About

I’m Chris Hockey. I’m Senior Manager, Information Governance at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where I’m responsible for operationalizing the firm’s information governance and records policies: building the governance structures and operating procedures that turn policy into daily practice. A large part of the work is standing up data governance — data dictionary, data mapping, data lineage — and upgrading the technology the IG program runs on. I treat that work as the groundwork for AI governance: you can’t govern AI responsibly on top of information you don’t already govern.

Before this, I spent fifteen years in higher education, the registrar role among them, before deciding I needed a change of industry. Moving into legal as Director of Information Governance and Management at Bond, Schoeneck & King was a genuine pivot: a new sector with its own learning curve, and the point where I formalized my IG training and earned my Information Governance Professional certification. The role was new to the firm, so I built the program from the ground up: policies, procedures, staffing, and technology. From there I moved into consulting, advising Fortune 500 financial-services and large healthcare organizations on information and AI governance, first at Alvarez & Marsal and then at Triad Executive Advisors.

Certifications

IGP — Information Governance Professional (ARMA International)
AIGP — Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional (IAPP)
CIPP/US — Certified Information Privacy Professional/US (IAPP)

How I got here

I came to information governance sideways, through a federal grant at SUNY system administration. The project was reverse transfer: find students who had left a community college without a degree, earned credits elsewhere, and pull those credits back so the original college could retroactively award the associate’s they had actually earned. Simple in theory. In practice it meant reconciling student data across 64 campuses. Most ran one of a few standard systems — Banner, Colleague, a handful homegrown — but years of campus-by-campus customization meant software built to interoperate often wouldn’t, and getting records to move between institutions was the real work. What pulled me in wasn’t the data. It was the registrars who governed it. When the grant ended, I went and became one: running the student information system, transcripts, and records at a community college, where I saw how completely information runs through everything an organization does.

Outside work

I live in Syracuse, New York, with my wife, two daughters, and three dogs. I read constantly but rarely finish a book — my attention jumps to the next subject before I close out the last — though I always finish what I cook, usually my mom’s old recipes.

Now (updated June 2026)

This quarter is almost entirely the Gibson Dunn build-out: turning information governance and records policy into a working program, and standing up data governance nearly from scratch. Away from that, I’m trying to finish The Alter Ego Effect — partly for the ideas, partly to get my health on track. What I’m least settled on right now isn’t professional: it’s what AI does to the generation my daughters are growing into. It isn’t going anywhere, yet the graduates I watched cross the stage this spring seem to want nothing to do with it, even though they’re the ones who’ll have to compete with it. I’m not sure whether that’s wisdom or avoidance.

christopher.l.hockey@gmail.com

Views are my own and not those of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.