Sharing Knowledge

Building Resilience

Demonstrating Trust

We bring expertise in privacy standards and expectations, applied to your organization's unique product, service, and clients, to help you build a resilient, trustworthy brand in a complex and evolving world.

We work across your organization to build training, risk assessments tuned to your public profile, and processes your organization can sustain on its own.

We help you build a privacy practice that fits how you work, builds accountability, and reflects the trust your community places in you.

When it comes to privacy and data protection, the public remembers your mistakes far longer than your successes.

Small to mid-size businesses

Small to mid-size businesses in the Seattle region can demonstrate a competitive advantage by building a brand that stands for trust. We help build voice of the customer insights, data privacy standards, and training without enterprise overhead.

Nonprofit Organizations

Nonprofits have all the security and data privacy challenges that the commercial sector has, along with a mandate to direct their limited resources towards delivering on primary mission. The effective use of data is a key enabler for non profits but creates security and data privacy risks.

Vendors handling sensitive data

Vendors and Contractors handle sensitive data (ie, CJIS, HIPAA) and need to demonstrate secure and reliable data handling practices, including specialized review and training, to retain contracts.

Security controls and technology aren't enough to protect organizations from data breaches - in fact, most breaches involve human error. Instead, we promote a unified human-centered risk management strategy that connects behavior insights with technical controls.

Behind every record is a person. We help you treat them that way.

Our belief

Who we serve

Our approach

Most data privacy consultations focus on deliverable artifacts that describe what is supposed to happen, but fail to close the gap between written policy and behavior in practice. Most data breaches involve human error or oversight.

We help small to mid-size businesses and nonprofits align technology-focused controls and governance frameworks with people-focused initiatives. Our approach is right-sized to your business needs, but may include:

Risk and Exposure Assessments

Community specific threat modeling for organizations serving vulnerable or surveilled populations, where ordinary data practices carry increased sensitivity and consideration.

Data Mapping

Data inventory in plain language. Process maps that analyze where your data originates, how it is stored/protected, and how it supports your goals, processes, and/or mission.

Policy and Program Development

Privacy policies, internal procedures, vendor management frameworks, incident response plans, and the operational backbone of a working privacy program.

Training and Education

Staff training, board briefings, and role-specific guidance that turns policies into standard operating practices.

Specialized Compliance Support

Translating compliance to NIST, CJIS, and My Health My Data Act guidelines into credible, ongoing assurance for government and regulated entities.

Fractional Privacy Officer

Ongoing advisory for organizations that need privacy leadership without a full time hire.

Who we are

Alex Rowley is the Founder and CEO of Eelgrass Consulting, which delivers human-centered data privacy strategy and compliance. Data privacy is a complex and evolving challenge that requires a systems perspective and the ability to translate technical information across a wide range of audiences.

A Certified Information Privacy Professional, Alex brings fifteen years of experience in product management, quality evaluation, escalation management and change management across diverse sectors, including domain expertise working with operational data flows through complex enterprise systems at scale, API protocols and standards, and identity, authentication, and governmental frameworks that shape regulatory compliance.

Just like data privacy, eelgrass (zostera marina) is the foundation of a healthy ecosystem. In the Puget Sound area of the Salish Sea, eelgrass beds stabilize soil, improve water quality, and serve as a nursery for juvenile fish and animals. They grow in a unique underground network of rhizomes (roots) that can extend for up to a mile underground.

What's the meaning behind our name?

The materials available on this web site are for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice.
Eelgrass Consulting, LLC is not a law firm. If you need legal advice, please contact an attorney who is competent to provide
appropriate legal advice with respect to your specific problem. The ideas or opinions expressed on this website are the
opinions of the specified author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the company.