Data Governance & Ethics

Richard Brait is the General Counsel of Siemens Canada, which has over 4,000 employees and annual revenue of $2.5 billion Canadian. All of Siemens’ global businesses have significant operations in Canada comprising 46 locations with 14 production facilities, many with an R&D presence. These businesses are part of Siemens’ operating companies – Smart Infrastructure, Digital Industry, and Gas & Power – and its portfolio of other companies. In addition, Siemens has a financing business and affiliates in healthcare, wind power, and urban transit.

Prior to his 10+ year tenure at Siemens, Richard was General Counsel at ATI Technologies and then Chief Administrative Officer of Advanced Micro Devices Canada.

ATI was Canada’s second-largest technology company and the world’s leading supplier of graphics chips to the computer, cellphone, and digital TV industries. It merged with Advanced Micro Devices in 2006.

Previously Mr. Brait was a senior partner at the law firm Stikeman Elliott, and chaired its technology group. Stikeman was Canada’s leading global law firm, with 9 offices on 4 continents. He also had a lengthy career at Nortel Networks, a leading telecommunications equipment supplier. While at Nortel, he formed and ran what became one of the world’s largest intellectual property businesses, and was General Counsel to Nortel’s largest divisions.

He has degrees in Engineering Physics, and Law from Queen’s University, a Masters-level degree in Law from the University of Oxford, and is a member of the Institute of Corporate Directors, holding the Certified Corporate Director designation.

Claudiu Popa, CISSP, CIPP, PMP, CISA, CRISC, is a leading authority on risk management, personal information protection, data security strategy and author of four books including The Canadian Cyberfraud Handbook: A Professional Reference (Thomson Reuters) and Managing Personal Information: Insights on Corporate Risk and Opportunity for Privacy-Savvy Leaders (Thomson Reuters).

Claudiu is the co-founder of the KnowledgeFlow Foundation, a Canadian non-profit organization focused on cybersafety in the education sector, edtech innovation and the protection of personal information.

Claudiu was previously the Managing Director of the Canadian Cybercrime Information Centre at Seneca College where he led efforts to collect and analyze financial cybercrime information for public awareness and education.

For over 25 years, Claudiu has been an active participant in the development of standards, systems, and methods to improve cybersecurity education and protect information assets. He created AVAST, a healthcare security assessment process currently in use in Canada’s western provinces and continues to actively contribute to information security initiatives across diverse industry sectors in Canada and internationally.

He is a lecturer on enterprise privacy at the University of Toronto. Claudiu resides just outside Toronto with his wife and four young children.

Holly has enjoyed a 20+ year RBC career and has global responsibility for privacy risk management and responsible use of personal information across all businesses and functions. The privacy program is supported by a central team as well as a UK/EU Data Protection Officer and Privacy Officers worldwide.

Holly has held a variety of roles at RBC, including corporate and sales strategy, communications and first-line risk oversight. She began her RBC career as a lawyer with an M&A and bank regulatory focus. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s of law and is a Certified Information Privacy Manager.

Kate has a background in social services where she treated youth with complex mental health and addictions issues. Her role involved developing detailed, treatment-focused program plans and seeing them through to completion. Kate brings many years of experience in the service industry to her role at Cambridge Forums. In her spare time, Kate enjoys good food and wine, all things true-crime related, and dance parties with her kids.

Rob has been working in the professional development field since 1979, when he founded Insight Information Inc. Since then, he has been active in developing various conferences, seminars, as well as interactive television and publishing projects. In 2004, Rob founded Cambridge Forums Inc. to meet the professional growth needs of top-tier professionals and was instrumental in developing the exclusive forum format. Today, as Chairman of the firm, Rob focuses on strategy and spearheading new forums. In his spare time, he spends as much time as possible at his country home north of Toronto with his wife and four adult children.