Michelle Dennedy, Cisco

Michelle Finneran Dennedy currently serves as VP and Chief Privacy Officer at Cisco She is responsible for the development and implementation of the organization's data privacy policies and practices, working across business groups to drive data privacy excellence across the security continuum.

Before joining the CIsco, Michelle founded The iDennedy Project, a public service organization to address privacy needs in sensitive populations, such as children and the elderly, and emerging technology paradigms. Michelle is also a founder and editor in chief of a new media site—TheIdentityProject.com—that was started as an advocacy and education site, currently focused on the growing crime of Child ID theft.

Michelle was the Vice President for Security & Privacy Solutions for the Oracle Corporation. This team worked closely with customers to enable them to proceed with the confidence that information is protected and accelerated as an asset. Before the Oracle acquisition of Sun, Michelle was Chief Data Governance Officer within the Cloud Computing division at Sun Microsystems, Inc. Michelle worked closely with Sun's business, technical and legal teams to create the best data governance policies and processes possible for cloud computing in order to build trust for cloud environments through vendor transparency. Michelle also served as Sun’s Chief Privacy Officer.

Michelle is a sought-after and provocative public speaker, evangelizing new approaches and business justifications for soundly-defined, transparent security and privacy policies and systems that protect healthy, safe global businesses.

Michelle has a JD from Fordham University School of Law and a Bachelor of Science degree with university honors from The Ohio State University. In 2009, she was awarded the Goodwin Procter-IAPP Vanguard award for lifetime achievement and the EWF – CSO Magazine Woman of Influence award for work in the privacy and security fields. In 2012, she was recognized by the National Diversity Council as one of California’s Most Powerful & Influential Women. In 2014 she was cited as an AlwaysOn Power Player in On-Demand Computing and was honored as the Gold Stevie award as Woman of the Year in Technology.