Rob Leathern

Founder and CEO

2025

We are experienced product and engineering people who co-found and fund companies working on trust, identity, privacy and safety.

Board Member

2025

CollectiveMetrics tracks meaningful indicators of online trust, privacy and safety. Our mission is to transform complex data into free and accessible insights, empowering global communities to understand and improve the systems that shape their lives.

Advisory Board Member

2025

Affiliate

2024

Affiliate at The Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School. The Center’s mission is to explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.

Founder

2023 - 2025

Trust2 provides strategic advice on product management across ads & monetization, AI, privacy, trust and identity. Clients include large companies and startups alike.

Investor, Advisor, Mentor, Board Member

2005 - 2025

Investor in or advisor to various startups, funds, or limited partnerships including Centigrade, NotCommon, Climate Draft, V1.VC, Teambuilder Ventures, Fakespot, Anonym, Abovo, Handipoints (acquired by Slide/Google), Spartan Beverages, Inadco, Alt12 Apps (acquired by The Honest Company), Chintano and others. Board member of Brand Networks after my startup's acquisition, and board member of 300 Days (a 501c3).

Vice President of Product Management

2021 - 2023

I led the product team for the company's Privacy and Data Protection Office and worked closely with engineering, legal, regulatory, design and product teams across the company on privacy and security issues - including Ads, Search, YouTube, Android/Play, DeepMind, Brain, Cloud/Workspace, etc.

Senior Director of Product Management

2017 - 2020

Helped start Business Integrity as its own organization at Facebook, splitting from the Ads Delivery team within the Ads and Business Platform/Products group. Grew the PM team from 3 to >40 and co-led our pillar as part of the Ads Leadership team. We worked to enforce ads and business policies across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other Facebook products. Business Integrity prevents abuse and removes bad actors from the platform, and provides ads- and data transparency tools and controls. I have frequently engaged with regulators, media and the public to provide context on these policies and programs.

Mentor

2014 - 2017

Founder and CEO

2015 - 2017

Optimal.com made tools to help ​people filter advertising while still paying content creators. I was acqui-hired by Facebook and we sold the DNS and web proxy technology we had built to Sovrn; two of my co-founders joined Sovrn as part of the deal.