Harriet Pearson

Harriet Pearson is a partner at Hogan Lovells and was the former Vice President, Security Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer at IBM. IBM’s CPO since 2000, she leads the company’s global compliance, law and policy initiatives in privacy, data protection and cybersecurity. She serves on the executive committee of the Center for Information Policy Leadership; the board of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP); the CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency; and the Steering Committee of the Data Security Council of India.

Harriet graduated from the UCLA School of Law (Order of the Coif) and earned an honors undergraduate engineering degree from Princeton University. Before joining IBM in 1993 she practiced law in a Washington, D.C. law firm and briefly worked for Shell Oil on offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2007 she won the IAPP’s Vanguard Award, given annually to the professional who exemplifies leadership and innovation in the field of privacy. IBM itself has been recognized as the top “Most Trusted for Privacy” business-to-business company in the U.S. and Canada several times by the TRUSTe/Ponemon independent survey of consumers.

Outside of IBM, Harriet teaches a graduate seminar on Security, Privacy & Trust at Georgetown University and sings with the DC-area Potomac Harmony Chorus. She currently serves on the Chorus board and on the board of directors for an American K-thru-college private school located in Thessaloniki, Greece. A first-generation American, she speaks Greek fluently.