Michelle Finneran Dennedy is recognized as one of the world’s leading privacy experts. A unique visionary in the field of privacy and the IT industry, she brings together multifaceted approaches that provide sincere privacy protections and drive business value. Throughout her career, she has worked to raise awareness and create tools that promote privacy, quality, respect, trust, and asset-level possibilities for data.

Dennedy has led security and privacy initiatives ranging from regulatory compliance, privacy engineering, advocacy and education efforts, and litigation at companies including Cisco, McAfee/Intel Security, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems. She founded The iDennedy Project, which seeks to change how people think about information and data, and co-authored The Privacy Engineer's Manifesto: Getting from Policy to Code to QA to Value. She hosts a podcast, Privacy Sigma Riders, which focuses on cybersecurity, trust, and data privacy issues. She has also written numerous articles and op-eds, and has been invited to sit on many Boards.

Dennedy’s industry awards include California’s Most Powerful and Influential Women, by the National Diversity Council; the IAPP Vanguard Award; Woman of Influence for Security and Privacy, from the Executive Women’s Forum (EWF) and CSO Magazine; Woman of the Year in Technology and Transformation, by the Stevie American Business Awards; and World Women Awards Silver Winner for Female Executive of the Year for her leadership in optimizing privacy maturity at Cisco Systems.

Dennedy has a Doctorate of Law degree from Fordham University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Clinical, Counseling and Applied Psychology and Economics from The Ohio State University.