By Byron V. Acohido

I’ve been writing about data trust and privacy engineering for more than a decade.

Related: Preserving privacy can be profitable

In 2015, I sat down with Cisco’s privacy lead, Michelle Dennedy, who argued that privacy must be grounded in authorized, fair processing — and warned that treating data as cheap exhaust ultimately costs you in breaches, fines, and lost credibility.

But Dennedy didn’t stop at theory. She’s gone on to build and lead — pioneering privacy engineering in practice. She founded PrivacyCode / PrivacyCode.ai, a startup focused on governance, accountability, and AI-aware privacy systems, and later assumed the role of Chief Data Strategy Officer at Abaxx Technologies, where she continues to push the boundaries of trust infrastructure.

Through that arc — from executive to founder to strategy leader — Dennedy has embodied what few do: turning the philosophy of privacy-by-design into working systems. That’s why her 2015 warnings aren’t relics — they’re blueprints.

This context matters today because we’re seeing that ethic creep into new terrain: not just data flows, but value flows. A Miami-based SaaS marketplace called AcceleTrex is testing this idea with a new campaign, “Saving Money While Saving Lives.”

In conjunction with two partners in the enterprise stack — Open Controls (automating compliance and governance) and EverythingCloud (optimizing cloud spend) — AcceleTrex is turning cloud savings into a socially directed stream. Open Controls replaces manual audits and spreadsheets with dashboards that track policy status and responsibility. EverythingCloud surfaces waste across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, often revealing 30–60% unneeded cost.

AcceleTrex sits between those two functions as a referral and marketplace layer, connecting experts who help enterprises trim costs or meet compliance goals with the companies that need them. The “Saving Money While Saving Lives” initiative adds a simple but telling feature: when a deal closes, participants can direct a portion of their referral earnings to pediatric healthcare — a design meant to show that efficiency and generosity can coexist inside the same business logic.

What you’re seeing here is more than a PR move. It’s a modest experiment in trust engineering for money flows — the same logic that underlies privacy-by-design, translated into how transactions work. If you can see where money moves, who earns, and who gives back — and audit it — you’re curating value, not extracting it.

Last Watchdog sat down with Allan Thompson, CEO of AcceleTrex, to drill down on how this model works — and why embedding generosity in the transaction layer might be good business as well as good ethics.

LW: What problem are you trying to solve with this initiative, and why does it matter now?

Thompson: AcceleTrex is an enterprise marketplace that transforms trusted relationships into revenue. The platform connects vendors with market experts — experienced executives, IT practitioners, consultants, and engineers — who use their networks to help vendors solve issues or save money for customers.

In our “Saving Money While Saving Lives” campaign, experts who close opportunities can direct part or all of their fees to the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) or another charity of their choice, via our partnership with ADP WorkMarket.

The idea came from our cofounder Tom Masucci, who saw the potential in connecting smart people — vendors, experts, and customers — in a single trusted environment that benefits everyone. Through partnerships with Open Controls and EverythingCloud, we’ve extended that vision to make social impact part of everyday business.

Many vendors never get a chance to showcase their technology to enterprise buyers — referrals drive up to 70% of purchasing decisions. AcceleTrex helps automate that process, ensuring experts are compensated for their role in connecting trusted relationships, while making it easy to share a portion of success with those in need.

LW: You describe AcceleTrex as “turning relationships into predictable revenue.” How do you keep trust at the center of that process?

Thompson: People prefer to do business with those they know and trust — that’s the foundation of the AcceleTrex marketplace. Most of our experts have built relationships with dozens of customers over many years. Our platform enables them to introduce next-generation technologies with confidence, knowing every transaction is transparent and fairly managed.

We automate the process from introduction to procurement through partnerships with Chase Bank and ADP WorkMarket, ensuring payments are traceable and equitable for all parties. The goal is simple: preserve fairness and accountability at each step, so trust remains the organizing principle.

LW: Could this model extend beyond philanthropy to areas like privacy, compliance, or security?

Thompson: The original marketplace idea grew from decades of experience in cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance. We designed it to strengthen relationships among next-generation companies tackling those challenges — and later broadened it to include high-tech vendors across sectors.

Our focus on transparency and auditability naturally applies to other trust-based systems. When companies can trace how value moves — how money is saved, earned, and shared — they turn extraction into stewardship.

As Michelle Dennedy put it years ago: uncurated data is a liability; curated data is opportunity. The same principle applies to value flows. What may look like a small experiment in social impact points toward a larger idea — the next frontier of trust-by-design, not just for data, but for the marketplace itself.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

October 16th, 2025 | Q & A | Top Stories