Joanne Charles is a Senior Corporate Counsel in the Global Privacy & Regulatory Affairs group for Microsoft. She advises executive stakeholders for research, product development, sales and engineering teams on areas related to privacy and data protection specific to Microsoft as an enterprise. As part of this role, Joanne interacts with attorneys and business leaders in human resources, finance, security, legal affairs and global business teams. Joanne works with corporate counsel teams supporting them as they address international data protection law and compliance requirements impacting the tech sector. Additionally, she consults with the product development and research teams supporting innovation in the health sector. Prior to joining Microsoft, she focused her practice on the regulation of healthcare entities, health information technology and data protection. Joanne leverages her prior experience as a litigator and in- house counsel to develop targeted data use strategies relevant to global and sector-specific privacy laws. Joanne attended Syracuse University where she earned her Bachelors’ degrees in Journalism and Psychology and she received her JD from the Shepard Broad College of Law at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. In the past year, Joanne has served as a guest lecturer and speaker discussing innovation in healthcare and privacy enhancing technology, HIPAA- HITECH other data use regulations as well as trends in emerging privacy jurisdictions.