Dominique Shelton Leipzig

Practice Areas

Dominique Shelton Leipzig is a Chambers-ranked partner in Mayer Brown's Los Angeles office and a member of the Cybersecurity & Data Privacy practice. She leads the firm’s Ad Tech Privacy & Data Management team. She also serves as leader of the firm’s Global Data Innovation team and, in that role, Dominique advises CEOs and Board Members on their fiduciary duty of oversight as it relates to emerging digital and data technologies, including generative AI. She is one of the country’s top privacy, artificial intelligence and data lawyers and her considerable experience helps clients navigate the evolving legal compliance issues related to privacy, artificial intelligence and data security for their digital data initiatives. In her forthcoming book, Trust: Responsible AI and Data Leadership, Dominique has pioneered a step-by-step approach for successfully optimizing digital technology through responsible data stewardship.

Dominique has trained over 50,000 professionals in the area of data privacy, AI and data leadership. She is known for translating complex technical concepts into actionable information that leaders can use to establish effective governance and enjoy resilience in a fast-paced regulatory environment. Dominique shows non-technical executives how to achieve success with their data by following trusted AI/privacy/security legal frameworks and accelerating digital opportunities. She brings clarity to chaos by providing executives and general counsel with actionable information they can use to properly assess and mitigate enterprise risks like privacy and cyber, while moving ahead with smart innovation to optimize technological advances, like generative AI, at speed and scale.

By founding and leading the firm’s Global Data Innovation team Dominique has established the AM Law 50’s first-ever multidisciplinary group focused on data leadership. She also founded and established the first-ever day-long program on generative AI, privacy and cyber governance for CEOs and Board Members called the Digital Trust Summit. To get a sense of the importance of the event, see a video about the first Digital Trust Summit linked here. The 60+ CEOs called it “Davos-plus” in that the conversation stimulated the CEOs and Board Members to reimagine their oversight roles and data leadership.

In an environment with over 160 countries adopting data protection laws and 37 countries across six continents considering artificial intelligence laws, Dominique draws upon her decades of experience to spot trends by reviewing legislative developments globally and helping clients to issue spot and map to trends even before they become final laws. In this way, Dominique has focused on a strategy of leveraging global trends so companies can future-proof their investments in technology – by mapping, in advance, to trusted legal frameworks for privacy, data security and AI. In this respect, Dominique helps companies to look around corners and avoid costly digital blind-spots while leveraging technology in a way that is highly profitable. Dominique’s advice has also helped clients heighten goodwill and demonstrate data leadership in the areas of AI, privacy, security and data more broadly.

Dominique’s clients value the way she advises them years before headlines emerge of trends so they can avoid legal issues as they pursue digital strategies. Her method is thorough. She studies trends occurring globally so as to help clients shape a data strategy that not only addresses current news but looks to the future to address those down the line that are not yet generally discussed.

Dominique not only reads the privacy/data/AI/security laws, she is instrumental in shaping them. For example, in California, she represented the CEO of the CalChamber and led a 6-week negotiation with the proponents of the law (Alastair Mactaggart, Ashkan Soltani and Bob Hertzberg). Many of the business-friendly terms emerged from that negotiation. She is now on the front-lines as it relates to AI, meeting with governmental officials around the world in developing strategies for business.

Through her roles on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, a member of NASDAQ’s Advisory Council on Risk and Cybersecurity, and as a member of the Advisory Board for the AI Governance Center for IAPP, Dominique interacts with global business leaders, regulators, legislators to set the agenda for data leadership.

When she is not in the Boardroom, Dominique leads the firm’s Ad Tech Privacy & Data Management team – a group of Mayer Brown attorneys that provides strategic AI, privacy and cyber-preparedness compliance advice, and defends, counsels and represents companies on privacy, global data security, AI compliance, data breaches and investigations. Her experience includes defending companies under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, attorneys general offices and other global regulatory and governmental authorities. She advises companies on best practices in AI, privacy, cybersecurity, data, mobile, cloud storage, Ad Tech privacy, Internet of Things and other areas of regulatory compliance.

Dominique has deep experience advising publicly-traded and privately held companies in technology, healthcare, media, entertainment, e-commerce, financial services and other industries. She leads companies in legal assessments of AI, data security, cyber preparedness and compliance with such emerging regulatory trends as the draft AI laws in 37 countries spanning 6 continents, and domestically, California’s privacy laws including (California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, the California Age Appropriate Design Act, the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA)), as well as the numerous other states that have adopted privacy laws similar to the CCPA. She has a global practice that incorporates developments in privacy and AI in North America, EU, APAC and LATAM. With regard to the US, Dominique has advised clients on AI and privacy compliance, as well as Board-level oversight of same under emerging regimes like the SEC Cybersecurity Rule amendments, NY DFS Cybersecurity Rule amendments, FTC enforcement against CEOs and Board Members in data matters. She has advised clients on compliance with HIPAA, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the NIST AI/ Privacy and Cybersecurity Frameworks.

Dominique is the co-founder and co-CEO of NxtWork, a non-profit dedicated to diversifying the C-suite and the boardroom. She has received many accolades. She was recently named a “Legal Visionary” by the Los Angeles Times. In addition to her forthcoming Forbes book called Trust, her two other landmark books Transform and Implementing the CCPAi (2nd Ed), cover data leadership. In those books, Dominique pioneered the concept of data as a pre-tangible asset in what she calls “our post-data world.”

She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional by the IAPP. She is also certified in AI Governance. She has been certified in Board governance by the UCLA Andersen School of Business and the Berkeley Haas School of Business.