Education

  • Santa Clara University, B.S. electrical engineering cum laude
  • Santa Clara University School of Law, J.D. High Technology Law certificate

Admissions

  • California
  • United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)

Christiana State, CIPP/US, CIPP/E

Senior Counsel
cstate@crowell.com
+1.415.365.7431

Christiana State is a senior counsel in Crowell & Moring’s San Francisco office and a member of the firm’s Corporate and Privacy & Cybersecurity groups. Christiana focuses her practice on counseling clients on technology and privacy matters. Christiana leverages a combination of in-house counsel experience and electrical engineering training to guide emerging technology companies through transformational growth stages. Christiana represents technology companies, from start-ups to multinational corporations, in various industry segments, such as: AI/ML, cloud services, biometrics, semiconductors and computing architectures, gaming, AR/VR, drones, and EV charging.

Christiana brings a pragmatic and business-focused approach to her representations. Prior to Crowell, she spent over a decade serving as in-house counsel for various technology companies in Silicon Valley. In those roles, Christiana led cross-functional teams while managing global technology and intellectual property deals, product launches and related regulatory matters, and intellectual property strategies.

Christiana is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she teaches a Privacy and Technology course. Christiana is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) for the U.S. private sector and Europe by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). She is also registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Christiana is a certified mediator.

Technology Transactions

Christiana advises on issues related to technology and commercial transactions, and M&A corporate activities. Christiana leads strategic transactions, such as joint development agreements, partnerships, research and development agreements, SaaS, marketing and advertising, supply chain, software and hardware licensing, data transfer agreements, and intellectual property licensing (including FRAND patent licensing).

Privacy and Product Counseling

In addition to her technology transactions practice, Christiana works with clients on identification of liability issues and implementing risk mitigation strategies throughout the development lifecycle and commercialization of various products and services. She is also experienced in providing counseling on privacy matters and has counselled clients on privacy by design, privacy compliance, and data rights, usage, and sharing. She also advises AI researchers on world-wide data collections and processing for training/validating machine learning models and user studies.


Affiliations

Professional Activities and Memberships

International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP)

  • CIPP/US: Certified Information Privacy Professional for the U.S. private sector
  • CIPP/E: Certified Information Privacy Professional for Europe

Certified mediator


Speeches & Presentations

  • "Global Privacy Policy Training," Crowell & Moring, Webinar, 2023. (March 24, 2023). Speakers: Christiana State, Maria Sokova, Sarah Rippy, Garylene (Gage) Javier, and Yung Shin Van Der Sype.
  • "The Essentials on Employee Data Privacy," Meru Data Webinar, 2023 (February 24, 2023). Speakers: Christiana State, Yung Shin Van Der Sype, Sarah Rippy, and Jacob Canter.
  • “IP Litigation, Patent, Trademark & Copyright: A Balanced Approach for 2023,” Global IP ConfEx, San Francisco, CA. (February 23, 2023). Speaker: Christiana State.
  • "GRC, Data Privacy & CyberSecurity," Global Legal ConfEx, San Francisco, CA. (November 17, 2022). Speaker: Christiana State.
  • "California’s Consumer Privacy Rights Act (CPRA): What Arizona Data Processors Need to Know," ARMA International, Phoenix, AZ. (September 15, 2022). Speaker: Christiana State
  • "The Intersection of Biometric Technology Privacy and Enforcement Actions," ACC Webinar, 2022. (August 24, 2022). Speakers: Jason Stiehl, Agustin D. Orozco, Gage Javier and Christiana State.
  • “IP and Privacy,” Global IP ConfEx San Francisco (February 2020). Panelist: Christiana State.
  • “Emerging Regulation of AI,” Managing Intellectual Property: International Women's Leadership Forum, San Mateo, CA (December 3, 2019). Panelist: Christiana State.
  • “Protecting Privacy,” Benchmark Litigation: Women in Litigation, Palo Alto Forum (July 1, 2019). Panelist: Christiana State.
  • “IP Defense and Prosecution Strategy 2020 and Beyond,” Managing IP - Innovation & Litigation Summit - San Francisco (June 1, 2019). Panelist: Christiana State.
  • “Building an International Employee Privacy Program,” DataGuidance and FieldFisher LLP Webinar (May 1, 2019). Panelist: Christiana State.
  • “Privacy for IP Practitioners,” Managing IP Women's Leadership Forum - Menlo Park, CA (December 1, 2018). Panelist: Christiana State.

Publications


Client Alerts & Newsletters


Press Coverage