Draft:Harriet Pearson

• Comment: This reads like a resume. It should read like a biography. Birth? Family? Czarking0 (talk) 06:16, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

• Comment: External links should be removed or converted to inline citations where appropriate. Greenman (talk) 06:09, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

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Harriet Pearson is Founder and Managing Principal of Axia Advisory LLC. Pearson was the Cybersecurity Division Head and Executive Deputy Superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services from 2023-24 From 2012 to 2023, she founded and led the global cybersecurity law practice at Hogan Lovells. From 2000-2012, she served as IBM’s first ChiefPrivacy Officer. In the early 2000s, she was part of a small group of professionals who founded the International Association of Privacy Professionals..

Early life and education

Pearson was born and raised in New York City by parents who immigrated to the United States from Greece. She graduated from Princeton University cum laude in geological engineering. At Princeton, she was Treasurer of Cloister Inn and CEO of Travel 101, a campus travel agency which was then part of Princeton Student Agencies. She graduated from UCLA Law School where she was a member of the Order of the Coif and Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Journal ofEnvironmental Law & Policy. Later in her career, Pearson completed executive leadership programs at Harvard Business School and Said Business School of Oxford University.

Career

Pearson led IBM’s privacy and data protection strategy from 1996 until 2012, in addition to other executive leadership roles in legal and compliance, public affairs, and human resources. Her appointment by IBM as the company’s chief privacy officer was widely covered by the press and regarded as a milestone. “The role of the chief privacy officer was solidified within the U.S. corporate world in November 2000 with the naming of Harriet Pearson as Chief Privacy Officer for IBM Corporation. That event prompted one influential analyst to declare, ‘the chief privacy officer is a trend whose time has come’." Pearson was also appointed IBM’s global chief Security Counsel, responsible for cybersecurity legal matters and global incident response. Pearson led IBM’s groundbreaking adoption of a genetic privacy policy in 2005 and in 2007 testified in the U.S. Congress on behalf of IBM in favor of the Generic InformationNondiscrimination Act. In 2012 Pearson joined the law firm Hogan Lovells as a partner, founding and leading the firm’s global cybersecurity practice. Her publicly-disclosed clients included Equifax, Uber, Bloomberg, and Salesforce. In 2013, Pearson advocated on behalf of a multi-industry group of business organizations during the creation of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. Also in 2013 she testified before the House of Representatives on the relationship between critical infrastructure cybersecurity and privacy. From 2023-24 Pearson led the New York State Department of Financial Services’ revision of its nation-leading cybersecurity regulation. She currently is the managing principal of consultancy Axia Advisory LLC where she advises on cybersecurity, privacy and AI issues.

Awards and recognition

Pearson has been widely recognized for her pioneering work in privacy and cybersecurity, including:

• Band 1, Privacy and Data Security USA by Chambers and Partners (2022)
• North America Legal Innovator of the Year by the Financial Times (2016)
• Cybersecurity and Privacy Trailblazer by National Law Journal (2015)
• BTI Client Service Super All-Star (2022)
• One of the 500 Leading Lawyers in America by Lawdragon (2015)
• Vanguard Award for innovation and leadership in the field of privacy by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (2007)
• Woman of Influence award by the Executive Women’s Forum (2012)

See also

Pearson taught cybersecurity and privacy as an adjunct lecturer at the UCLA School of Law (2021-23) and Georgetown University (2007-10). She appears as herself in the forthcoming film Privacy People.