Cecilia Alvarez Rigaudias

Cecilia Álvarez Rigaudias is the EMEA Privacy Policy Director at Facebook since March 2019. From 2015 to 2019, she served as European Privacy Officer Lead of Pfizer, Vice-Chair of the EFPIA Data Protection Group and Chairwoman of IPPC-Europe. For an interim period, she was also the Legal Lead of the Spanish Pfizer subsidiaries. She formerly worked 18 years in a reputed Spanish law firm, leading the data protection, IT and ecommerce areas of practice as well as the LATAM Data Protection Working Group.

Ms Álvarez Rigaudias was the Chairwoman of APEP (Spanish Privacy Professional Association) until June and is currently in charge of its international affairs. She is also the Spanish member of CEDPO (Confederation of European Data Protection Organisations) and member of the Leadership Council of The Sedona Conference (W-6). She is a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation in the section of the Law on Technologies of the Information and the Knowledge as well as Arbitrator of the European Association of Arbitration (ITC section).

Ms Álvarez Rigaudias formed part of the Volunteer Group of Privacy Experts of the OECD (Working Party on Information Security and Privacy; WPISP) in charge of the 2013 review of the OECD guidelines governing the protection of privacy and transborder data flows of personal data. She formerly participated in the Group of Experts selected by the Spanish DPA to prepare the Madrid Resolution on International Privacy Standards in 2009.

Ms Álvarez Rigaudias has written numerous publications on data protection and regularly lectures on data protection, IT and e-commerce at different Master’s programmes and seminars.