Privacy Law Introduction, Theory, and Fundamentals

Marcela Mendez is a privacy expert with over twenty years of corporate legal experience at Qualcomm Incorporated. In addition to serving as in-house, privacy counsel during her last six years at Qualcomm, Marcela is a corporate legal veteran having served as lead counsel for various business units domestically and internationally.

Marcela is currently adjunct professor at California Western School of Law where she teaches Privacy Law. As privacy counsel she was responsible for working in the creation and execution of Qualcomm’s global privacy program. Her practice included development and enhancement of privacy features in Qualcomm’s products and services; implementation of systems and policies for the processing of employee data worldwide; and management of all international privacy compliance efforts. Marcela oversaw the company’s global privacy training program and was a lecturer of critical training sessions for employees of different backgrounds (including HR, engineers, lawyers, payroll, procurement). In addition to her internal responsibilities, Marcela started the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ (IAPP) chapter in San Diego and co-chaired it for two years (2016-17).

Trained both in common law and civil law, Marcela has been a member of the California bar since 1997. She attended Georgetown University Law Center as a Fulbright Scholar, where she received an LLM in international trade. She has a J.D. degree from the Universidad de Costa Rica School of Law and worked in private practice serving a variety of corporate clients.

Prior to joining Qualcomm, Marcela was appointed by the Costa Rican government as Counselor to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland from 1994 to 1996.