Born and raised in Spain, Lydia F. de la Torre is a dual-licensed attorney (Madrid Bar and California Bar.). She is a privacy expert and influential commentator on data privacy and protection at the local and state level who currently serves as a Board Member at the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA.) Lydia is the founding Partner of Golden Data Law and teaches comparative privacy law at UC Hastings.

Lydia started her career working for the large Spanish law firm Garrigues where she specialized in new technologies and data protection. After moving to the US, she passed the California bar and obtained an L.L.M. at Santa Clara University School of Law. After graduation she gained valuable experience working in the privacy law departments at both eBay and PayPal. Lydia returned to Santa Clara to serve as the inaugural privacy fellow in 2017, where she had an opportunity to co-direct the Law School privacy certificate program.

More recently, Lydia was of counsel at Squire Patton Boggs. providing strategic privacy compliance advice related to US and EU privacy, including data protection and cybersecurity law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), other states’ privacy and cyber laws, US financial privacy laws, and marketing and advertising compliance, as well as information security.

After her appointment as a Board Member to CPPA, Lydia founded Golden Data Law,  a mission driven benefit corporation that provides legal services to the nonprofit/not-for-profit community.

Lydia is a frequently invited to speak on privacy-related topics, such as the freedom of speech implications of privacy laws, ethics and privacy, the application of privacy laws to blockchain technology, financial privacy laws and the CCPA. Lydia is a prolific writer and has been published in a variety of outlets, from mainstream media to privacy and legal publications. She is the co-editor of Golden Data, a Medium publication focused on data laws. Lydia also teaches advanced courses in privacy law.