25 leaders, 25 moments at 25 years: Alan Westin

As part of the IAPP's 25th anniversary, we will celebrate 25 trailblazing innovators and 25 defining moments in the last quarter century that helped establish the privacy and digital governance profession. Throughout the course of the year, we'll highlight these transformative individuals and pivotal moments that have helped inspire and guide us as we navigate this rapidly evolving digital landscape. Though many of these individuals and moments originated on both sides of the Atlantic, we recognize the truly global scope of privacy and digital responsibility as it continues to develop around the world each day and note there are many more individuals and moments that have shaped the profession. Though we'd like to cover them all, we are focusing on these 50.

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Alan Westin

When considering some of the major figures who helped shape the privacy profession in the last 25 years, the first who leaps to mind is groundbreaking information privacy scholar Alan Westin. Though his early work came to fruition nearly 60 years ago with the publication of the foundational text "Privacy and Freedom," Westin's research, writing and influence continues well into the 21st century, leading to the creation of the Westin Research Center and the Westin Fellowship program at the IAPP.

"Today, literally tens of thousands of statutes, court decisions, regulations and company best practice standards, throughout the globe, are based upon" principles set forth by Westin, friend and Arnall Golden Gregory Privacy Partner Bob Belair said in an IAPP article shortly after Westin's death in 2013. "He was the first to understand the implications that computer technology, as well as other kinds of automated technology, had for personal privacy," Belair added.

As part of his legacy, the IAPP Westin Research Center was created in 2013 to encourage, enable and produce practical, applicable research and scholarship in privacy. And each year since then, the IAPP's Westin Fellowship program has brought forward recent graduates to help the IAPP work on a broad array of privacy and digital governance research projects to support the growth and development of the profession and further an understanding of major issues in the field. In the last decade, 21 Westin Fellows have worked with the IAPP to advance these initiatives before blossoming into their own influential careers.

In 2020, the IAPP also launched the annual Westin Scholar Awards to support students who are identified by their professors as future leaders in the field of privacy or data protection. ?

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