Zoom has named Cheree McAlpine its new chief legal officer as it continues to wade through the relatively unknown legal waters of artificial intelligence.
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The pressures of the job are further highlighted by the recent class action lawsuit that Zoom was caught up in over supposed security flaws relating to its encryption software. The video conferencing and collaboration platform ended up paying $150 million to settle.
According to Bloomberg, McAlpine is taking over from Aparna Bawa who was promoted to chief operating officer (COO) nearly four years ago and has been acting as the company’s interim legal chief ever since. Now, Bawa can focus purely on her role as the company’s COO.
Cheree McAlpine, Chief Legal Officer at Zoom, took to LinkedIn earlier this week to express her happiness with the new role: “I am thrilled to share that I have recently joined Zoom as its Chief Legal Officer.
“Zoom is revolutionising collaboration and shaping the future of work around the globe.
“I am thrilled to be a part of this innovative team and to lead its group of talented legal and compliance professionals.”
Who is McAlpine?
The new legal chief has racked up 25 years of experience in the technology industry.
McAlpine came to Zoom from Intercom Inc., where she was interred as general counsel for the software startup since 2021.
Before this, she was the number one lawyer at the lighting solutions provider Lumileds Holding BV. Lumileds was acquired by Apollo Global Management in 2017, five years before going bankrupt in 2022. McAlpine had exited the company in August of the previous year.
Prior to this, McAlpine worked for nearly four years at the global leader of electronic components and services Avnet, where she was the vice president and general counsel of the Americas.
She held a similar title at Wyse, which she worked at for seven years, including managing its $1 billion sale to Dell in 2012.
Between 1997 and 2005, McAlpine worked at the American technology company Sun Microsystems, which eventually went bust in 2010 despite Oracle completing its acquisition of the company in January of the same year.
‘An Exciting Time’
The financial news provider Bloomberg quoted an email McAlpine had written about her move to Zoom: “Zoom is revolutionising collaboration and shaping how the world works.
“It’s an exciting time to join and lead the legal and compliance team.”
Perhaps McAlpine views this as an ‘exciting time’ to be heading Zoom’s legal team, but many might reasonably see this as a daunting time as the company is continually testing the boundaries of what is both legal and ethical, which are still being mapped out as one unprecedented situation leads to another.
Its data sharing practices were recently under fire from consumer advocates as users were reportedly finding it difficult to opt out of various AI tools like automated meeting summaries and there were concerns that their data would be used by Zoom to improve its AI services.
Zoom attempted to placate these fears by reassuring users that their audio, video and any other customer content would not be used to train its AI tools.
The same could also be said of major rivals like Microsoft and Google which also have their fingers in the AI pie.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department were debating which agency should investigate Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI. The discussions arose from questions as to where OpenAI has been acquiring content to train its AI models.
The fact that so many employees in Zoom’s legal department have fallen by the wayside in recent years may also be seen as cause for concern. Two associate general counsels, Mara Davis and William Mullee, left the company earlier this year, for example.
Whether you regard the legal minefield associated with AI as exciting or worrying, it is certainly an incredibly important space to watch over the coming years.
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