Recently included as one of Europe's top 100 women in cybersecurity, Dr. Valerie Lyons is a highly experienced senior cybersecurity and privacy professional. Currently COO of BH Consulting (a data protection and cybersecurity firm based in Ireland), Valerie is also a subject matter expert in European data protection and privacy. She recently completed an award-winning PhD, researching organizational approaches to Information Privacy. She lectures on the topic of cybersecurity, privacy and ethics in several Irish academic institutions including Dublin City University.

She is also a regular speaker at both industry and academic conferences on cybersecurity and privacy. Her key motivation is to change the approach to privacy so that privacy is the baseline rather than the goal, and to bring an understanding of privacy that extends beyond legislative dimensions.