J Cromack
J has been at the forefront of data ethics and privacy since 2014 when he co-founded MyLife Digital. He had a vision that people should have greater control and self-empowerment over the use of their data to benefit society and future commerce. In 2020, J was nominated by his industry peers for the DataIQ Privacy & Trust Champion which he was honoured to win. J oversaw the successful sale of MyLife Digital to DataGuard, a PrivTech based in Munich, Germany in April 2021.
Having been a data practitioner for over 25 years J recognised that if people no longer trust brands and organisations with their data, marketers will face significant challenges and consumers wouldn’t receive the personalised experiences they desire, as data sharing would be significantly hindered.
J has recently invested in The Salocin Group and supported Nick Dixon in his acquisition of Edit, a data and tech consultancy, from Kin + Carta. In February 2022 he joined The Salocin Group and Edit as Chief Growth Officer. A core part of his remit is redefining Edit’s approach to supporting its clients to ‘optimise customer connections by supercharging first-party data in an ethical and privacy-first way’.
Over the last year J has developed five new key principles to help Edit’s clients embed privacy within the customer journey to ensure data remains accurate, insightful and marketable as well as build trust with the consumer, something he calls #ThePrivacyDividend. These five principles are based on the work he supported as a founding member of the MyData Global movement, a not-for-profit organisation based in Helsinki.
These principles are now being rolled out to the Editors via training sessions and J has also delivered several keynote presentations to major brands on how they can generate a privacy dividend by applying a human-centric and decentralised approach to data privacy.