Michele Whitham is an established employment and privacy lawyer, community leader and Partner in the Boston office of Locke Lord LLP. She is a member of the Firm-wide privacy & cybersecurity and labor & employment practice groups. She is a former Co-Managing Partner of Foley Hoag LLP and a well-known lawyer who has been recognized nationally for her accomplishments. Among her areas of practice is a particular focus on workplace and corporate data security and privacy. She has served as charter outside counsel to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Advanced Cyber Security Center (ACSC), including to the ACSC Board.
Based on her experience in litigating and advising on data theft, systems breach and cyber-attack cases dating back to 2005, Michele founded and co-chaired Foley Hoag's Security and Privacy Practice Group. She is a frequent speaker, locally and nationally, on these topics, including presenting programs on “Cyber Threats for Lawyers” and “Data Breach Prevention Response” and “What Employers Need to Know in 2016.”
Her many accolades include recently being listed in The Best Lawyers in America® for Employment Law – Management, co-leading the launch of the inaugural Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts' Women's Leadership Initiative, and being named one of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly's Top Women in the Law. She was a Director of the global law consortium Lex Mundi through mid-2015, and served as Counsel to the MITRE Advanced Cyber Security Center and a member of its Steering and Policy Committees from its founding in 2011.
Michele is a 2015-2016 Inductee into the National Association of Professional Women and the Association’s VIP Woman of the Year Circle; a director of the Partnership Inc. (promoting diversity in management ranks); a member of the Administration and Audit Committee and chair of the Compensation Committee of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board ("PRIM"); and a Trustee and member the Executive, Audit and Administration, and Trusteeship Committees of the Wentworth Institute of Technology. She is a long-time member of the Massachusetts Women’s Forum (and its global parent organization, the International Women’s Forum), MWF’s immediate Past President and, for several years before that, its Treasurer. In addition, she is a member of the President’s Council of Cornell Women.
