The Board of the Information Accountability Foundation is pleased to announce that Martin Abrams has joined the organization as its first Executive Director and Chief Strategist. Abrams was formerly President of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership, and Vice President Information Policy at Experian.

The Information Accountability Foundation is a non-profit charitable institution that institutionalizes the work of the five year old Global Accountability Project. Abrams founded and led the project.

“The project funders agreed late last year that accountability based privacy governance needed the focus and attention that could only come from incorporating the project,” said Peter Cullen, Foundation Chairman and General Manager of Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft. Cullen went on to say, “when we decided to make Foundation leadership a fulltime time position there was one natural choice, Marty.”

“Data governance based on responsible and answerable organizations is necessary to assure both innovation and protection of dignity and against tangible harm in an Information age, “ said Abrams. “To be trusted the leading organization in the field must be a non-profit open to all stakeholders, and I welcome that challenge,” Abrams said.

Abrams has led major global projects on privacy transparency, interoperability between different privacy regimes, big data, as well as accountability. He was the advisor to the 33rd International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners and organized educational seminars in South, Central and North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. He has been a privacy leader for 24 years and consumer policy for 34.

The very active Foundation Board includes Joseph Alhadeff, Oracle; Jennifer Barrett-Glasgow, Acxiom; Peter Cullen, Microsoft; David Hoffman, Intel; JoAnn Stonier, Mastercard; Scott Taylor, HP; and Hilary Wandall, Merck.

For more information contact Martin Abrams at (972) 955-5654.