Over the past decade, OneTrust has transformed from a promising startup into a globally recognized powerhouse in privacy management and AI governance technology.
Last month, the company ushered in a new leadership era by appointing John Heyman — the former CEO of Radiant Systems and Snap One — as its chief executive officer. Heyman takes over from OneTrust founder Kabir Barday, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, FIP, who will remain involved as a board member and advisor.
In an exclusive interview with the IAPP, Heyman highlighted how the global push to embed AI into business operations is “presenting an enormous opportunity” for OneTrust customers adopting agentic systems. As organizations deploy growing numbers of AI agents, they will need sophisticated platforms to monitor their activities and ensure full regulatory compliance.
“They’re going to have hundreds and then thousands of agents working all the time, and that’s going to create big opportunities, but also bigger risks than they’ve ever seen before,” Heyman said. “OneTrust is in the best position to enable them to drive innovation in their businesses by delivering systems that let them trust the data and technology in their enterprises.”
Heyman, who most recently served as a partner at StellarIQ, expressed strong enthusiasm about joining OneTrust at this critical moment. As he gets up to speed with the company’s solutions, OneTrust plans to expand its AI governance capabilities — which Heyman described as “building the agents that are going to watch the agents.”
While many companies are still in the initial stages of cataloging their AI inventory, Heyman predicted that the explosion of AI agents will quickly create demand for much more advanced governance tools. These tools will move beyond simple inventories to provide autonomous monitoring and oversight.
“AI governance is in its infancy. If this was a baseball game, we just finished the middle of the first inning,” Heyman said. “We’re going to go from the middle of first to the seventh inning stretch very quickly and we’ve got to prepare our customers for it. Companies will need to understand what data is being collected by their agents, how that data is being shared and making sure it stays within the four walls of their enterprise.”
In a statement, outgoing CEO Barday praised Heyman’s “proven track record of innovation, customer obsession, and (a) deep experience growing (business-to-business) technology companies” during what he called a “pivotal time” for the company and the technology sector.
“Growing adoption of AI across organizations has led to massive demand for OneTrust solutions that help enable the responsible use of data and AI,” Barday said. “This is a pivotal time to bring on a new CEO who can harness this momentum and drive OneTrust’s next chapter of growth.”
Nearly a month into the role, Heyman described himself as a “lifelong learner” and credited Barday for becoming a strong partner during the transition.
“The thing I love about OneTrust is the domain skills of our people who understand the technology, and our customer needs inside and out,” Heyman said. “He knows more in the tip of his finger than I’ll know in my entire career here, so a partnership with him is really important.”
