Chris Pierson

Founder & CEO BlackCloak

Last Reviewed: September 25, 2026

Executive Summary

Dr. Chris Pierson is the founder and chief executive of BlackCloak, a Florida company that protects the personal digital lives of corporate executives, board members, high-net-worth individuals and family offices. BlackCloak calls this category Digital Executive Protection. It rests on the view that attackers who cannot get through a corporate network will go after the executives who run it, at home, on their personal devices and through their families. Pierson came to that view from about 25 years in privacy and security roles. He ran US privacy for Royal Bank of Scotland, was CISO at two fintechs, and started as a lawyer representing companies that had been breached. He founded BlackCloak in 2018. It closed a $17 million Series B led by Baird Capital in 2024 and appeared on the Inc. 5000 in both 2025 and 2026.

Career Highlights

• Founder and CEO of BlackCloak, and a member of its board of directors.
• Raised a $17 million Series B in 2024, led by Baird Capital with Blue Heron Capital, TDF Ventures and TechOperators, taking total equity financing past $30 million.
• BlackCloak was named to the 2025 Inc. 5000 at No. 1,261 overall and No. 25 in Security, reporting three-year revenue growth of nearly 350%, and returned to the list in 2026.
• Chief Privacy Officer for Royal Bank of Scotland, leading its US privacy and data protection program.
• Founding executive of Viewpost, the fintech payments company, as its CISO and General Counsel.
• Established the CyberSecurity Practice at the law firm Lewis and Roca, representing companies that had been hacked or suffered data breaches.
• Served for more than a decade on the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee, and was President of the FBI’s Arizona InfraGard.
• Distinguished Fellow of the Ponemon Institute.

Professional Journey

Pierson began his career as a corporate attorney at Lewis and Roca, where he set up the firm’s CyberSecurity Practice to represent companies that had been hacked or had suffered data breaches. That starting point shows in his later work: he came to security through the legal and regulatory consequences of breaches rather than through engineering.

He then held security and privacy leadership roles in financial services. He was Chief Privacy Officer for Royal Bank of Scotland, leading its US privacy and data protection program, and served as chief information security officer at two fintech companies. One was Viewpost, a payments company where he was a founding executive and held the CISO and General Counsel roles together. Alongside these jobs he served for more than a decade on the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Committee and its Cybersecurity Subcommittee, was President of the FBI’s Arizona InfraGard, and became a Distinguished Fellow of the Ponemon Institute.

BlackCloak came out of a gap he saw between enterprise security teams and the people they were meant to protect. Companies spent heavily on securing their networks. The home networks, personal phones and family accounts of their senior executives were unprotected and outside the security team’s remit. Pierson founded BlackCloak in 2018 to close that gap. Its platform combines mobile and desktop apps with concierge support, protects clients’ devices against social engineering, cyber-extortion and doxxing, and includes executive threat intelligence and incident response. Companies pay for the service so that their executives are protected without the employer having to look into their private lives.

The business has grown steadily. After earlier raises, including an $11 million Series A in 2021, BlackCloak closed a $17 million Series B in September 2024. Baird Capital led it, Blue Heron Capital joined, and existing investors TDF Ventures and TechOperators took part. The company made the Inc. 5000 for the first time in 2025, ranking 25th in Security, and again in 2026. Its product line has kept pace with the threats: in 2026 it extended deepfake protection to an executive’s wider circle of trusted contacts and launched BlackCloak Perimeter, which adds physical-world threat monitoring around the places executives live, work and travel. Pierson speaks widely on digital executive protection, including at RSA, Black Hat, ISSA and SecureWorld, and is often quoted in the business press on attacks against high-profile individuals.

Education

Boston College

B.A. and M.A.

University of Iowa

Ph.D. and J.D.

Fields of study are not stated in the company biography that is the source for these degrees.