International

Cristina Dos Santos has been a Consultant expert in privacy and data protection since 2006, with a legal background in European Law (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France) and a European Master's Degree in Labor Sciences (University of Florence, Italy).

After living in several European countries (Portugal, where she is originally from, Switzerland during her teenage years, France, Italy, and since 2005 in Belgium), she started her career working as a Researcher and Consultant for CRIDS (Research Centre in Information, Law and Society) at the University of Namur on several European or regional projects related to privacy compliance in e-government, re-use of public data, transparency of public administration, or on electronic voting in social elections. In this role, she has published several European reports and presented her research and publications at several national and international conferences targeting different audiences.

Since 2015 she has been the 'DPO' (Data Protection Officer) for several multinationals and SMEs, helping them implement GDPR compliance, such as Stanley Black & Decker (industry and security) or currently for Mainsys Group (banking software publisher) also as Legal & Compliance Officer. And in 2020 she established her own consulting company 'ELL Consulting' and works as a Freelance DPO on different assignments for either Mainsys Group (Brussels, Belgium), DPO Consulting SAS (Paris, France) or Privacy Desk (Lugano, Switzerland) for some of their respective B2B clients.

In these roles, Cristina has since maintained a strong connection with the ASSO DPO (she participated in the Women in Privacy podcasts in 2022), or with other DPO associations in France or Belgium so that she can maintain and develop her network with colleagues at the European level and be constantly stimulated on new laws, case law or doctrinal developments, and share best practices with other DPOs. Her strengths are her great flexibility, due to her experience living and working in different countries and with people from different cultures, and she has a great curiosity for all the topics in vogue in the privacy field (AI, etc.).