhD researcher at the Law Science Technology and Society research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She is a Marie-Skloswska Fellow at Horizon 2020 Legality Attentive Data Scientists – LeADS Project.

Gianclaudio Malgieri

Associate Professor & Co-Director, Leiden University & Brussels Privacy Hub

is an Associate Professor of Law and technology at Leiden University (the Netherlands), where he is a Board Member of the eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies. He serves as the Co-Director of the Brussels Privacy Hub, as an Associate Editor of Computer Law and Security Review (Elsevier), and co-leads “VULNERA“, the International Observatory of Vulnerable People in Data Protection. He is an external ethics expert for the European Commission and is a programme committee member of the PLSC (Privacy Law Scholarship Conference), and an Advisory Board member of Epic.org. Gianclaudio has authored over 60 publications, including articles in leading international academic journals and a monograph, “Vulnerability and Data Protection Law” (Oxford University Press, 2023). His works have been cited by, inter alia, top international newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Politico, La Tribune) and European and International Institutions.

Bianca-Ioana Marcu

Deputy Director for Global Privacy, FPF

Bianca-Ioana Marcu is Deputy Director for Global Privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum. As part of the Global Privacy team, her work focuses on growing the footprint of FPF’s global policy and legal research internationally.

Prior to joining FPF, Bianca was the Managing Director of the multidisciplinary Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) Conference in Brussels. She led the conference’s programming work, comprised of 90+ panel sessions debating the latest developments in data protection and privacy in the EU and beyond.

As Researcher in Law at the Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS) Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Bianca counselled on the compliance of AI tools for scientific and political research purposes with data protection law.

Prior to making the move from the Netherlands to Brussels in January 2021, Bianca worked as Senior Advocacy and Standards Programmes Coordinator at ESOMAR. She is a certified Data Protection Officer and holds an LLM in International Law and Globalisation from Maastricht University.

Ingrida Milkaité

Postdoctoral Researcher, Law & Technology research group at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghent

Ingrida Milkaite is a postdoctoral researcher at the Law & Technology research group at the Faculty of Law and Criminology, Ghent University, Belgium. Her research interests cover human rights law, privacy, data protection, contemporary developments in the field of law and technology, and children’s rights issues arising in the digital environment. 

Currently, she focuses on children’s rights in the context of the processing of children’s voice data (research project funded by the Flanders Research Foundation (FWO)). She is a member of the Human Rights Centre, the UGent Human Rights Research Network and PIXLES. She also holds the positions of an Assistant Editor for IEL Media Law, Assistant Editor for the Strasbourg Observers blog, she is a member of the Legal Affairs Committee at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) and she has recently been appointed a member of Special group on the EU Code of conduct on age-appropriate design.

Ingrida obtained her PhD in 2021, her doctoral research (supervised by prof. dr. Eva Lievens) focusing on a children’s rights perspective on privacy and data protection in the digital age, and the implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation in that context. In 2019, this research project was awarded the first edition of the Stefano Rodotà award established by the Council of Europe Committee of Convention 108.

Thiago Moraes

Coordinator of Innovation and Research, Brazilian Data Protection Authority (ANPD)

Thiago Moraes is a joint-degree Ph.D. Candidate in Law at University of Brasilia (UnB) and Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB). He holds a LLM in Law & Technology (Tilburg University), MSc in Information Sciences, and two Bachelors, one in Law and another in Network Engineering (UnB). Currently, he works as the Coordinator of Innovation and Research at the Brazilian Data Protection Authority (ANPD). He was also the first Data Protection Officer of ANPD. Thiago is co-founder and councilor of the Laboratory of Public Policy and Internet – LAPIN. CIPM, CIPT, CIPP/E, CDPO/BR.

Mark Scott

Senior Resident Fellow, Atlantic Council

Mark Scott is a senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab’s Democracy + Tech Initiative where he leads on comparative digital policy issues. In this role, he is engaged in expanding the Initiative’s ongoing work on digital policy, regulation and governance, as well as efforts linked to the European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Scott was the chief technology correspondent for POLITICO, and previously spent almost a decade at the New York Times. He was most recently a visiting fellow at Brown University’s Information Futures Lab and sits on the international advisory board of RegulAIte, a project at the University of Amsterdam dedicated to artificial intelligence policymaking. He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Digital Governance at the Hertie School in Berlin.

Kim Smouter-Umans

Executive Director, European Network Against Racism (ENAR) 

Kim Smouter-Umans joined ENAR as Director General in March 2022 and was recently appointed Executive Director.

Named in 2023 as one of the world’s Most Influential People of African Descent, Kim champions the voice of our membership in front of societal change-makers wherever they may be.

A policy and advocacy expert, Kim has nearly 20 years experience advocating social causes including LGBTQIA+ rights, employment, education and social affairs, civic space and dialogue, and digital rights.

He has previously held senior and leadership roles in the European Parliament, the European Network of National Civil Society Associations,  and ESOMAR, the global trade association for opinion polling businesses.

He holds a master’s degree in European Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree in European Studies and is a graduate of the University of Maastricht.

Professor Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon

Brussels Privacy Hub

Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon is co-Director of the Privacy Hub. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Southampton Law School of law, where she held the chair in IT law and Data Governance until 2022. She was Principal Legal Engineer at Immuta Research for six years. Sophie is the author and co-author of several legal articles, chapters and books on data protection and privacy. She is Editor-in-chief of the Computer Law and Security Review, a leading international journal of technology law, and has also served as a legal and data privacy expert for the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for the Cooperation and Security in Europe, and for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Sven Stevenson

Director for the Coordination of Supervision on AI and Algorithms, Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, DPA)

Since 2023, Sven Stevenson is Director for the Coordination of Supervision on AI and Algorithms at the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, DPA). In 2023, the DPA took up the new role of national coordinating authority for the supervision of AI-systems and algorithm risks. His department works on pro-active identification and analyses of risks related to AI systems and algorithms. This is published twice a year in the AI & Algorithmic Risks Report Netherlands (ARR). The department  facilitates cooperation between supervisors, national compliants desks, academia, NGO’s and sectoral bodies. In addition, the department works on guidance and policy contribution. Currently, the department is strongly involved with the coordination and preparation of national supervision in the Netherlands on the AI Act.

Before joining the DPA, Mr. Stevenson was employed at the Dutch Central Bank for 14 years, working in the Financial Stability Department and the Resolution Department. He was seconded to the IMF (2014) and was co-chair of the Taskforce on Deposit Guarantee Schemes at the European Banking Authority (2018-2023). Mr. Stevenson holds a MSc. in Economics (2007) and a MBA (2021) from the University of Amsterdam.

Vincenzo Tiani

Partner at PANETTA Law Firm, PhD Researcher at VUB – Brussels Privacy Hub 

Vincenzo Tiani, LLM, is the head of the Brussels office and Partner at PANETTA law firm, specialising in data protection, data governance and AI. He is a PhD researcher at VUB – Brussels Privacy Hub and teaches Law & Tech as an Adjunct Professor at EDHEC Business School (France) and IULM University (Italy). He is a board member of the NGO Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights and a co-chair of the IAPP Brussels KnowledgeNet Chapter (2023-2024). He writes in major Italian newspapers and media about European digital policies. He also joins the OECD expert group on AI and Data protection.

Pablo Trigo Kramcsák

PhD researcher, Law, Science, Technology and Society Research Group (LSTS) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

Pablo Trigo Kramcsák is a PhD researcher in the Law, Science, Technology and Society Research Group (LSTS) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). His PhD research explores the legitimate interest as a suitable legal ground for processing AI training datasets, considering the potential impacts on data subjects’ rights. He is also a researcher at the Centre for Information Technology Law Studies within the Faculty of Law at the University of Chile, delving into the dynamics of data protection laws, cross-border data flows, and digital trade. Pablo obtained his LLB degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and holds an LL.M. degree in International Law from the University of Heidelberg and the University of Chile

Michaël Van den Poel

Research Engineer, EDHEC Business School

Michaël Van den Poel is a Research Engineer at the EDHEC Augmented Law Institute, where he works on the Interdisciplinary Project on Privacy (IPoP). He is pursuing a PhD at the Law, Science, Technology and Society Research Group at VUB, where he is an executive team member at the Brussels Privacy Hub.

Wojciech Wiewiórowski

European Data Protection Supervisor

European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) since December 2019. Adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk. He was among others adviser in the field of e-government and information society for the Minister of Interior and Administration, the Director of the Informatisation Department at the Ministry of Interior and Administration. He also represented Poland in committee on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (the ISA Committee) assisting the European Commission. The Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data (Polish Data Protection Commissioner) 2010-2014 and the Vice Chair of the Working Party Art. 29 in 2014. In December 2014, he was appointed Assistant European Data Protection Supervisor. After the death of the Supervisor – Giovanni Buttarelli in August 2019 – he replaced Mr. Buttarelli as acting EDPS. His areas of scientific activity include first of all Polish and European IT law, processing and security of information, legal information retrieval systems, informatisation of public administration, and application of new IT tools (semantic web, legal ontologies, cloud, blockchain) in legal information processing.

Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna

Vice President for Global Privacy, FPF

Dr. Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna is the Vice President for Global Privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum, where she leads the work on Global privacy developments and counsels on EU data protection law and policy, working with all FPF’s offices and partners around the world. She created and curates FPF’s Global Privacy blog series.

Gabriela currently serves as a member of the Reference Panel of the Global Privacy Assembly, and she is also a member of the Executive Committee of the ACM FAccT (Fairness, Accountability and Transparency) Conference, since 2021. She is a member of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) Working Group on Access to Platform Data, working on the creation of a Code of Conduct on access to platform data under Art. 40 of the GDPR.

As a data protection and privacy law expert, Gabriela recently testified for the FTC on data portability and for the European Parliament’s LIBE Committee on the EU’s proposed Data Governance Act.

Prior to moving to the US in 2016, she worked for the European Data Protection Supervisor in Brussels, being part of the team that advised the EU legislator on the GDPR during its legislative process. She dealt with both enforcement and policy matters, was a member of the EDPS litigation team appearing before the Court of Justice of the EU, as well as actively participated in the work of the Article 29 Working Party. She worked on the assessments of both the draft EU-US Privacy Shield and the draft EU-US Umbrella Agreement during her time at the EDPS and the Article 29 Working Party.

She previously served as a Program Chair (Law) for the ACM FAccT 2020 and as a member of the Program Advisory Committee for the ICDPPC 2019 Conference in Tirana. She was also a member of the Program Committee of PLSC Europe, CPDP – academic track, ACM – AIES 2020, and the ENISA Annual Privacy Forum. She served as a Project Scientist supporting the IoT Privacy Infrastructure Project within the Institute for Software Research of Carnegie Mellon University (2019 – 2020).

Gabriela holds a PhD in law (2013, University of Craiova) with a thesis on the rights of the data subject from the perspective of their adjudication in civil law and an LLM in Human Rights (2010), after obtaining her law degree at the same university (2009). She is also an associated researcher with the Law, Science, Technology and Society Center at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Gabriela is a contributor-author to ‘The EU General Data Protection Regulation – A Commentary‘, edited by C. Kuner, C. Docksey and L.A. Bygrave, Oxford University Press, 2020 (on Articles 13, 14, 15, 21 and 82). She is also the author of the volume ‘Protecția Datelor Personale. Drepturile Persoanei Vizate‘, C.H. Beck, Bucharest, 2015.

Lex Zard

Technology and Human Rights Fellow, Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights

Aleksandre Zardiashvili (alias Lex Zard) is a legal scholar with expertise in the European Union digital policy regarding surveillance advertising. In 2024, Lex defended his thesis, ‘Power & Dignity: The Ends of Online Behavioral Advertising’, at Leiden University (the Netherlands), where he also worked as a researcher and a teacher from 2018 to 2024 at eLaw—Center for Law and Digital Technologies. His research primarily addresses the boundaries of influencing humans in the online environment, including through interface design and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Lex works to understand different forms of influences (i.e. persuasion, manipulation, coercion) and consequent harms. Lex has published several academic papers and has won the EURA Young Scholar award in 2019. In 2019-2023, Lex also assisted in coordinating the Advanced Master’s Program in Law and Digital Technologies (LDT), where he gave lectures in several courses. 

Emerald de Leeuw-Goggin

Global Head of Privacy and AI Governance, Logitech 

Emerald de Leeuw-Goggin is a leading expert in privacy and AI governance, currently serving as the Global Head of Privacy and AI Governance at Logitech. She is also co-founder of Women in AI Governance and a founding member of the Future of Privacy Forum’s AI Leadership Council. Her expertise in the field was awarded with the accolade of Privacy Executive of the Year 2023. Emerald’s professional journey in privacy began with her founding a privacy-tech company, after writing her master thesis on the GDPR in 2012. Her leadership in this venture led to numerous awards, including European Young Innovator of the Year and inclusion in Forbes’ 100 European female founders to follow.

As a speaker, Emerald is known for her engaging presentations at conferences like TEDx and Dublin Tech Summit, and at institutions such as Berkeley and the European Parliament. Her talks cover a range of topics including privacy, AI governance, and supporting female entrepreneurs. In 2021, she was named a Marshall Memorial Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Emerald holds a bachelor’s degree in Law, two master’s degrees, one in E-Law and Intellectual Property Law and another in Business Information Systems, both with First-Class Honours. She furthered her education by completing her executive education at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2023. Her blend of skills in legal, technology, and business areas makes her a key figure in shaping the future of privacy and AI governance.

Niels van Dijk

Associate Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Niels van Dijk is associate professor in legal philosophy and legal sociology at the faculty of law & criminology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), where he is vice-chair of the department of Metajuridica. He is also co-founder and director of the Brussels Laboratory for Privacy and Data Protection Impact Assessments (d.pia.lab). Niels van Dijk is a senior researcher at the Centre for Law Science Technology and Society (LSTS). His research is situated at the intersection between legal philosophy, science and technology studies (STS), and governance of digital innovation.