The lawyer as innovation engine: Jeewon Kim Serrato ’04 leads Berkeley Law’s new Chief Privacy Officer Program
Publish Date: 2026-06-25 13:19:00
Source Domain: www.law.berkeley.edu
By Andrew Cohen
At every step in her career, Jeewon Kim Serrato ’04 has watched the future show up early — and rather than simply react to it, she’s worked to shape it. For 20 years as a lawyer, that meant mastering the rules: understanding what governs society and how businesses operate inside the most heavily regulated spaces.
Serrato (second from right) and Assistant Dean for Strategy, Innovation, and Education Eric Askins (right) talk with members of the first program cohort after their graduation event June 12. Photo by Anastasiia Sapon
In February, she left her position as partner and head of the consumer protection practice at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP to put that mastery to a different purpose. The pivot to leading Berkeley Law’s new Chief Privacy Officer Program, she notes, is not about leaving the law behind — it’s about bringing everything she has learned from it to build the future.
“Mastery is the license to innovate,” Serrato says. “Because I know the rules, I know what the future can look like when we bring change with intention. Lawyers can and should be the innovation engine for the future — now we can reimagine a different world by becoming creators and innovators.”
That conviction runs through everything she’s now building as the lead instructor for the Chief Privacy Officer Program, run through Berkeley Law’s Executive Education program, a training initiative for senior leaders in data strategy, innovation, governance, and risk management.
She has also co-founded Bear Financial, a startup launched with a former Meta Superintelligence Labs artificial intelligence/machine learning engineer to democratize financial planning for everyday families. And she started The K-University, a mastermind community that gives breakthrough founders the scaffolding and space to make pattern-breaking inevitable rather than accidental.
The common thread is intention. The future, Serrato argues, isn’t…
