Liz MacPherson joined the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in April 2020 as Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Policy and Operations. Liz was appointed to the statutory Deputy Commissioner role in November 2021 and in this capacity acted as Privacy Commissioner from 1 January - 4 July 2022 until the appointment of Michael Webster.
Liz has had a extensive public service career spanning over 30 years including policy, operations, regulatory, strategy and corporate governance roles. Liz held a number of Deputy Chief Executive positions at the Ministry of Economic Development and MBIE before being appointed to the position of Government Statistician in 2013 and later Government Chief Data Steward. Liz leads the Office’s Policy, Compliance and Enforcement and Investigations and Dispute Resolution teams.
With an original legal background from South Africa, and after requalifying here as a solicitor, Sue has worked in New Zealand for the past 13 years in regulatory compliance in the financial services sector and for six of those specialising in privacy compliance in particular. Her work experience spans all of the big four banks, being the current ANZ Privacy and Data Protection Senior Manager. Her primary privacy focus with the banks has always been to uplift existing privacy frameworks to evidence sustainable privacy compliance with both the NZ Privacy Act and any applicable GDPR regulation. Prior to that she worked on the deployment of various international and national compliance frameworks and change initiatives.