28. European CEO of the Year Awards 2026 This demonstrates just how involved Andreas is in running Prighter and the development of its initiatives, and this extends to its culture. The intercultural, interdisciplinary, peoplecentred culture the company has is partly a response to the distaste its CEO has for the hierarchical environments he experienced in the legal industry. Prighter stays aligned with its mission and vision by working in this interdisciplinary fashion every day, seen through its legal, compliance, and technical teams solving problems together. Some challenges do arise with this however, especially since these multidisciplinary teams are spread throughout the world, from Vienna to London, Dublin, and across Asia. Andreas is refining how he coordinates this as the company grows, alongside ensuring that Prighter continues to work towards its mission of giving clients easy access to compliance. To achieve the latter, the company is continuing to develop its platform, and build a multifaceted team whose expertise allows them to keep up with regulation that is not slowing down. Reflecting on these next steps, Andreas told us: “In many ways, the challenges ahead are what make this work worth doing. As AI, digital compliance, and privacy frameworks continue to develop, organisations will need partners who can keep up with the changes and turn them into practical solutions. We intend to keep being that partner.” This proactive approach to the future is one of the many reasons why we are pleased to recognise Prighter as the Best Global Privacy Representation Platform 2026 as we bestow Andreas with his title of Most Innovative Privacy Software & Services CEO 2026. More on Prighter and its CEO can be found at the web address linked down below. Contact: Andreas Maetzler Company: Prighter Web Address: https://prighter.com/ Jul22575 Privacy, AI, and digital compliance regulations, such as GDPR Article 27, UK GDPR, and the EU AI Act, all over the world are in a state of overhaul, becoming more complex and carrying bigger consequences by the day. Now, they are changing how organisations enter new markets, grow their products, and handle data. Prighter, a Vienna-based company with offices and partners worldwide, brings all of these requirements together in one integrated approach for its clients. Following a double win at the European CEO of the Year Awards 2026, Founder and CEO Andreas Maetzler explains how Prighter is making global compliance simpler. Prighter, founded in 2018 by Andreas Maetzler, is a Vienna-based privacy compliance company providing GDPR representative services and a modular privacy compliance SaaS platform. The idea behind the company’s approach to its services is simple: innovating globally depends on trust, and trust depends on compliance that is clear, scalable, and reliable. On the back of this, Prighter exists to make complex regulatory obligations manageable, helping organisations operate confidently across borders. Andreas Maetzler is the founder and CEO of Prighter, a position he came to occupy as a result of a deliberate choice not to follow the conventional path. An attorney at law, Andreas has worked in regional law firms and the innovation and digital sales department of a bank. He was fascinated by building and scaling, and this led him to look for ways to apply his legal expertise in data protection and digital compliance for building legal products. That answer came in 2018, when GDPR was about to come into force. Andreas noticed that, as a result of this, companies outside of Europe were starting to shut down their European presences. Newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post suddenly became unavailable, and the website to buy tickets for the Australian Open could not be accessed. What had happened was that regulation became a barrier that scared businesses away from providing services in Europe. Prighter was created to remove all of these barriers. Putting its clients first, Prighter provides its global privacy representation and regulatory support in multiple jurisdictions, helping organisations to meet local requirements and be sure they have got it right. Across the four legal areas it covers – legal precision with scalable technology, compliance that adapts, operational efficiency, and transparency and assurance – the company is rigorous in both its security and compliance. It regularly reviews its controls and updates them as regulations and industry practices develop. Currently, its focus is on deepening the software side of the business, especially the modular SaaS platform for which the company has been recognised with an award in this programme. The platform automates the operational side of privacy work, such as breach response and audit documentation, and Prighter plans to extend this further. To do this, it has established two product pipelines, one of which is legal product development. Andreas’ role is to evolve the product vision for this pipeline team. Andreas Maetzler Named Most Innovative Privacy Software & Services CEO 2026 as Prighter Wins Best Global Privacy Representation Platform 2026
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