Ron De Jesus is a seasoned compliance professional with a strong focus on data protection law and operational practices. He is the industry’s first-ever Field Chief Privacy Officer at Transcend, where he leads advocacy and outreach efforts, collaborating with industry leaders to identify and promote governance strategies that address the complex and technical requirements of data protection. His mission: to design and scale intuitive, enterprise-friendly, and consumer-conscious solutions that address ever-shifting privacy requirements, and demystify the evolving data protection landscape for the C-suite.

De Jesus has over 15 years of experience successfully creating and operationalizing privacy programs for Fortune 500 companies. He began his career consulting with healthcare and government agencies across Canada, then later helped establish the privacy practices of Deloitte and PwC in San Francisco and New York. After spending his early career in an advisory role, serving large clients in the tech, pharma, retail, telecom, entertainment, and education industries, De Jesus went in-house creating, operationalizing, and managing his own global privacy programs at American Express, Coach, Tapestry, Tinder, and Match Group. Prior to Transcend, De Jesus was Chief Privacy Officer and Data Protection Officer at Grindr, the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people.

De Jesus is also the founder of De Jesus Consulting, where he equips startups and small- to medium-sized tech companies with robust privacy policies and forward-thinking data protection strategies, and establishes best practices in privacy compliance, auditing, risk assessment, and employee education.

Additionally, De Jesus sits on the training faculty of the International Association for Privacy Professionals (IAPP), co-leads the IAPP Diversity in Privacy Advisory Board, and co-authored the official Certified Information Privacy Manager textbook. He previously co-chaired the CIPT Exam Development Board and IAPP KnowledgeNets in LA and New York, and is a regular contributor to the IAPP Daily Dashboard and Privacy Advisor.

As co-chair of the LGBTQ Privacy & Tech Network, a global group of gay privacy professionals (and allies), De Jesus has led fundraising efforts through conference networking events known as “LGBTQ + Allies After Parties,” which have raised over $500K for gay youth organizations across the U.S.

Fast Company, Privacy, Technology, Data, Corporate Governance, Law, Artificial Intelligence LGBTQ,