Nuala O'Connor, Walmart's new chief counsel of digital citizenship.Walmart Hires Former Amazon Lawyer as First Chief Counsel of Digital Citizenship
In the newly created role, Nuala O'Connor will focus on leveraging data and technology while also advising on privacy issues, cybersecurity and records management.
September 11, 2019 at 03:19 PM
3 minute read
As Walmart continues to carve out territory in the e-commerce marketplace, the retail giant has tapped former Amazon lawyer and executive Nuala O'Connor to serve as the company's first chief counsel of digital citizenship.
O'Connor is slated to begin her new job, which also includes the role of senior vice president, Oct. 7 at Walmart's Washington, D.C., office. She brings more than 20 years of tech policy and legal leadership experience, according to Walmart, which announced her appointment Tuesday.
O'Connor will hold the reins of Walmart's digital citizenship team while focusing on leveraging data and technology. She's also expected to advise the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company on privacy issues, cybersecurity and records management.
"While this function will incorporate our existing privacy function, digital citizenship will have a broader focus than a traditional privacy office—it will advise on issues such as the ethical use of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence," a Walmart spokeswoman wrote in an email Wednesday.
O'Connor will report to Walmart executive vice president of global governance and chief legal officer Rachel Brand. Brand said in a prepared statement that O'Connor and her team will "advise not only on whether we may legally use data or technology in a particular way, but also on what effect that use would have on our relationship of trust with our customers and stakeholders."
O'Connor added in a written statement that she looked "forward to working on responsible digital citizenship as technology transforms the retail industry and the daily lives of our associates, customers and communities." She and Brand were not available for interviews.
For the past five years, O'Connor has served as the president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group headquartered in Washington, D.C., that advocates for internet privacy, according to her LinkedIn profile.
At Amazon, O'Connor was vice president of compliance and customer trust and associate general counsel of privacy and data protection from 2012 to 2014. She joined Amazon after seven years at General Electric Co., where she was chief privacy leader and senior counsel of information governance.
Earlier in her career, O'Connor served as chief privacy officer for both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Commerce.
She has a bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University; a master's in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard University; and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. After law school, she joined Venable as an associate before moving on to partner roles at Hudson Cook and Sidley Austin.
Her first stint in the in-house world was as deputy general counsel, vice president and chief privacy officer for DoubleClick, an online ad service firm that Google owns now.
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