Who We Are
We maintain regular contact with UK and foreign data protection organizations, data protection activists and academics. We also conduct opinion polls among internet users on topics relevant to our cause. All insights we gain from these activities are included in our decision-making processes on research, investigation and redress.
Please feel free to contact us at hello@dataprotectionfoundation.org if you have any questions or would like to bring something to our attention.
Our Board
Our Board of Directors maintain our direction and supervise our activities. Our Board members have the specific expertise and experience necessary to represent our members’ interests.
Mark Stoter OBE
Mark was a senior technologist in the British Army and the intelligence community. He was seconded to GCHQ to build the National Cyber Force. He holds a patent for a privacy-preserving technology and is an advocate for consumers’ data rights online.
Kate Wellington
Kate is the CEO of the Costs Lawyer Standards Board and co-founder and director of the Class Representative Network. She brings extensive legal and practical experience in UK collective actions.
Hannah Lownsbrough
Hannah is an experienced campaign and fundraising professional and is currently the Executive Director of SumofUs. She brings considerable experience of campaigning and fundraising and has broad experience as a board member in this field.
Advisory Panel
Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE
Baroness Kidron is a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environment and a global authority on digital regulation and accountability. She has played a determinative role in establishing standards for online safety and privacy across the world. Baroness Kidron sits as a crossbench peer in the UK’s House of Lords. She is an advisor to the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford, a Commissioner on the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, an expert advisor for the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence, and Founder and Chair of 5Rights Foundation. She is a Visiting Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics, where she chairs the research centre Digital Futures for Children, and is a Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford.
Lex Zard
Lex Zard is a post doctoral fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where he works with Professor Shoshana Zhuboff, a leader in the field of the study of “surveillance capitalism”. Lex is an expert European Union digital policy regarding surveillance advertising. He has a bachelors degree in law from Caucasus University in Tblisi, and a masters degree and Ph.D in law from Leiden University, with his Ph.D thesis focussed on the legal implications of online behavioural advertising. Lex was a researcher and a teacher at Leiden from 2018 to 2024 at eLaw—Center for Law and Digital Technologies. His research primarily addresses the boundaries of influencing humans in the online environment, including through interface design and artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Duncan McCann
Duncan is Head of Accountability at 5 Rights Foundation where he works to ensure companies respect children’s rights in the online world. Duncan has a legal background, and over a decade in both tech industry and NGO worlds. Duncan advises us on data matters that relate to children and surveillance advertising
César Manso-Sayao
César is the Legal Officer at Digital Freedom Fund. He is a law graduate from the University of Costa Rica, and holds two Master’s degrees from the University of Barcelona, one in Human Rights and the other in Sociology. César also has a postgraduate degree in Technopolitics and Rights in the Digital Age from Pompeu Fabra University and previous work experience in digital rights organisations. He is an advocate for strategic litigation, as well as human rights-based, open-source and social innovation approaches as means to address the digital age’s emerging harms and challenges.