Heather West

Heather West is a policy and tech translator, product consultant, and long-term internet strategist guiding the intersection of emerging technologies, culture, governments, and policy. Heather's areas of focus include data governance, data security, digital identity, and privacy in the digital age. Prior to joining Venable, she served as the director of the privacy policy team at one of the world's largest social technology companies, leading policy development around the company's work to develop privacy-protective product experiences, building policy frameworks that create accountability, and promoting privacy-protective decision making across the company.

Heather regularly collaborates with stakeholders and policymakers in DC and with global product and policy teams. She helped found the public policy team at a website performance and security company, served as the global and federal privacy and security issue expert on a multinational technology company's public policy team, and started her career working on government technology, privacy, and identity management at a public-interest group focused on the rights of individual users in relation to technical policy.