Our Story

It was mid-winter in central Massachusetts when Bob Siegel looked out his window and saw 27 inches of snow on the ground. His sons had all moved on to their own adult lives. All Bob could imagine was a future of winters shoveling snow on his own. Maybe it was time to move to a warmer climate.

In the early 2010s, Bob was managing the global privacy program at Staples. Bob reasoned that privacy requirements were becoming a critical legal requirement for successful businesses which is when the concept of Privacy Ref was born. Founded in 2012, Privacy Ref is focused on not only understanding the global regulatory requirements for protecting information, but also building effective privacy programs for emphasizing alignment of privacy practices with organizational and operational goals as well.

Bob put the snow behind him, he and his wife moving to Florida, and opening the Privacy Ref Offices. Initially Privacy Ref provided consulting and assessment service with our first engagement working as a subcontractor ASR Analytics to perform a privacy audit for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau within ARS’s Independent Performance Audit of CFPB Operations and Budget.

Later that year, Bob joined the IAPP’s educational training staff facilitating classes on their behalf for over 12 years as well as serving as a subject matter expert for many of their offerings. Privacy Ref soon became an Official Training Partner of the IAPP adding educational services to our portfolio and becoming the top attended OTP in North America.