IBM was one of the first major tech companies to roll out a chief privacy office position way back in 2000. At that point, Christina Montgomery was serving as the company’s senior counsel, steadily working her way up the ranks to associate general counsel, and then vice  president, assistant general counsel and secretary.

She added the privacy officer title to her resume in July 2019, a time that presented a very different—and ultimately much more complicated—regulatory landscape than would have been found anywhere in 2000. With more than 400,000 employees working across the globe, IBM not only has to contend with the likes of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) but a patchwork of additional state-level laws scattered throughout the United States.