Hielke Hijmans

President of the Litigation Chamber, Belgian DPA

Prof Dr Hielke Hijmans is President of the Litigation Chamber and Member Executive Board of the Belgian Data Protection Authority. On part time basis he is professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, Institute European Studies), member of the Meijers Committee (ngo on EU fundamental rights) and lecturer at Luxembourg University.

He is author of The European Union as Guardian of Internet Privacy: The Story of Art 16 TFEU (Springer 2016), based on his doctorate thesis. Before his appointment ,at the Belgian DPA, he worked:

• as consultant on EU law and data protection, e.g. at the Centre for Information Policy Leadership (a think based in Washington, London and Brussels) and at Considerati (a consultancy based in Amsterdam) (2016-2019),

• at the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), e.g. as head of unit Policy & Consultation policy unit (2004-2016),

• at the Court of Justice of the European Union (Cabinet of Advocate General Geelhoed) (2000-2004)

• and at the Ministries of Agriculture, Environment and Justice in The Hague, mostly dealing with legislation and EU law (until 2000) . He holds a law degree at Leiden University and a doctorate in law at the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels.

Tobias Judin

Head of International Office, Norwegian DPA

Tobias Judin heads the International Section at the Norwegian Data Protection Authority. He represents Norway in the European Data Protection Board, and he is a Co-Chair of the Global Privacy Assembly’s International Enforcement Working Group. He is furthermore responsible for the Norwegian Data Protection Authority’s cross-border cases and cases regarding international transfers. Tobias is a lawyer, technologist and sinologist by education.

Blanca Lilia Ibarra

President Commissioner, INAI

She has a degree in Communication Sciences and a degree in Journalism, with a master’s degree in Government and Administration and a master’s degree in Quality Administration of Public Management.

She has a career of more than 30 years in the media, holding different management positions in the press, radio and television. She was General Director of the Television Channel of the General Congress of the United Mexican States, Director of Media Information of the states of the Presidency of the Republic and General Director of Social Communication of the Congress of the State of Puebla.

She served as President Commissioner of the Commission for Access to Public Information and Protection of Personal Data of the State of Puebla and, during her administration, she was Coordinator of the Social Communication Commission and Coordinator of the Central Region of the Mexican Conference for Access to Public Information. Likewise, she served as President of the Transparency Commission of the Municipality of Puebla and as Director of the Documentation Center of the Coordination of Information, Documentation and Transparency of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation.

In 2018, she was elected by the Senate of the Republic as Commissioner of the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data and, since December 2020, she has been Presidential Commissioner of the INAI and President of the National Council of the National Transparency System.

Mercy King’ori

Policy Analyst, FPF

Mercy King’ori has joined the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) as a Policy Analyst for the Global Privacy team. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

As a Policy Analyst for FPF, she follows and analyzes privacy and data protection developments of laws and policies, case law, decisions by national data protection bodies and implementation of data protection and privacy laws in key African jurisdictions. She has spent a significant amount of time working on areas of digital finance and digital identification systems and their impact on data protection and privacy. Mercy obtained her law degree from Strathmore University, Nairobi in 2019 where her final thesis discussed the state of privacy laws within Kenya’s internet banking industry.

Publications, contributions and relevant activity

How the Kenyan High Court (temporarily) struck down the national digital ID Card: Context and Analysis

Data Protection in the Kenyan Banking Sector: A study of Publicly Available Data Policies of Commercial Banks operating in Kenya in Relation to a Set Data Protection Standard

Privacy and Data Protection Practices of Digital Lending Apps in Kenya

A Data Protection Guide for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Kenya 

The Data Protection Act as a tool for permitting innovation and consumer safety in Kenya’s digital finance market

The impact of Kenya’s Finance Act, 2019 on online services with regard to digital tax

Conference Presentation on preliminary research findings on developing a consent framework for the use of facial recognition systems among refugees (TILTing Perspectives 2021)

Jules Polonetsky

CEO, Future of Privacy Forum

Jules serves as CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization that serves as a catalyst for privacy leadership and scholarship, advancing principled data practices in support of emerging technologies. FPF is supported by the chief privacy officers of more than 200 leading companies, several foundations, as well as by an advisory board composed of the country’s leading academics and advocates. FPF’s current projects focus on AI and Ethics, Connected Cars, Health, Research Data, Smart Communities, Ad Tech, Youth, Ed Tech, Privacy Legislation and Enforcement, and Global Data Flows.

Jules also serves as Chairman of the International Digital Accountability Council and as Co-Chairman of the Israel Tech Policy Institute.  Jules is co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy, published by Cambridge University Press (2018). More of his writing and research can be found at the www.fpf.org and on Google Scholar and SSRN.

Jules’s previous roles have included serving as Chief Privacy Officer at AOL and at DoubleClick, as Consumer Affairs Commissioner for New York City, as an elected New York State Legislator and as a congressional staffer, and as an attorney.

Jules has served on the boards of a number of privacy and consumer protection organizations including TRUSTe, the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and the Network Advertising Initiative. From 2011-2012, Jules served on the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Jules is a member of The George Washington University Law School Privacy and Security Advisory Council. He also currently sits on the Advisory Boards of Open DP | Harvard University Privacy Tools Project and the California Privacy Lab (University of California).

Jules is a regular speaker at privacy and technology events and has testified or presented before Congressional committees and the Federal Trade Commission.

Pansy Tlakula

Chairperson, Information Regulator of South Africa

Adv. Tlakula studied a Bachelor of Law (B.Proc) at the University of the North (now known as the University of Limpopo), Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) before completing her Masters in Law (LL.M) at Harvard University. She also holds a Doctorate in Legal Studies (Honoris Causa) from the Vaal University of Technology. She has held several influential positions. Advocate Tlakula was a member of the South African Human Rights Commission from 1995 until 2002. She was appointed as the Chief Electoral Officer of the Electoral Commission of South Africa in 2002 until 2011. In 2011 she was appointed as the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission of South Africa until 2014. She was appointed in 2005 as a member of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). She served the ACHRC for 12 years, until November 2017. She held the mandates of Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, Chairperson of the Working Group on Specific Issues related to the work of the African Commission, and, between 2015 and 2017, she served as Chairperson of the ACHRC. In January 2020 she started her four-year tenure as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She was the Chancellor of the Vaal University of Technology from 2010 until 2014.

Dr. Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna

VP for Global Privacy, Future of Privacy Forum

Dr. Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna is Vice President for Global Privacy for the Washington DC-based Future of Privacy Forum, a global non-profit present in Brussels, Tel Aviv, Singapore and Nairobi, where she leads the work on global privacy and data protection developments. She is also an associated researcher for the LSTS Center of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a guest lecturer for Maastricht University’s European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity. Dr. Zanfir-Fortuna is a member of the Reference Panel of the Global Privacy Assembly and was a member of the Executive Committee of ACM’s Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FaccT) Conference (2021-2022). She has experience in working for the European Data Protection Supervisor in Brussels, dealing with enforcement, litigation and policy matters, and contributed to the work of the Article 29 Working Party. She holds a PhD in law 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. She published a comprehensive volume on the rights of the data subjects in 2015 (Protectia datelor personale. Drepturile persoanei vizate”, C.H. Beck, Bucharest, 2015), and is one of the co-authors of “GDPR: A commentary”, Oxford University Press, 2020. In 2023, she received the Stefano Rodota Award of the Council of Europe together with her co-authors for the paper “The Thin Red Line: Refocusing Data Protection Law on Automated-Decision-Making“.