SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 09, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bold, visionary, and deeply human best describe the winners of the 2025 DataGrail Data Privacy Heroes Award. This year’s privacy heroes exemplify leadership and innovation, each bringing a deep commitment to advancing the field of data privacy.
The Data Privacy Hero Awards recognize individuals who are making exceptional contributions to privacy through innovation, leadership, and advocacy. The awards honor standout figures in three categories: Innovators, who implement impactful technical solutions and advance privacy practices within their organizations; Visionaries, senior leaders who align strategy across departments to lead transformative privacy initiatives; and Champions, advocates who influence the broader privacy community through thought leadership and public engagement.
This year’s winners are:
- The Champion: Jennifer Dickey, Associate, Dykema
Dickey’s impact on the privacy community goes far beyond her day job. She co-leads the Women in Security and Privacy Chicago chapter, was recognized as an AI 2030 global fellow, serves as Vice Chair on the Chicago Bar Association Cyber Law & Data Privacy Committee, and the Young Privacy Professional for her local IAPP KnowledgeNet chapter. She is a nationally recognized privacy expert known for her policy work and research, but she’s most admired for her selfless mentorship. Through LinkedIn, she supports over 11,000 followers with job leads, resources, and career advice, helping newcomers thrive in the complex privacy and AI regulatory space.
- The Visionary: Randy Wood, VP & AGC, Cricut
Recognizing an opportunity to build cross-functional in-roads with a white glove approach, Wood led a company-wide initiative to meet individually with global teams including legal, IT, security, procurement, and business unit leaders to understand and document their privacy needs. After laying the initial groundwork, Wood built collaboration and accountability across the organization in developing a culture of shared ownership of privacy compliance. As a result, Wood delivered a comprehensive data inventory of all systems that could process or store personally identifiable information (PII).
- The Innovator: Anna Rogers, Senior Privacy Analyst, nCino
Rogers played a crucial role developing nCino’s proactive and user-centric privacy strategy. Her work included creating a comprehensive cookie governance framework implemented on a global scale, training the company on privacy by design principles, and spearheading the migration of nCino’s Data Subject Request Management from a legacy system to an API-integrated experience. Rogers was nominated for her ability to demonstrate the business value of privacy and keep privacy solutions simple, elegant, and intuitive. As a result of her work, Rogers proved that building customer confidence in privacy could accelerate nCino’s sales cycles.
Semifinalists include: Lisa Barksdale, Director of Privacy & Compliance Monitoring, Zillow (Visionary Semifinalist); Monique Altman, Senior Privacy Program Manager and Francesca Ezinwa, Senior Regulatory & Compliance Manager, Ping Identity (Innovator Semifinalists); Claudia Castro, Sr. Legal Ops Specialist, Branch (Innovator Semifinalist); Katelyn Ringrose, Privacy & Security Attorney, McDermott Will & Emery (Champion Semifinalist); Dwight Turner, Compliance Analyst, SimSpace (Champion Semifinalist); and John Cavanaugh, Executive Director, Plunk Foundation (Top Nominated).
“This year’s Data Privacy Heroes aren’t just keeping data safe—they’re shaping the future of privacy and redefining what privacy leadership looks like,” said Daniel Barber, CEO, DataGrail. “We’re pleased to recognize a group of outstanding, innovative individuals this year, as we collectively work to ensure privacy is a human right.”
DataGrail Virtual Summit: Meet Our Data Privacy Heroes
DataGrail will host a live virtual event on October 21, 2025, “The Privacy Risk Summit: Winning Strategies to Future-Proof Your Privacy Program.” The event brings together leading voices to explore the intersection of AI adoption and data privacy, offering actionable insights for navigating emerging risks and regulations. Attendees also can hear directly from the Data Privacy Hero Award Winners. Visit our summit events page for details and registration.
To learn more about this year’s Data Privacy Heroes, visit our blog.
About DataGrail
DataGrail is the data privacy company for this era. We help brands minimize risk, stay a step ahead of consumer and employee expectations, and safeguard their reputation. Our complete, data privacy platform is powered by patented Risk Intelligence technology that detects shadow IT and makes vulnerable data visible so brands can proactively manage risk. Leveraging responsible automation at scale and the largest integration network in data privacy, DataGrail automates privacy workflows across systems to perform risk assessments, accelerate data subject request (DSR) fulfillment, and optimize resources.
Headquartered in San Francisco, the world’s most trusted brands such as Salesforce, Dexcom, Life360 and others partner with DataGrail on their data privacy journey.
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