Rachel Nyswander Thomas is Chief Operating Officer of TAG, the leading global initiative fighting criminal activity and increasing trust in the digital advertising industry. She oversees TAG’s work in setting industry standards, facilitating the sharing of threat intelligence, and promoting brand safety, and enabling transparency – as well as its business operations. She serves concurrently as Chairwoman of the Brand Safety Institute’s Board of Advisors and as an Executive in Residence at Progress Partners.
Rachel has spent her career studying, creating, and implementing digital policy in the business, non-profit, and academic sectors. Prior to joining TAG, she served as Vice President of Advocacy & Accountability and Executive Director of the Data-Driven Marketing Institute at the Data & Marketing Association (now ANA). In those roles, she advocated before Congress and federal agencies on behalf of thousands of businesses and nonprofits and facilitating academic research on how the use of consumer data shapes industry, society, and the economy.
Before joining DMA, Rachel led data privacy compliance for The McGraw-Hill Companies, auditing worldwide publishing operations and managing a global corps of 80 Privacy Officials in more than 40 countries.
Rachel earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a Master of Policy Management from Georgetown University. She is a Certified International Privacy Professional and was among the first in the advertising industry to become a Certified Brand Safety Officer. Her scholarship on cybersecurity public-private partnerships has been published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Thomson Reuters Press.
