Whitney Merrill is Head of Global Privacy and Data Governance and the Data Protection Officer at Asana. Previously, she was at a fintech company building their privacy program from scratch. Before that she was Privacy, eCommerce & Consumer Protection Counsel at Electronic Arts (EA) and an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission. In 2017, she received the 2017 Women in Security Award and was named one of the 2017 Top Women in Cybersecurity by CyberScoop. She has a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where she explored issues associated with the intersection of technology, information security, privacy, and the law. During her time at Illinois, she was an Illinois Cyber Security Scholar and member of the Illinois Security Lab.
In her free time, she makes enamel pins, stickers, designs puzzles, and recently published her first zine which includes art and commentary about privacy, AI, security, and surveillance.
In 2016, her research was published in NDSS. And in 2014, Whitney argued and won a criminal case before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, resulting in a circuit split. During law school, she served as Managing Editor of the University of Illinois Law Review and President of the Internet & Technology Law Association, and worked as a legal intern for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She founded the Crypto & Privacy Village (which appears at DEF CON & BSidesSF each year) but has recently retired.
You can find her on Twitter, on LinkedIn, or at a conference near you. Inquiry? Please email or reach out to her on Twitter.