Anna Buchta

Head of Unit Policy and Consultation, European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS)

Anna Buchta is Head of the Policy & Consultation Unit at the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). She coordinates the work of the EDPS on providing advice to the European Commission and other EU institutions and bodies on legislative and policy proposals relevant to data protection. She has extensive experience in data protection and privacy regulations, institutional law and litigation before the Court of Justice. She represented the EDPS in a number of cases before the CJEU, including Opinion 1/15 PNR Canada and, recently, a number of data retention cases. She is one of the institutional rapporteurs on EU data protection for the FIDE2020 Conference. Previously, Anna worked at the European Commission, among others on data privacy in electronic communications. Before that, she was a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT (ICRI, currently CITIP) at KU Leuven (Belgium) and worked as a lawyer in private practice. Anna has a master’s degree in Law from the University of Warsaw (Poland) and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from the KU Leuven (Belgium).

Gianclaudio Malgieri

Associate Professor, VUB

Gianclaudio Malgieri is an Associate Professor of Law and Technology at the EDHEC Business School in Lille (France), where he conducts research at the Augmented Law Institute and teaches Data Protection Law, Intellectual Property Law, ICT Law and Business Law. He is also Editorial Board Member of Computer Law and Security Review and Attorney at Law.

He obtained a PhD in Law at the Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS) Research Centre of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he is Affiliated Researcher and where he was Work Package Leader of the EU H2020 PANELFIT Project, for the development of Legal & Ethical Guidelines on Data Processing in Research. His PhD thesis (defended in August 2020) focused on the notion of data subjects in the GDPR, in particular on the vulnerable data subjects. He also conducts research on automated decision-making, privacy and fundamental rights, surveillance, data ownership, intellectual privacy, consumer law. In the 2019 he is the only European scholar to receive the Future of Privacy Award. He is also external expert of the European Commission for the ethics and data protection assessment of EU research proposals.

Previously, he was lecturer of Data Protection Law and Intellectual Property for undergraduate and professional courses at the University of Pisa and S.Anna School of Advanced Studies. He was also Training Coordinator for the Brussels Privacy Hub from 2018 to 2020.

He got an LLM with honours at the University of Pisa (2016) and a JD with honours at S.Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa (2017). He was visiting student at the London School of Economics (2013), World Trade Institute of the University of Bern (2014), École Normale Superieure de Paris (2015) and Oxford University (2018).

He has authored more than 45 publications including articles in leading international law reviews, the Italian Handbook of Personal Data Protection and the editing of a Special Issue on Computer Law and Security Review. He published in English and Italian, and some works were translated in French and Chinese.

He is peer reviewer of Computer Law and Security Review; International Data Privacy Law; Federal Law Review, Big Data and Society; Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology; Opinio Juris in Comparatione.

Corinna Schulze

Director, EU Government Relations, Global Corporate Affairs , SAP

Corinna Schulze is Director, EU Government Relations, Digital Government at SAP since 2014. In her current position, Corinna is responsible for public policy matters related to the Digital Single Market, Data Protection and Security. Corinna holds a law degree with the University of Münster, Germany and her bachelor law degree with the district court of Düsseldorf.

Mathias Vermeulen

Public Policy Director, AWO

Mathias oversees AWO’s public policy work. He is a legal and public policy expert in information technology law, digital rights and emerging technologies, with a focus on EU-law. Mathias previously worked as a strategic advisor for the Mozilla Foundation and Luminate, where he advised both organisations on their campaigning and public policy strategies related to countering online disinformation, ad tech and online content regulation.

Prior to that, he worked for five years in the European Parliament on a wide range of digital policy issues, including the EU’s copyright reform, online content regulation, the EU cybersecurity Act, digital trade chapters of trade agreements, and the recast of the EU’s export control regime of dual use items.

Mathias was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Law, Science, Technology and Society at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he is still an associate fellow, and the European University Institute in Florence, where he managed and participated in a number of large European research projects that focused on the legal and ethical challenges of the use of new technologies.

Mathias has more than a decade experience working more broadly at the intersection of human rights and security policies. He worked as the main advisor to the UN special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, Prof. Dr. Martin Scheinin for three years, and started his professional career with internships at the Special Procedures Unit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and at the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. He also worked as a consultant for a number of organisations, including the Belgian Standing Intelligence Oversight Committee, the European Parliament, and a variety of think tanks and NGOs.

He holds a Ph.D. in European privacy and data protection law from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and has a joint European Masters in Human Rights and Democratization from the European Inter-University Centre in Italy and the University of Hamburg.

Christina Michelakaki

Policy Fellow, Global Privacy, FPF

Christina Michelakaki is a Policy Fellow for Global Privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF). She is following global trends in data protection and privacy laws around the world but also focuses on European and national case law, recent academic research, guidelines, and decisions from the European Data Protection Board and national Data Protection Authorities and actively monitors the activity of EU institutions around privacy and data protection, including Communications and Proposals of the European Commission and legislative reports from the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. She has been conducting extensive research on Data Protection by Design and by Default and was one of the principal authors of an FPF Report pertaining to this matter. Her research interests also revolve around fundamental rights and Artificial Intelligence.

Christina has a legal background and holds an LL.M on Information Technology, Media & Communications Law from the London School of Economics (LSE) (2022, London), where she wrote her thesis on Automated decision-making and the “right to an explanation” under the GDPR. She is an EU qualified lawyer and a member of the Thessaloniki Bar Association in Greece.

Jules Polonetsky

Chief Executive Officer, FPF

Jules has served for 15 years as CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, a global non-profit organization that serves as a catalyst for privacy leadership and scholarship, advancing principled data practices in support of emerging technologies.

Jules has led the development of numerous codes of conduct and best practices, assisted in the drafting of data protection legislation and presented expert testimony with agencies and legislatures around the world. He is an IAPP Westin Emeritus Fellow and the 2023 recipient of the IAPP Leadership Award.

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 Ph.D. 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.