Faces of Optery is a series highlighting the people behind Optery’s mission to help individuals, families, and businesses minimize exposed personal information online and reduce the risk of cyber and physical threats.
Protecting Consumers, Advancing Privacy: Meet Optery’s General Counsel
In this story, General Counsel and VP of Legal Ambar Chavez shares how more than a decade in consumer protection shaped her approach to privacy, what she enjoys about working at Optery, and how being “the calm in the storm” guides her approach to high-pressure situations.
For Ambar Chavez, protecting consumers has been a consistent thread throughout her career.
As General Counsel and VP of Legal at Optery, no two days look exactly alike. As the company’s in-house legal counsel, she works across employment matters, customer and vendor agreements, corporate governance, and regulatory issues. But the part she enjoys most is working with the product team.
A privacy attorney by training, Ambar says helping shape a product built around protecting people’s privacy online brings together many of the areas she has focused on throughout her career.
Before joining Optery, Ambar spent more than ten years in consumer protection prosecution, including about eight years with the federal government and several years as a local consumer protection prosecutor.
During that time, she saw identity theft, fraud, and scams from the consumer protection side of the equation. Those experiences, combined with her later work in privacy and product counseling, made Optery’s mission a natural fit.
“I’ve really been focused on product and privacy, and being able to protect people online,” she said. “It’s the core, and thread of a lot of what I’ve been working towards my entire career.”
One experience that has stood out since joining Optery has been interacting directly with data brokers when privacy rights requests became stalled.
She found it interesting that once she identified herself as Optery’s legal counsel, conversations often received a different level of attention. Being able to help move those requests forward and secure removals for customers has been one of the more rewarding moments of her time at the company.
Ambar’s expertise has also evolved alongside technology.
Much of her career has focused on the intersection of people, data, and emerging technology. Long before today’s generative AI tools, she was already working on issues involving machine learning, automation, and how technology uses personal data. She says her prosecutor’s perspective helps her identify what really gets people into trouble, prioritize real risks, and focus on what is important when helping consumers with their data.
That perspective carries into the way she approaches her work every day.
Her guiding principle is to “be the calm in the storm.”
Legal teams are often brought into situations that feel urgent or highly escalated. Ambar tries to help people understand why she is there, what to expect, and what comes next. Staying calm, she believes, helps everyone work through difficult situations more effectively.
Outside of work, Ambar enjoys puzzles and other activities that keep her mind engaged. She is currently working on a 1,000-piece puzzle of the Netherlands and also enjoys logic puzzles and coloring detailed sugar skull designs, which are part of her cultural heritage. As a kinesthetic learner, she often absorbs information best while doing something with her hands, so colleagues may occasionally find her coloring during meetings as she listens.
Her favorite privacy tip is one many people have never heard of.
If your email provider supports it, you can add a plus sign and identifier to your email address when signing up for services—for example, name+company@email.com. If messages later begin arriving at that address from unexpected senders, it becomes much easier to see where your information may have been shared.
When she is not working, Ambar enjoys spending time with her family, hiking with her Border Collie rescue, cooking, traveling, seeing live shows, and unplugging from technology for a while. She is also a fan of The Sandlot, enjoys books by Fredrik Backman, listens to artists including Ozomatli, Ziggy Marley, Trombone Shorty, and Lenny Kravitz, and counts Moana among her favorite characters.
Her favorite reminder is simple: “Tomorrow never actually gets here.” Although she is a planner who loves checklists, Ambar tries to stay present and “optimize for today,” because today is where we are at all times.