Privado hires ex-Meta leader Nishant Bhajaria to head privacy CoE
Data privacy startup Privado has announced the appointment of Nishant Bhajaria, a seasoned privacy engineering leader with previous experience at Google, Netflix, Meta, Uber, and Nike. Bhajaria will head Privado's newly established Privacy Engineering Center of Excellence (CoE).
Bhajaria's role will involve advising privacy leaders and Privado's customers on optimising privacy programmes for compliance, enhancing software developer efficiency, and bolstering customer trust. As Privado enhances its privacy code scanning platform, Bhajaria will provide guidance to the product team on developing new solutions aimed at bridging the gap between privacy and engineering teams. He will leverage his experience working with various stakeholders to support Privado in its mission to reduce privacy risks for organisations that develop software processing personal data.
Throughout his career, Bhajaria has been known for pioneering a technical privacy playbook designed to scale privacy compliance and transform it into a business driver. At Meta, for instance, he redesigned internal settings to enhance user consent experiences. At Uber, he played a key role in building the Uber Privacy Center, repurposing internal dashboards to manage a privacy centre that, contrary to expectations, reduced the number of data requests.
Expressing his enthusiasm for his new role at Privado, Bhajaria commented, "I've been extremely impressed with Privado's new approach to privacy compliance that promotes innovation, instead of hinders it. For software-driven companies, data flows through their infrastructure like fire through dry grass fueled by code, yet privacy and engineering teams often lack visibility into how their software moves data. Many privacy teams try to fill this gap by asking engineers to complete questionnaires, but these manual assessments do not scale, and never will. Privado has helped address this gap by scanning code to continuously monitor data flows and proactively identify risks. I'm excited to join the amazing team at Privado and help more privacy and engineering leaders implement solutions that enable, rather than block, engineers."
Privado CEO Vaibhav Antil provided insight into the timing of this strategic hire, stating, "Nishant is an extraordinary leader and one of the pioneers in privacy engineering. His deep experience in managing privacy at the world's most scrutinised tech companies makes him uniquely positioned to drive our vision forward. We've been planning the launch of our Privacy Engineering Center of Excellence for some time, but we knew we needed the right person to lead it. With Nishant's proven track record in solving complex privacy challenges at scale, we are confident that he will help shape the future of privacy engineering and strengthen our ability to serve our customers."
With more than a decade of leading privacy and security engineering teams, as well as a decade of experience as a software engineer, Bhajaria brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise. His cross-functional approach to privacy engineering has been instrumental in mitigating risk at scale for top-tier technology companies. Additionally, Bhajaria is an accomplished educator, having authored works on data privacy and taught courses on data governance and Generative AI as an adjunct professor at Arizona State University and Portland State University.
In light of increasing privacy regulations in the US, Bhajaria's appointment is timely. During 2024, enforcement actions by the California Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission have resulted in fines for multiple companies over non-compliant personal data sharing. New major privacy laws such as the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and Washington State's My Health My Data Act (MHMDA) have intensified scrutiny on data privacy practices. Companies now face challenges related to data quality and business inefficiencies.
Privado aims to assist companies in proactively addressing privacy compliance with its privacy code scanning platform, which offers full data visibility and continuous privacy governance. With the inclusion of AI for enhanced accuracy and automation, Privado believes Bhajaria's leadership will be crucial in bringing privacy code scanning to the enterprise market.
