Our Founders

Christina Catenacci, BA, LLB, LLM, PhD

Christina Catenacci is a member of the Law Society of Ontario. Christina worked as an editor with First Reference between 2005 and 2015 working on publications including The Human Resources Advisor (Ontario, Western and Atlantic editions), HRinfodesk, and First Reference Talks blog discussing topics in Canadian Labour and Employment Law. She continues to contribute to First Reference Talks as a regular guest blogger, where she writes on surveillance technologies, AI, and privacy law, policy, and ethics.

Since graduating with her PhD in law (with specialties in Privacy law and Employment law), Christina has worked as a law professor, senior policy advisor, and self-employed consultant. Christina has also appeared in the Montreal AI Ethics Institute's AI Brief, International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Privacy Advisor, Tech Policy Press, and Slaw - Canada's online legal magazine. Christina is a driven, organized, and resilient thinker and lifelong learner who works at the intersection of technology, privacy, surveillance, and ethics to work with organizations to design creative solutions to their challenges—with integrity, enthusiasm, and passion. 

She has extensive knowledge of the privacy laws of three main jurisdictions—Canada, the United States, and the European Union. She also has significant knowledge and experience in the labour and employment laws of all jurisdictions in Canada. She has considered the privacy implications of cutting edge surveillance technologies involving the consumer, employment, and health contexts. In her PhD dissertation, Christina created a comparative socio-legal analysis where she synthesized privacy legislative provisions, privacy cases, and social theories of privacy and surveillance to propose new provisions in Canada’s federal privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).  In particular, she proposed closing the electronic surveillance gap with novel legislative data protection provisions by modifying and adding provisions to PIPEDA. Christina has a friendly and collaborative personality, strong work ethic, and strong organizational and analytical skills.

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Christina has extensive education and experience in each of the three pillars of voyAIge strategy. First, she has a law degree at the PhD level with two specialties (Employment and Privacy Law) and she has been a law professor for a number of years. Christina has also worked as a legal editor for about 20 years. Second, Christina has created a PhD dissertation in legislative privacy policy and has worked as a senior policy advisor with the Government of Ontario. And third, Christina took a large concentration of philosophy and ethics courses when earning her first degree, and excelled in her legal philosophy course when earning her PhD. She continues to have a strong interest in philosophy, including technology ethics. Finally, Christina has taught legal ethics, where the program focused on the Ontario Law Society’s Rules of Professional Conduct. 

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She likes to learn about the art of public speaking, organize and present at conferences, and creatively combine ideas in interdisciplinary ways. In fact, Christina was a finalist in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition, where she competed against students in the entire University of Western Ontario, and has since been the only law student from Western Law to reach this stage. Christina is interested in Design Thinking and finding innovative solutions to wicked problems. Furthermore, Christina likes to engage with thought leaders and ask critical questions about the implications of technology.