The AI Strategy Summit: IP, Data and Compliance – Chicago

Best boss ever

Vice President, Associate General Counsel, IBM Corporation

Donna is currently Vice President, Associate General Counsel, with global responsibility for supporting IBM’s cloud business. Donna is also a Founding Board Member of IBM’s AI Ethics Board, and she led IBM’s Global Pro Bono Program for three years. From 2011 to 2014, Donna worked in Dubai on international assignment as Senior Regional Counsel, IBM Middle East, North and West Africa. Donna has over 25 years of experience in advising her senior business clients on various legal issues as well as more than 25 years of non-profit board service in a variety of leadership, advisory and committee roles. Donna has been involved in AI legal matters since the inception of IBM’s Watson AI business unit in 2014.  Donna is a speaker on AI, AI Ethics, AI and the Law and the intersection of STEM and the Law. Donna holds a JD from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and a BA in Economics and Political Science from Northwestern University.

Community and Board Involvement

Donna is a member of the Executive Committee of Law Board at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and is Chair of the Board’s Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Working Group.  Donna also serves on the Joint Committee of Law Firm Partners and Corporate Counsel of The National Judicial College. She is Past President and current member of the Board of Directors of the Arab American Bar Association of Illinois. Donna was recently awarded the Chicago Bar Association’s Vanguard Award, which honors individuals who have made the law and legal profession more accessible to and reflective of the community at large.

Julie is counsel in Thompson Hine’s Corporate Transactions & Securities group, a member of the Contract Solutions group, and a member of the Artificial Intelligence Industry Team. Our AI Industry Team is a multidisciplinary group of attorneys dedicated to understanding and managing the legal issues, implications, and risks of developing, funding, and using AI.
Julie focuses her practice on drafting and negotiating a variety of commercial contracts. She also advises clients on the development and use of AI and generative AI, including drafting corporate policies, and developing training programs. Previously, Julie served as general counsel where she built and led in-house legal departments. She brings years of experience as an executive team member to her practice, providing practical, business-forward, and results-oriented advice to clients.

A trial and appellate lawyer who primarily concentrates his practice on insurance-coverage litigation and cyber risks, Kevin has extensive experience litigating directors and officers (D&O), errors and omissions (E&O), and property and casualty (P&C) coverage under both primary and excess policies. He has served as both lead settlement and trial counsel in highly sensitive business and coverage disputes. He also advises clients on insurance-policy drafting and underwriting issues.

As co-chair of the Data Security & Technology Practice Area, Kevin represents businesses facing first- and third-party losses due to data breaches, service interruptions, theft, and other cyber threats. He also counsels clients on contract drafting and coverage for cyber risks and represents them in liability and coverage disputes.

In addition to his practice, Kevin is the host of Barclay Damon Live: Cyber Sip, the firm’s biweekly cybersecurity podcast.

Nicole Clouse is a seasoned IP attorney with a specialized focus in the biotech and pharma industry.  Currently serving as the Vice President, Head of Intellectual Property at Generate Biomedicines, Nicole leads the protection of the company’s IP assets and provides strategic legal guidance to advance its pioneering work in the field of generative biology.  Using its proprietary generative AI platform, Generate Biomedicines is developing a robust pipeline of novel protein therapeutics, two of which are currently in human clinical trials.

Before joining Generate, Nicole was IP Counsel at Biogen, supporting clinical stage and marketed programs with respect to IP strategy, transactions, and patent litigation. She was in private legal practice for nearly 15 years, most recently as a partner in the IP Litigation group at McDermott Will & Emery and, before that, as a Patent Agent at Choate Hall & Stewart. She has a JD from Boston University School of Law and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Princeton University.

As the Vice President, Legal, for Intelligent Medical Objects, Inc. (IMO), a pioneer in healthcare data enablement, Nicole Pearce brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the intersection of law, technology, and business. Nicole leads the Legal and Compliance functions at IMO, which delivers terminology and data normalization solutions to 4,500 hospitals; 89% of physicians, nurses, and PAs; and 70% of acute care facilities in the United States.  While IMO has always been on the forefront of innovation in machine learning, IMO’s AI journey accelerated in 2022 with the acquisition of Melax Technologies, a leader in healthcare NLP technology leveraging cutting edge AI models and LLM capabilities.  Nicole works closely with product, security, and technology leaders to ensure that cutting-edge developments are both protected and compliant with evolving regulations. Nicole is passionate about the role of law in shaping the future of healthcare technology and is committed to advancing the conversation on how legal frameworks can support innovation while safeguarding intellectual property rights.  Prior to joining Intelligent Medical Objects, Nicole served as Staff Attorney for a Chicago-based employee assistance program provider working on broad range of legal issues, including HIPAA Compliance and Data Privacy. Nicole holds a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law.

Sarah Duda is Chief Patent Counsel and head of the Employee Innovation Program at CME Group. In her role, she is responsible for global intellectual property (IP) strategy, policy, procurement, and enforcement. With a background in law and technology, she also serves as a trusted advisor in navigating complex legal issues in emerging technologies such as blockchain, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Prior to joining CME Group, Sarah held leadership roles at S&P 500 companies and began her career practicing in IP boutiques.

Angela Kalsi helps her clients protect, manage, and enforce their intellectual property (IP) in the U.S. and around the globe. As her clients’ trusted partner, she advises businesses and individuals on a wide array of trademark, copyright, artificial intelligence (AI), design, trade secret, M&A, and licensing issues.

Angela devises and implements global strategies for managing the trademark and copyright portfolios of multinational companies; at the same time, she excels at helping smaller companies develop robust IP portfolios to best position them for their next stage of growth. Angela also advises her clients on best practices concerning the evolving IP issues implicated by new technologies, including AI.

Angela serves on leadership committees for the International Trademark Association (INTA) and Chicago Women in IP (ChiWIP).

Chris Rauch is Chief Intellectual Property Counsel and Assistant Secretary of ITW, a diversified equipment and consumables manufacturer that employs more than 46,000 people and has operations in 51 countries. Chris heads ITW’s worldwide intellectual property legal team, which is responsible for all aspects of IP support for the enterprise, including IP litigation, IP transactions, IP risk mitigation, and developing and enforcing ITW’s portfolio of patents, trademarks, copyrights, domains, and trade secrets.  Chris also heads AI governance and policy for the enterprise.  Before joining ITW, Chris was a partner at Sonnenshein Nath & Rosenthal LLP (now Dentons.)

Professional Associations and Memberships

Adler Planetarium – Board Trustee

Uncharted Learning, NFP | INCubatoredu – Coach

Education

University of Illinois-Chicago School of Law (J.D., LL.M.)

Illinois Institute of Technology (B.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering)

K.C. Halm is co-chair of DWT’s Technology, Communications, Privacy & Security practice, and co-lead of the AI Team. He provides strategic advice and regulatory counseling to companies developing and deploying AI.

K.C. guides AI developers and early adopters through the emerging regulatory and legal risks in this area. He regularly advises clients on the applicability of new laws and regulations to AI/ML platforms, including the E.U. AI Act, California’s automated decision-making regulations, and NYC Local Law 144. K.C. advises clients on issues surrounding the use of scraped data for training AI/ML models; compliance with new regulatory requirements and disclosures; and advocacy regarding the development of federal and state AI legal frameworks. K.C. also leverages this experience to help clients develop responsible AI policies.

Daniel Shulman, Shareholder of the IP Group of Vedder Price, will discuss the role of the in-house counsel while assessing new risks that arise when implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into business practices

Joy’s practice focuses on the intersection of technology and risk. In her current role, she advises Eaton’s businesses on all issues related to data, privacy and cybersecurity. Prior to joining Eaton, Joy supported clients in cyber security incident response, privacy compliance and proactive planning as a Senior Associate in the Chicago office of Baker Hostetler LLP. Joy has also served as in-house counsel at Uber. Joy holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Nancy Libin counsels clients in a wide range of industries regarding compliance with privacy laws and regulations. Nationally recognized by Chambers & Partners for her leadership and expertise in this area, Nancy considers each client’s business operations, objectives, and tolerance for risk to offer practical advice, so that clients can manage and use data effectively—and responsibly—to achieve their business goals.

A former chief privacy and civil liberties officer of the U.S. Department of Justice, and counsel to then-Senator Joe Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Nancy also brings a three-dimensional understanding of law, policy, and strategy that enables her to help clients effectively participate in legislative activity and government proceedings and understand regulatory trends. She has represented clients before federal and state agencies in rulemaking and other policy-related proceedings.

Jacob Graham is intellectual property counsel at Dow, overseeing the negotiation of IP agreements and prosecution of a global patent portfolio. He also manages post-grant review and European patent opposition matters for Dow’s largest business unit of packaging and specialties plastics and hydrocarbons.

Prior to joining Dow, Graham worked in private practice, externed for a federal judge, and performed research in private industry and government settings as a scientist. He enjoys the comparative aspects of patent law and its interplay between innovation and economics on micro and macro scales. Graham believes in continuous improvement and champions the idea of bringing diverse and high-performing teams together to solve problems.

Hemu is one of this country’s foremost leaders in privacy, security, and safety issues clients face across multiple business sectors, including big tech, government, law enforcement, corporations, start-ups, talent, and pro athletes. A globally recognized leader with nearly 25 years of cyber experience, he helps clients build up privacy, safety, and security programs and navigate through crises that might arise as the result of privacy and security breaches. He has developed an extensive network in the state attorney general community and respect as a thought leader on cyber policy matters. Hemu was previously the founder and chief executive officer of cyber security and cyber intelligence firm Cyber Security Affairs, formerly known as SSP Blue.

During his tenure at Cyber Security Affairs, Hemu provided strategic guidance to both corporations and online companies in online safety, security, and privacy issues covering product, policy, PR, and regulatory matters. He effectively helped Internet- and non-Internet-based companies in creating and implementing holistic online safety, security, and privacy programs, including in social media, and provided guidance to safety, security, and privacy technology providers. Hemu has also led numerous product and program audits to identify key risk areas and drive execution of changes. When companies are under government inquiry or investigation at the federal and state levels, Hemu provides strategic and legal guidance in navigating such matters. He engages with the non-government organization (NGO) community to build partnership opportunities and provides crisis media management and proactive media outreach services and media training. Having been a federal prosecutor for computer crimes and online sex crimes, Hemu helps clients develop and implement law enforcement compliance programs and training. He also leads cyber security vulnerability assessments on behalf of clients.

Hemu also works with talent, pro athletes, and executives (principals) who require 24/7/365 cyber threat protection, to act as the eyes in cyberspace for security details on the ground, whether on the road or at home, to identify, prevent, or dismantle any threats brewing in the public, deep, or dark web, including social media. Hollywood stars and other high-profile individuals who have been cyberstalked, hacked, and threatened have sought out Hemu to help them, including with online reputational attacks and cyber privacy.

From 2006 to 2010, Hemu was chief security officer for a mass media and publishing company, where he was responsible for protecting the personal information of more than 200 million users around the world. He has been credited with making a social networking service safe and secure after launching an initiative to identify and remove criminals from the networking site. He also drove the launch of more than 150 other safety, security, and privacy protection features for the company and played a key role in an accord between the company and 49 state attorneys general to develop key principles of social networking safety.

From 2002 to 2006, Hemu worked for a multinational technology company, where he led a global initiative to build safety standards into products across the company. He also implemented a virus enforcement strategy and collaborated with the U.S. Secret Service, Interpol, and the FBI to develop the company’s landmark anti-virus reward program. The program is credited with toppling one of the world’s most notorious virus creators in 2005.

From 2000 to 2002, Hemu was vice president of worldwide Internet enforcement at a trade association that represents major film studios, where he spearheaded a global effort to combat online movie piracy for the major Hollywood studios. During his tenure, Hemu implemented anti-piracy technology that allowed the association to eliminate more than 100,000 illegal movie websites in a year.

From 1997 to 2000, Hemu held simultaneous roles in the federal government, serving as a federal prosecutor against child and computer crimes for the U.S. Department of Justice, advisor to a congressional commission on child safety, and advisor to the White House on cyberstalking. In addition to prosecuting Internet predators, Hemu was behind the prosecution of 17 foreign nationals engaged in the trafficking of women and children into the United States.

Hemu began his career as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County from 1990 to 1997, focusing on prosecuting sexual assault and child abuse cases. During his tenure, Hemu handled more than 1,000 criminal matters and was a recurring lecturer at rape crisis centers across Los Angeles.

Hemu has also been honored to work with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the state attorneys general to develop widely used online safety standards. He was appointed by the New York Office of the Attorney General as an independent safety and security examiner to provide periodic independent assessments of a major online company’s safety and security practices. He has been asked by the White House and the United Nations to provide guidance and counsel on navigating the world’s most critical online protection challenges.

With over a decade of experience in the online space, Simrin Hooper is a veteran in the intersection of policy, regulatory, and product with online safety and privacy. At Venable, Simrin leads a team of analysts focused on regulatory response, human rights assessments, and child safety-related client engagements. Simrin has developed safety, security, and privacy programs for clients and operationally helped clients integrate them in their product, engineering, and policy structure. She is also experienced in analyzing the data of client products, including data receipt, data storage, data management, and data sharing, to identify potential client vulnerabilities and mitigation solutions.

During her time as vice president of safety, security, and privacy at a leading Los Angeles advisory firm, Simrin oversaw all related product reviews for clients providing mobile services, interactive games, social networks, dating opportunities, online classifieds, and applications. She reviewed products from both the front- and back-end perspectives, including signup, abuse reports, age-related safety, data management, and other areas to determine strengths and weaknesses from the perspectives of safety, security, and privacy.

As safety and security manager at a global social media platform company, Simrin oversaw all safety, security, privacy-related site and product features and programs for all company properties, focusing specifically on a major social media site with millions of users around the world. She established uniform SSP standards for all company properties and reviewed new features, marketing campaigns, and expansions to ensure adherence to those standards. She also wrote and distributed safety guides for parents and schools in partnership with educational organizations. She created and maintained original content for the social media site’s safety section, which was developed to help parents, teachers, and users navigate online. She also implemented all attorney general joint statement requests for the platform, and developed, implemented, and oversaw marketing and brand campaign policies for alcohol and movie advertisements for all company properties. Simrin was also responsible for building public affairs programs to showcase these efforts to the public and government globally. Simrin led a team of program managers, working closely with product, engineering, communications, legal, policy, regulatory, and government affairs teams.

Simrin has also worked extensively with nonprofit organizations focused on child safety and human trafficking.

Scott Garnick serves as a trusted advisor to the customer organization’s leadership team, at HERE Technologies, the world’s leading location technology platform. Scott negotiates strategic IP licensing transactions globally and leads a team of deal lawyers negotiating HERE’s customer agreements in the Americas. Leveraging his technical background, Scott advises engineering teams on automotive product regulatory matters, and serves on the company’s AI strategy committee. Prior to HERE, Scott worked at Accenture, negotiating deals with clients in the health and public services sector, and in healthcare regulatory compliance at Centene Corporation.

Kate Dennis Nye is Associate General Counsel & Senior Director at Gap Inc., the parent company to The Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta.  In her role at Gap, Kate manages the team responsible for marketing and advertising legal issues companywide and serves as the senior legal partner to the Old Navy brand on marketing, advertising, and intellectual property matters.  Among the kinds of issues she handles on a day-to-day basis are trademark clearance, claim substantiation, promotions and pricing, and product review, as well as managing related contracts and disputes.  Prior to joining Gap Inc., Kate was a partner at Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP in Chicago, where her practice encompassed a broad range of intellectual property and marketing matters for clients across industries.

Sara is an experienced intellectual property attorney focused on trademark, copyright, and advertising matters. She counsels clients of all sizes and industries, including major retailers, technology start-ups, financial institutions, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, marketing, and journalists. She manages U.S. and foreign trademark portfolios, overseeing trademark clearance, prosecution, licensing, and policing. She identifies trademark risks connected with global product rollouts and handles brand enforcement such as domain name recovery, social media takedown notices, and anti-counterfeiting actions.

Although her experience spans countries all over the world, she spends a significant amount of time curbing infringements in the Middle East. Sara is fluent in Arabic and works closely with local counsel to monitor, investigate, and file lawsuits to shut down infringing stores across the region. For one client in particular, she has traveled to the United Arab Emirates to collaborate with local counsel in formulating an aggressive trademark enforcement strategy.

Sara also counsels a variety of health care professionals on IP-related issues. This includes advising dentists and doctors on protecting the names of their clinics, developing their own lines of products and inventions, and advising pharma companies on new product rollouts. Sara has also sent demand letters and, when necessary, handled litigation against third parties infringing on these clients’ trademarks.

As a former journalist, Sara is especially passionate about media law, which includes advising journalists on freelance and publisher agreements, copyright considerations, and fair use factors. She has represented a wide range of players in this space, from large media companies to freelance journalists to podcasters. She also advises clients on the best practices of social media law, including updating social media policies, reviewing terms of conditions and use, and ensuring proper consent when posting photos.

Sara is also an adjunct professor teaching copyright law at DePaul University College of Law.

With over three decades of experience, my legal practice centers on Trademark, Copyright, Internet, and Advertising law. Clients in the retail, consumer products, outdoor, apparel, and footwear sectors seek my advice in developing, managing, and protecting their brand portfolios. I also represent the U.S. interests of European clients, primarily those located in Germany and Switzerland.

My practice encompasses a range of services, including counseling, prosecution, portfolio management, enforcement, and dispute resolution, all tailored to my clients’ varying needs. I have significant experience with the registration and enforcement of colors, product designs, and other types of trade dress.

I am versed in administrative trademark and domain name disputes, including trademark oppositions and cancellations before the USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Proceeding (UDRP) arbitration matters.

In addition to working with clients, I enjoy being an adjunct professor of intellectual property law at the University of Washington.

Angela Dunning’s practice focuses on trademark, copyright, trade secrets, unfair competition, and other complex commercial litigation for the world’s top companies. She has tried numerous cases to a jury verdict and has substantial experience in the federal appellate courts, including successful arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in high-profile, published cases. In 2008, Angela served as an assistant district attorney for the City and County of San Francisco under then-District Attorney Kamala Harris, prosecuting criminal cases. Angela is an industry thought leader and regularly writes and speaks about AI issues and the IP, privacy and data security implications of generative AI. She teaches trademark law at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Hemu is one of this country’s foremost leaders in privacy, security, and safety issues clients face across multiple business sectors, including big tech, government, law enforcement, corporations, start-ups, talent, and pro athletes. A globally recognized leader with nearly 25 years of cyber experience, he helps clients build up privacy, safety, and security programs and navigate through crises that might arise as the result of privacy and security breaches. He has developed an extensive network in the state attorney general community and respect as a thought leader on cyber policy matters. Hemu was previously the founder and chief executive officer of cyber security and cyber intelligence firm Cyber Security Affairs, formerly known as SSP Blue.

During his tenure at Cyber Security Affairs, Hemu provided strategic guidance to both corporations and online companies in online safety, security, and privacy issues covering product, policy, PR, and regulatory matters. He effectively helped Internet- and non-Internet-based companies in creating and implementing holistic online safety, security, and privacy programs, including in social media, and provided guidance to safety, security, and privacy technology providers. Hemu has also led numerous product and program audits to identify key risk areas and drive execution of changes. When companies are under government inquiry or investigation at the federal and state levels, Hemu provides strategic and legal guidance in navigating such matters. He engages with the non-government organization (NGO) community to build partnership opportunities and provides crisis media management and proactive media outreach services and media training. Having been a federal prosecutor for computer crimes and online sex crimes, Hemu helps clients develop and implement law enforcement compliance programs and training. He also leads cyber security vulnerability assessments on behalf of clients.

Hemu also works with talent, pro athletes, and executives (principals) who require 24/7/365 cyber threat protection, to act as the eyes in cyberspace for security details on the ground, whether on the road or at home, to identify, prevent, or dismantle any threats brewing in the public, deep, or dark web, including social media. Hollywood stars and other high-profile individuals who have been cyberstalked, hacked, and threatened have sought out Hemu to help them, including with online reputational attacks and cyber privacy.

From 2006 to 2010, Hemu was chief security officer for a mass media and publishing company, where he was responsible for protecting the personal information of more than 200 million users around the world. He has been credited with making a social networking service safe and secure after launching an initiative to identify and remove criminals from the networking site. He also drove the launch of more than 150 other safety, security, and privacy protection features for the company and played a key role in an accord between the company and 49 state attorneys general to develop key principles of social networking safety.

From 2002 to 2006, Hemu worked for a multinational technology company, where he led a global initiative to build safety standards into products across the company. He also implemented a virus enforcement strategy and collaborated with the U.S. Secret Service, Interpol, and the FBI to develop the company’s landmark anti-virus reward program. The program is credited with toppling one of the world’s most notorious virus creators in 2005.

From 2000 to 2002, Hemu was vice president of worldwide Internet enforcement at a trade association that represents major film studios, where he spearheaded a global effort to combat online movie piracy for the major Hollywood studios. During his tenure, Hemu implemented anti-piracy technology that allowed the association to eliminate more than 100,000 illegal movie websites in a year.

From 1997 to 2000, Hemu held simultaneous roles in the federal government, serving as a federal prosecutor against child and computer crimes for the U.S. Department of Justice, advisor to a congressional commission on child safety, and advisor to the White House on cyberstalking. In addition to prosecuting Internet predators, Hemu was behind the prosecution of 17 foreign nationals engaged in the trafficking of women and children into the United States.

Hemu began his career as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County from 1990 to 1997, focusing on prosecuting sexual assault and child abuse cases. During his tenure, Hemu handled more than 1,000 criminal matters and was a recurring lecturer at rape crisis centers across Los Angeles.

Hemu has also been honored to work with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the state attorneys general to develop widely used online safety standards. He was appointed by the New York Office of the Attorney General as an independent safety and security examiner to provide periodic independent assessments of a major online company’s safety and security practices. He has been asked by the White House and the United Nations to provide guidance and counsel on navigating the world’s most critical online protection challenges.

With over a decade of experience in the online space, Simrin Hooper is a veteran in the intersection of policy, regulatory, and product with online safety and privacy. At Venable, Simrin leads a team of analysts focused on regulatory response, human rights assessments, and child safety-related client engagements. Simrin has developed safety, security, and privacy programs for clients and operationally helped clients integrate them in their product, engineering, and policy structure. She is also experienced in analyzing the data of client products, including data receipt, data storage, data management, and data sharing, to identify potential client vulnerabilities and mitigation solutions.

During her time as vice president of safety, security, and privacy at a leading Los Angeles advisory firm, Simrin oversaw all related product reviews for clients providing mobile services, interactive games, social networks, dating opportunities, online classifieds, and applications. She reviewed products from both the front- and back-end perspectives, including signup, abuse reports, age-related safety, data management, and other areas to determine strengths and weaknesses from the perspectives of safety, security, and privacy.

As safety and security manager at a global social media platform company, Simrin oversaw all safety, security, privacy-related site and product features and programs for all company properties, focusing specifically on a major social media site with millions of users around the world. She established uniform SSP standards for all company properties and reviewed new features, marketing campaigns, and expansions to ensure adherence to those standards. She also wrote and distributed safety guides for parents and schools in partnership with educational organizations. She created and maintained original content for the social media site’s safety section, which was developed to help parents, teachers, and users navigate online. She also implemented all attorney general joint statement requests for the platform, and developed, implemented, and oversaw marketing and brand campaign policies for alcohol and movie advertisements for all company properties. Simrin was also responsible for building public affairs programs to showcase these efforts to the public and government globally. Simrin led a team of program managers, working closely with product, engineering, communications, legal, policy, regulatory, and government affairs teams.

Simrin has also worked extensively with nonprofit organizations focused on child safety and human trafficking.

Erik is a Denver-based partner at Husch Blackwell and heads up the firm’s cybersecurity practice. A retired Navy Captain, Erik focuses on compliance requirements related to cybersecurity and data privacy, including statutory, regulatory, and consensus-based standards, with an emphasis on critical infrastructure sectors such as mining, energy, and aviation and the Defense Industrial Base (DIB). In 2022 and 2023, Erik returned to public service in a civilian capacity with the Office of General Counsel at the National Security Agency, as the acting deputy chief of the cybersecurity practice group. He represents defense contractors and subcontractors; companies underpinning electrical, wastewater, transportation, and smart city systems; and other major organizations facing extortion threats from malicious foreign cyber actors.

Dustin is a Partner in Husch Blackwell’s Denver office, where his practice focuses on intellectual property, computer access, and data privacy litigation. Dustin helps ensure innovations receive the proper protection. He has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in federal litigation in courts nationwide, including Colorado, California, Texas, New York, Florida, and more. Dustin is a member of the firm’s Artificial Intelligence team, where he often writes about IP concerns imposed by AI, and the firm’s privacy team, where he publishes a monthly report of court data privacy decisions.

Laura Lemire is a privacy and cybersecurity attorney with more than a decade of experience in the technology sector. She has developed a deep understanding of the intricate legal landscape of vanguard technologies, such as social platforms, cloud computing, ad tech, and AI. Motivated by the desire to help clients introduce innovative services to the market, Laura helps them navigate their way through the regulatory uncertainties that permeate our digital era.

Laura has two certifications from related bodies of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (CIPP/US and CIPP/EU), plus an AI certification from MIT, further demonstrating her commitment to guiding clients in our data-driven economy.

K.C. Halm is co-chair of DWT’s Technology, Communications, Privacy & Security practice, and co-lead of the AI Team. He provides strategic advice and regulatory counseling to companies developing and deploying AI.

K.C. guides AI developers and early adopters through the emerging regulatory and legal risks in this area. He regularly advises clients on the applicability of new laws and regulations to AI/ML platforms, including the E.U. AI Act, California’s automated decision-making regulations, and NYC Local Law 144. K.C. advises clients on issues surrounding the use of scraped data for training AI/ML models; compliance with new regulatory requirements and disclosures; and advocacy regarding the development of federal and state AI legal frameworks. K.C. also leverages this experience to help clients develop responsible AI policies.