Speaker Bio
Steven Ward is a privacy and security fellow for R Street’s Cybersecurity and Emerging Threats team. He focuses on data security, data privacy and cybersecurity at the federal and state levels, emerging cyber and national security threats, and cybersecurity impacts on the private sector.
Steven worked for nearly a decade in law enforcement. He had assignments in the Patrol Division and the Detective Division, where he was a senior and lead investigator on homicides, robberies, sexual assaults, white collar crimes and child abuse cases. He also was a computer forensic examiner and a member Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crime Task Force and Sacramento Internet Crimes Against Children’s Task Force.
Steven has a JD from the University of California, Hastings College of Law, and graduated summa cum laude from California State University, Los Angeles, with a bachelor’s degree in English.
During law school, he interned at the Federal Trade Commission working on issues regarding federal and state privacy law, antitrust laws and consumer-related issues from blockchain technology. Prior to that, Steven interned at SpeedLegal, a Silicon Valley tech startup company utilizing artificial intelligence in the legal space. At SpeedLegal, he worked on privacy-related issues, corporate governance and contract artificial intelligence quality control.
Steven lives in San Francisco, California, with his wife and two boys.