Washington, DC (August 11, 2023) – Venable LLP is pleased to announce that Anne Toth has joined the firm as senior director of privacy services. Ms. Toth has more than 25 years of experience at the forefront of technology policy issue, including data privacy, protection and governance, accessibility, appropriate content policies, content moderation, advertising content policy, and inclusive, ethical product design.
“Anne has successfully built and scaled privacy and trust and safety programs for some of the largest and fastest-growing technology companies in the world. She understands how to navigate difficult situations and has experience implementing safe and practical solutions to meet business needs. She will be a tremendous value to our clients and a great addition to the team,” said Stu Ingis, chairman of Venable.
Most recently, Ms. Toth was a strategic advisor providing consultation on technology policy and strategic guidance for the Wikimedia Foundation and Future of Privacy Forum. Prior to that, she was part of the Alexa Trust leadership team at Amazon, where she oversaw privacy policy, content policy, and responsible innovation policies across first- and third-party-developed product experiences. Her work there specifically related to AI/ML, and voice and facial recognition technologies for Amazon’s devices and services.
As the head of technology policy and partnerships and a member of the executive committee at the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Industrial Revolution in San Francisco, Ms. Toth managed programs in data policy, digital trade, precision medicine, responsible innovation, ethics, and the environment. In addition, she collaborated with governments, companies, civil society, academia, and stakeholders worldwide to launch programs and accelerate the adoption of new technologies in the global public interest in Dubai, Beijing, and Tokyo.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Toth served as the vice president of People and Policy at Slack Technologies, where she focused on privacy, policy, security, government relations, people operations, recruiting, and corporate social responsibility, and at Google, where she led policy for their social products.
Ms. Toth served as the first known chief trust officer for any company at Yahoo!, where she built their privacy program, wrote their first fair information practice-based privacy policy in 1998, and managed compliance with the FTC’s first privacy action with the GeoCities order in 1999. During her tenure at Yahoo!, Ms. Toth oversaw projects on social, mobile, and advertising privacy issues and was responsible for implementing the company’s search log file retention policy, among other accomplishments. In this role, she regularly represented the company in discussions with international, federal, and state policymakers and legislators and with trade associations. Ms. Toth testified as a key witness before the Energy & Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on the topic of online behavioral advertising. Additionally, she testified before the EU Article 29 Data Protection Working Party regarding the company’s global search log file data retention policy. She has worked extensively throughout her career with legislators and policymakers in the United States and Europe, predominantly at the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Commerce, and the White House, and with members of Congress, state attorneys general, members of the EU Parliament, and data protection authorities, to establish a conduit between technology companies and regulatory bodies.
Commenting on her move to Venable, Ms. Toth said, “I have partnered with Venable on projects in the past and really enjoyed the firm’s collaborative culture and comprehensive approach to managing client issues. I am thrilled to join the team and get started.”
Ms. Toth received her B.A. in economics from Wellesley College and attended the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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Venable LLP is an American Lawyer Global 100 law firm headquartered in Washington, DC that serves as primary counsel to a worldwide clientele of large and mid-sized organizations, nonprofits, high-net-worth entrepreneurs, and other individuals. With more than 850 professionals across the country, including in California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Virginia, and Washington, DC, the firm strategically advances its clients' objectives in the United States and around the globe. Venable advises clients on a broad range of business and regulatory law, legislative affairs, complex litigation, and the full range of intellectual property disciplines. For more information, please visit https://www.venable.com/.