Dear Friends,
I am excited to share news about some important changes at the Information Accountability Foundation.
In the eleven years since Marty Abrams founded the IAF, the organization has grown into a respected, global leader in our work with regulators and industry executives to advance accountability, data stewardship, and ethics. With Marty’s transition last year, we were fortunate to welcome Elizabeth Denham CBE, former Information Commissioner of the United Kingdom and Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia, to the role of Chief Policy Strategist. Her leadership has been invaluable. Now, with Liz’s appointment as Chair of the Jersey Data Protection Authority, the IAF board has had the opportunity, and need, to reconsider the structure and operations of the Foundation.
Our mission remains the same: to build on the great successes of the IAF while becoming even more nimble in tackling the most pressing issues in data governance and stewardship. We are also focused on optimizing our resources to ensure that more of every dollar goes directly to driving impactful projects for our members and partners.
To that end, I am delighted to announce that the IAF Board today unanimously approved the appointment of Fred Cate as IAF’s new Executive Director and Stan Crosley as Chief Policy Strategist. Fred and Stan are industry veterans with over three decades of experience in data privacy and security, and bring a wealth of knowledge, leadership, and innovation to these roles. Both are very familiar with IAF and Stan currently serves as a Senior Strategist with the Foundation. Together, they are well positioned to help strengthen and lead IAF into an exciting new chapter, focusing on delivering high-impact projects that address specific, timely needs, with fewer routine calls and briefings.
In addition to these leadership changes, we’re taking significant steps to streamline our operations and reduce overhead, allowing us to be more flexible and focused on our core mission. As part of this transformation, the Board has decided to contract for limited administrative support, which will unfortunately result in phasing out three staff positions. It is with tremendous appreciation and great regret that we bid farewell to Barb Lawler, President of IAF; Candy Johnson, Director of Finance & Accounting; and Stephanie Pate, Administration and Operations Manager. We are deeply grateful to all three of these colleagues and to the many other strategists, policy board members, supporters, participants, and partners whose hard work has made IAF what it is today.
Over the past month, Fred, Stan, and members of the Board have actively engaged with our financial supporters and partners, including at our September members’ retreat. The goal in all of these interactions has been not merely to discuss the transition, but to learn where you see the areas of greatest concern and opportunities for maximum impact. I know you will be hearing more from Fred and Stan in the near future. But for the moment, on behalf of the entire Board, I want to welcome them to their new roles at IAF and thank our staff and each of you for your vision, commitment, patience, and support.
Scott Taylor
Board Chair
Fred H. Cate
Executive Director
Fred H. Cate is a Distinguished Professor, C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law, and Adjunct Professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. He is also a senior advisor to Red Barn Strategy, a strategic consulting firm he created with Stan Crosley that partners with government and private organizations to advance strategic data management, security, and use.
Professor Cate specializes in information security and privacy law and has testified before numerous congressional committees and served on advisory groups for many professional, industry, and government groups including DHS, DOD, NSA, FTC, OECD, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the United Nations, Microsoft, Intel, and many other organizations. He chaired the National Academies study on Law Enforcement and Intelligence Access to Encrypted Content. He served as the founding director of IU’s Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research from 2003 to 2014, where he is now a senior fellow, and IU’s Center for Law, Ethics & Applied Research in Health Information from 2010 to 2015. He served from 2001 to 2021 as a Senior Policy Advisor at The Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP.
He is the author of more than 200 articles and books, served as the privacy editor for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ Security & Privacy, and was one of the founding editors of the Oxford University Press journal, International Data Privacy Law. Professor Cate attended Oxford University and received his J.D. and his A.B. with Honors and Distinction from Stanford University. A former Senator and President of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, he is a fellow of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Bar Foundation, and an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute. He is chair-elect of the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites.
Stan Crosley
Chief Policy Strategist
Stan Crosley is the founder and managing partner of Crosley Law Offices and, along with Fred Cate, in 2022 created and launched Red Barn Strategy. The two organizations work with some of the largest and most successful multinational corporations in the world on data strategy and data governance, as well as small start-ups and non-profits, across the business ecosystem.
Stan has more than 25 years of privacy and data strategy experience and is the former Chief Privacy Officer at Eli Lilly and Company, where he initiated and implemented the privacy program in 2000 as one of the first CPOs in the United States. Stan is an Adjunct Professor of Maurer School of Law and a Senior Fellow with the Future of Privacy Forum. Stan was recently named a Westin Emeritus Fellow by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), one of only 50 globally among a professional association of 85,000 members.
Stan was a co-founder of the International Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Privacy Consortium, which he chaired for its first decade, and is a former member of the board of IAPP, and co-chair of the HHS/ONC Privacy and Security Workgroup. Stan’s experience extends from in-house chief privacy officer to an attorney with three separate large law firms, to appointments in academia, research NGOs, non-profit advisory boards, and federal government committees and is a frequent speaker on data strategy, digital governance, and data protection at conferences around the world.