Management Team

Charles Jennings

Founder, Chief Executive Officer

Charles Jennings, named in 2005 as one of the 100 most influential people in government technology by Federal Computer Week, is a successful Internet entrepreneur, author and collation-builder.

In 1997, Charles co-founded TRUSTe, a non-profit organization that is currently the leader in Internet privacy assurance. He founded and was Chair of GeoTrust, a global leader in SSL and certificate authority technology acquired by VeriSign for $250 million in 2007; and was a founder of Preview Systems, which had a highly successful IPO in 1999.

Charles also served for four years as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at The Northwest Academy, a grade 6-12 arts and honors private school in Portland; and created Portland’s Connect & Protect public safety service, which was a finalist for Harvard’s Kennedy School Homeland Security Innovation of the Year Award in 2004.

Charles’ seminal book on Internet security and privacy, The 100th Window (Simon & Schuster, 2000), has been excerpted in national magazines and translated into four languages. He is also a frequent speaker who has presented at events ranging from the United Nations’ Human Rights conference in Toulouse, France, to the Jupiter Internet music conference in New York. In the 1980s, Charles was a film and television line producer. He worked on films around the world, including in China, Thailand and Hong Kong, for major studios (Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Disney, Orion, NBC Productions).