President

Barbara Lawler is President of the Information Accountability Foundation, a non-profit information policy think tank creating collaborative policy development, education and scholarship fit for 2030.  

Barb believes that responsible ethical data use is the fundamental element of a robust digital ecosystem, and which is necessary to achieve the promise of the digital age – delivering value to individuals and society. She is committed to driving sustainable accountability-based information governance policy and frameworks.

She has an extensive track record in shaping the thinking of U.S. and global policymakers on data policy issues through direct meetings with regulators and policymakers around the world, and by delivering formal testimony to both the U.S. House and Senate IRS, FTC, California State Attorney General’s Office, and California Privacy Protection Agency. She has been a long-time contributor to accountability -based policy initiatives, including the Global Accountability Dialog. She is a member of the Internet Ethics advisory board to the Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

A three-time CPO and, Barb is a globally recognized and seasoned business and privacy executive who has built and scaled global initiatives involving data, content and applications. She has navigated companies through complex data governance, strategy, compliance and operational initiatives with a focus on people-centered values and ethics.

Most recently Barb was VP, Chief Privacy and Data Ethics Officer at Looker Data Sciences, acquired by Google Cloud, where she led privacy and data ethics strategy, policy and operational practices for the cloud-first data platform.

Prior to Looker, she was the Chief Privacy Officer of Intuit (2006-2017) and Hewlett Packard (2002-2006, pre-split), where she led practical and customer-savvy approaches to privacy strategy, implementation of privacy by design, and ethical data innovation strategies and tools.

As Intuit CPO, she re-built and led a best-in-class program and team that partnered directly with leadership, product development, data scientists and others to foster innovation in tandem with ethical data uses and governance, providing direct benefits to customers and earning their trust.

As HP’s first CPO, she brought cross-functional leadership expertise to build a world-class privacy program and cross-functional global team 35, which demonstrated excellence in customer focus and a practical approach to implementation that supported business and compliance requirements.

She is the most recent IAPP Vanguard Award winner, and has been awarded the IAPP Privacy Innovation Award.   She is a Fellow of Information Privacy, and holds a CIPM and CIPP/US from the IAPP.