CHRIS KELLY
Chris Kelly is a Silicon Valley attorney with a long track record of representing innovative companies and making the Internet a safer place for kids and adults alike.
As the first Chief Privacy Officer, General Counsel, and Head of Global Public Policy for Facebook, Chris helped the company grow from its college roots to the ubiquitous communications medium that it is today. His development of the site’s safety and security policies around real world identity and deployment of a highly-trained staff for rule and law enforcement are credited as critical elements in the company’s success.
At Facebook, Chris worked with Attorneys General in all 50 states to develop safeguards protecting children from sexual predators and represented the company in complex situations involving privacy and intellectual property in the digital age.
Chris left Facebook in 2009 to seek the Democratic nomination for Attorney General of California, garnering 16 percent of the vote in a seven-way race, his first run for statewide office. Since the June 2010 primary, he has become an active angel investor in companies seeking transformational improvements in technology, media, and finance.
As a policy advisor for President Clinton in the early 1990s, Chris advanced critical domestic programs, including the successful initiative to put 100,000 new community police officers on America’s streets and the formation of AmeriCorps, a network of national service programs that engage Americans to improve education, public safety, health, and the environment.
As an attorney in private practice before his time at Facebook, Chris represented Netscape in the Microsoft antitrust case and Diamond Multimedia in the groundbreaking suit over the MP3 player that furthered personal use rights over digital content.
Chris received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University, a master’s degree from Yale University, and his law degree from Harvard University. Raised in Santa Ana and San Jose, he lives in Atherton with his wife Jennifer, an entrepreneur and former prosecutor, their son Aidan and daughter August. Chris also serves on the Board of Directors for the San Francisco 49ers Academy, an alternative public middle school in East Palo Alto.
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