Reijo Aarnio has been serving as the Data Protection Ombudsman of Finland since 1 November 1997. The Data Protection Ombudsman is appointed by the government. Reijo Aarnio (born 1955) graduated from the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Law in 1981. He then worked at several expert and managerial tasks in the private sector. He aided the committee drafting the Personal Data Act in an expert capacity.

Alessandro Mantelero is Associate Professor of Private Law at the Polytechnic University of Turin. He is Council of Europe rapporteur on Artificial Intelligence and data protection. In 2016, he was appointed expert consultant by the Council of Europe to draft the Guidelines on personal data in a world of Big Data (2017). He is member of the IPEN-Internet Privacy Engineering Network (EDPS) and has served as an expert on data regulation for the UN–ILO, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, the UN-OHCHR, the European Commission, the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy, the Italian Ministry of Justice and the Italian Communications Authority.

Sophie Kwasny is the Head of the Data Protection Unit of the Council of Europe and is responsible for standard-setting (notably the modernisation exercise of Convention 108) and policy on data protection and privacy, including with regard to new technologies and the Internet. She is a graduate of the Strasbourg Law University and has been working for the Council of Europe for over 20 years on a variety of topics ranging from prisons’ reforms to medical insurance, or from the independence of the judiciary to nationality law.