Privacy Policy

Stern Strategy Group respects your concerns about information privacy and security, and is committed to safeguarding your privacy.  We believe it is important for you to be familiar with how we collect, use, and disclose information provided to us, or that we have obtained from you.  This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information we collect or use both online and offline:

  • through our websites and blog sites (“Websites”);
  • through social media properties (“Social Media”);
  • through email messages that we send to you or receive from you (“Emails”);
  • through services we provide to our clients and customers (“Client Services”); and
  • through offline information provided directly to employees and recorded and stored as electronic data (“Direct Data”).

Collectively, we refer to the Websites, Social Media, Emails, Client Services, and Direct Data as the “Services.”

If you do not agree with the data practices described in this Privacy Policy, do not use our Websites or any of our online features, products, or services.

If you have any questions, please contact us by email or regular mail as set forth below in the “Contacting Us” section.

Stern Strategy Group includes Susan Stern Public Relations, Inc., Daniel R. Stern Speakers, LLC. and each of their successors, subsidiaries, and affiliates (collectively, “Company”, “we”, “us”, or “our”).

PRIVACY POLICY – COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

“Personal Information” is any information that, either alone or in combination with other information, identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable individual.  This includes:

  • Name;
  • Postal address (including personal, business, billing, and shipping addresses);
  • Telephone number; and
  • Email address (personal and business).

In addition, we may collect social security numbers and bank information from our clients and customers.

We collect, and our service providers collect, Personal Information in a number of ways, including:

  • Through the Services: We collect Personal Information through the Services.  This includes in the course of operating our business generally, as well as when you visit our Websites, sign up for a newsletter, download a white paper, request Services.
  • Offline: We collect Personal Information from you offline.  This includes when you participate in a contractual arrangement for Client Services, when you provide information in conjunction with our Client Services, when you interact with us as or on behalf of a client, or when you provide Direct Data.
  • From Other Sources: We receive your Personal Information from other sources, for example:
    • publicly available databases and websites;
    • coordinators for speaking engagements, joint marketing partners, and event sponsors, when they share the information with us;
    • individuals and entities to whom we provide Client Services, which may include your employer; and
    • social media platforms.

If you do not provide the information requested, we may not be able to provide the Services. If you disclose any Personal Information relating to other people to us or to our service providers in connection with the Services, you represent that you have the authority to do so and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We and our service providers may use your Personal Information in the following circumstances:

  • when we need to perform a contract we are about to or have entered into with you;
  • when we need to do so in order to comply with a legal obligation;
  • when it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those legitimate interests;
  • when it is necessary to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims;
  • if you have already made the information public; or
  • if you have given your consent.

Specifically, we use your Personal Information for our legitimate business purposes, including the following:

  1. To provide Client Services, including:
  • validating authorized signatories when concluding agreements and transactions;
  • contacting individuals (including members of the media to conduct media relations activities and employees of institutional clients) in connection with providing Client Services; and
  • responding to inquiries and fulfilling requests from our clients, administering client work, providing marketing and speaking engagement services, and managing our client relationships.
  1. To provide the Services to you and fulfill your requests, including:
  • providing you with Client Services;
  • responding to your inquiries and fulfilling your requests when you contact us through one of our online contact forms, via Emails, or otherwise (e.g., when you send us questions, suggestions, compliments or complaints, or when you request other information about our Services);
  • sending administrative information to you, such as information regarding the Services, changes to our terms, conditions and policies, and notices as may be required by law or regulation; and
  • allowing you to send Services-related content to another person through the Services if you choose to do so.
  1. To provide you with our marketing materials and facilitate social sharing, including:
  • sending you our newsletters, blogs, publications, marketing insights, Emails, and mailings related to content, speakers, speaking engagements, or events that we think may be of interest to you;
  • fulfilling your event registration requests and providing Services, including seminars other events; and
  • sending you information about our Services and other information or news about our company; and
  • enabling your ability to share our content on various social media platforms from our Websites, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  1. To aggregate or anonymize Personal Information so that it will no longer be considered Personal Information. We do so to generate other data for our use, which we may use and disclose for any purpose, because that other data we have generated is not Personal Information.
  2. To accomplish our business purposes, including:
  • data analysis, which includes improving the efficiency of our Services;
  • audits, to verify that our internal processes function as intended and are compliant with legal, regulatory, and contractual requirements;
  • fraud and security monitoring, which includes activities to detect and prevent cyberattacks or attempts to commit identity theft;
  • enhancing, improving, or modifying our current products and services;
  • identifying usage trends, which includes understanding which parts of our Services are of most interest to users;
  • determining the effectiveness of our marketing and promotions, so that we can adapt to the needs and interests of our users; and
  • operating and expanding our business activities, which includes understanding which parts of our Services are of most interest to our users so we can focus our energies on meeting users’ interests.

The particular “legitimate interests” upon which we and our service providers rely in processing your Personal Information include the following:

  • For purposes of carrying out business intake procedures: this includes using and/or obtaining information for the purposes of carrying out conflict and other business intake searches, and completing retention agreements and other client-related documents.
  • For providing marketing, public relations, and strategic advice to our clients: this includes using contact data, data concerning your business activities, and any other data relevant to the marketing and speaking engagement matters upon which we are advising. This data does not typically include special categories of personal information (such as that relating to health) or information relating to criminal convictions and offenses.  If we come across special categories of information, we do not process that data.
  • For the purposes of marketing our services: this includes using your information for the purpose of promoting our business to you, if you request information about our services or indicate that you have an interest in receiving communications on marketing trends and topics, if you respond to invitations to events, if you download content offers or other marketing content, or if you comment on our blog or social networks.You have the right to ask us not to process your Personal Information for marketing purposes.  You can exercise your right to prevent such processing at any time by contacting us as set forth below in the “Contacting Us” section or by following the link in the marketing emails we send to opt out or manage your email preferences.
  • For the functioning of our business and its operations: this includes using your Personal Information in the course of operating our business, conducting media relations and public relations, communicating with potential speakers and potential event hosts of speakers, conducting market research, booking travel, and connecting speakers with management consulting clients.

We also use the Personal Information of our clients and customers and the Personal Information of third-parties that our clients and customers provide us to fulfill our contractual obligations with our clients and customers.  We disclose this information in accordance with our client and customer contracts and for the purposes discussed above.

DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We disclose Personal Information as necessary or appropriate, especially in connection with our contractual relationship with you, or when we have a legal obligation or legitimate interest to do so.  This may include disclosure outside your country of residence.  This includes the following: 

  • To our third party service providers, to facilitate services they provide to us. This includes providers of services for website hosting, cloud services, customer relationship management, information technology consulting, email delivery, software management, time management, legal services, and other services related to meeting our clients’ public relations, marketing, and speakers needs or conducting business operations. Our disclosure to these service providers is limited to processing Personal Information based upon our instructions and Personal Information is given to these service providers only to the extent it is necessary to do so. Note that by using certain Services to which you are able to post information and content (e.g., Social Media), or through which you are able to send messages, any information you post or disclose through these Services will become public and may be available to other users and the general public. Some of the companies we engage with for our work, like Cision, provide us with contact details and other personal information regarding media contacts and influencers from a variety of sources.
  • To comply with applicable law and regulations.
  • To cooperate with law enforcement, or public and government authorities. This includes responding to law enforcement requests and orders, or to provide information we believe is important.
  • For other legal reasons. This includes enforcing our terms and conditions, and protecting our rights, privacy, safety, and property, and that of you or others.
  • In connection with a sale or business transaction. We have a legitimate interest in disclosing or transferring your Personal Information to a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings). Such third parties may include, for example, an acquiring entity and its advisors.
  • To companies and people purchasing or receiving our Client Services. For us to conduct media relations and marketing campaigns, book our speakers, and provide our company’s services, we often must disclose the Personal Information of our speakers or our clients, including their names, contact information, and at times, payment information. Also, we must often disclose Personal Information from research we have conducted on individuals purchasing the services of our speakers clients or receiving information from our public relations clients. This includes the name and contact information of speaking event coordinators and members of the media.

OTHER INFORMATION

“Other Information” is any information that does not reveal your specific identity or does not directly relate to an identifiable individual.  This includes:

  • Browser and device information;
  • Information collected through cookies, pixel tags, and other technologies;
  • Demographic information and other information provided by you that does not reveal your specific identity; and
  • Information that has been aggregated in a manner such that it does not reveal your specific identity.

If we are required to treat Other Information as Personal Information under applicable law, then we may use and disclose it for the purposes for which we use and disclose Personal Information as detailed in this Policy.

We and our service providers may collect Other Information in a variety of ways, including:

  • Through your browser or device: Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device, such as your Media Access Control (MAC) address, computer type (Windows or Mac), screen resolution, operating system name and version, device manufacturer and model, language, Internet browser type and version, and the name and version of the Services you are using. We use this information to ensure that the Services function properly.
  • Using cookies. Cookies are pieces of information stored directly on the computer or device that you are using. Cookies allow us to collect information such as browser type, time spent on the Services, pages visited, language preferences, and other traffic data. To learn more about how we use cookies, please see our Cookie Policy by clicking here.
  • Using pixel tags and other similar technologies. Pixel tags (also known as web beacons and clear GIFs) may be used to, among other things, track the actions of users of the Services (including email recipients), measure the success of our marketing campaigns, and compile statistics about usage of the Services and response rates.
  • Analytics. We use Google Analytics and HubSpot, which use cookies and similar technologies to collect and analyze information about use of the Services and report on activities and trends. These services may also collect information regarding the use of other websites, applications, and online resources. You can learn specifically about Google’s practices by going to partner sites, and opt out of them by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at Google Analytics opt-out download page. If you wish to opt out of HubSpot’s practices, please do so through the posted cookie banner.
  • IP Address. Your IP address is automatically assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. An IP address may be identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user accesses the Services, along with the time of the visit and the page(s) that were visited. Collecting IP addresses is standard practice and is done automatically by many websites, applications, and other services. We use IP addresses for purposes such as calculating usage levels, diagnosing server problems, and administering the Services. We may also derive your approximate location from your IP address.

We may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose, except where we are required to do otherwise under applicable law. In some instances, we may combine Other Information with Personal Information. If we do, we will treat the combined information as Personal Information as long as it is combined.

PRIVACY POLICY – SECURITY

We seek to use reasonable organizational, technical, and administrative measures to protect Personal Information within our organization.  Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contacting Us” section below.

If you no longer want to receive marketing-related emails from us on a going-forward basis, you may opt-out by following the unsubscribe instructions in any such message or by contacting us by email at privacy@sternstrategy.com.  We will undertake efforts to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that if you choose to discontinue receiving marketing-related emails from us, we may still send you important administrative messages, which you cannot elect to discontinue.

DATA PRIVACY INQUIRIES AND ACCESS TO PERSONAL INFORMATION

If you believe the Personal Information we have for you is inaccurate, incomplete, or no longer current, please contact us at privacy@sternstrategy.com so that we can update, remove or correct the information as appropriate.

If you are in one of the following countries and accessing our Services, you can access, change, or delete your Personal Information: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

If you would like to request to review, correct, update, suppress, object, restrict, or delete Personal Information that you have previously provided to us, or if you would like to request to receive an electronic copy of your Personal Information for purposes of transmitting it to another company (to the extent any of these rights are provided to you by applicable law), you may contact us by email at privacy@sternstrategy.com. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law.

In your request, please make clear what Personal Information you would like to have changed, whether you would like to have your Personal Information suppressed from our database or otherwise let us know what limitations you would like to put on our use of your Personal Information. For your protection, we may only implement requests with respect to the Personal Information associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity and obtain other relevant information before implementing your request. We will undertake our best efforts to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable and as required by law.

PRIVACY POLICY – RETENTION PERIOD

We retain Personal Information for as long as needed or permitted in light of the purpose(s) for which it was obtained and consistent with applicable law.  The privacy policy criteria used to determine our retention periods include:

  • the length of time we have an ongoing relationship with you and provide the Services to you (for example, for as long as you keep using the Services);
  • the length of time we have an ongoing relationship with you as our client and provide you with Client Services;
  • whether there is a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, certain laws require us to keep records of your transactions or communications for a certain period of time before we can delete them); or
  • whether retention is necessary as a legitimate interest to our business to continue to conduct our Client Services (for example, so that we can conduct media relations for our clients).

THIRD-PARTY SERVICES

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information, or other practices of any third parties.

This includes any third party operating any website or service to which the Services link. The inclusion of a link on the Services does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us.

In addition, we are not responsible for the information collection, use, disclosure, or security policies or practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, LinkedIn, or any other application developer, application provider, social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider, or device manufacturer, including with respect to any Personal Information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with our Social Media or any third-party links.

USE OF SERVICES BY MINORS

The Services are not directed to individuals under the age of eighteen (18), and we do not knowingly or intentionally collect Personal Information from individuals under 18 years old for those Services.

If a parent or guardian believes or becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with Personal Information, please immediately notify us as set forth in the “Contacting Us” section below.

California minors under 18 years old may request the removal of any information that we may have collected by contacting us as set forth in the “Contacting Us” section.  Upon such request, we will anonymize or remove any content posted by or collected from the minor, unless required by law to retain such content or information.

CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER

Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers. By using the Services you understand that your information will be transferred to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country.  In certain circumstances, courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies, or security authorities in those other countries may be entitled to access your Personal Information.

Some non-EEA countries are recognized by the European Commission as providing an adequate level of data protection according to EEA standards (the full list of these countries is available here. For transfers from the EEA to countries not considered adequate by the European Commission, we have put in place adequate measures, such as the use of standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission to protect your Personal Information. You may obtain a copy of these measures by clicking here.

SENSITIVE INFORMATION

Except when required in connection with the Client Services we provide you, we request that you not send us, and you not disclose, any sensitive Personal Information (e.g., social security numbers, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs, information related to sex life or sexual orientation, health data, biometric or genetic characteristics, criminal convictions and offenses, or trade union membership) on or through the Services or otherwise to us, per our privacy policy.

UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

The “LAST UPDATED” legend at the top of this Privacy Policy indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised.  Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Services.  Your use of the Services following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

CONTACTING US

Stern is the company responsible for collection, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information under this Privacy Policy.

If you have a complaint about our handling of your personal data, we would appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns directly and before you approach a regulator.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us.

You can reach us at privacy@sternstrategy.com or at:

Eveline Brownstein
Privacy Officer
Stern Strategy Group
186 Wood Avenue South
Iselin, NJ  08830

Because email communications are not always secure, please do not include any sensitive information in your emails to us. 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION REGARDING THE EEA

You may lodge a complaint with a data protection authority for your country or region, or where an alleged infringement of applicable data protection law occurs. See https://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.htm.