Staff List
Lydia F. de la Torre is the Director of Privacy Initiatives at Santa Clara University School of Law. In this role, she leads the strategic development of the Law School’s privacy programming, working with faculty, students, industry leaders, regulators, and alumni to advance education, scholarship, and professional engagement in privacy, artificial intelligence, and data governance. She also teaches AI Governance at Santa Clara Law.
Lydia’s relationship with Santa Clara Law began as a student, when she completed her LL.M. in Intellectual Property at the School of Law in 2014. She returned to Santa Clara in 2017 as the Law School’s inaugural Privacy Fellow and has remained connected to the School in one role or another ever since—as Privacy Fellow, faculty member, and now Director of Privacy Initiatives. During her fellowship, her research focused on emerging state privacy laws, particularly California’s developing privacy framework, and she helped co-direct Santa Clara Law’s Privacy Law Certificate program. She also testified before the California Senate Judiciary Committee on the relationship between the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Santa Clara Law has remained an important professional and intellectual home for Lydia throughout her career. She has a deep affection for the School, its students, and the broader Santa Clara community, and her current role reflects her longstanding commitment to helping Santa Clara Law develop the next generation of privacy and technology lawyers.
Outside Santa Clara, Lydia is the Founding Partner of Golden Data Law and Of Counsel at Squire Patton Boggs. Her practice focuses on privacy, data protection, cybersecurity, advertising technology, artificial intelligence, and data governance. Earlier in her career, she held senior privacy counsel roles at PayPal and other technology companies and taught privacy and technology law at UC Davis School of Law and UC Law San Francisco.
Lydia previously served as a Founding Board Member of the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA), the first dedicated privacy regulator in the United States. Appointed by California Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, she was one of five founding members responsible for establishing the Agency and developing regulations implementing the CCPA and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).
A frequent speaker and published author, Lydia writes and speaks on privacy law, AI governance, digital rights, and emerging technologies. She is the founder and author of The de la Torre Review, an independent publication exploring the intersection of law, technology, and society. Her work has been cited or featured in publications including Bloomberg Law, Law360, Global Data Review, and IEEE Spectrum.
Lydia also serves as Senior Policy Advisor to Californians for Consumer Privacy; as a Leadership Board Member of the Future of Privacy Forum’s Center for Artificial Intelligence; and as a longtime member of the Internet Ethics Advisory Council at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
Lydia is dual-qualified as an attorney in California and Madrid, Spain.
Golden Data Law | The de la Torre Review | LinkedIn
Privacy Law
Data Protection
Artificial Intelligence & AI Governance
California Privacy Law and Policy
EU Privacy, Data Protection and AI Law and Policy