Federal Trade Commission Veteran Maneesha Mithal Joins as Partner at D.C.-based Law Firm Wilson Sonsini

Indian American Maneesha Mithal, most recently associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy and identity protection unit, has been hired as a partner by Wilson Sonsini law firm. Silicon Valley-founded Wilson Sonsini is known for advising clients in the technology and life sciences sectors.

An internationally recognized expert on privacy and data security, Mithal joins as a Washington, D.C.-based partner in the firm’s privacy and cybersecurity practice. She spent over 20 years at the Federal Trade Commission, where she led privacy policy reform and enforcement in emerging technology industries. She served in the FTC’s International Consumer Protection Division, where she worked on European privacy issues and was a U.S. delegate to the privacy committees of the OECD and APEC, and held various roles in the Bureau of Consumer Protection’s International Division.

In her FTC profile, Mithal says she came to the FTC in 1999, “after spending four years as an associate at a big law firm.” She states “after spending so much time reviewing documents, I was thrilled to join the FTC’s international program in the Bureau of Consumer Protection. Noting that her “first project was to develop a rule on the privacy of personal health records,” she added that she “loved working on the intersection of health, privacy, and administrative procedure concerns.” 

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As associate director of the division, she wrote how with “a world-class staff of dedicated, smart, creative, and productive professionals,” they have “settled cases against companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Lifelock, Equifax, HTC, and Snapchat,” and “delved into the privacy implications of new technologies like facial recognition, the Internet of Things, and mobile device tracking.”