In this episode of the Privacy Pros Academy podcast, Jamal Ahmed interviews Priya Bhadwaj, a data privacy expert with over a decade of experience

You'll discover:

• The most challenging pillar of data governance and how to overcome it.
• How to transform people from privacy risks to privacy champions.
• The secrets to building credibility and influence as a Privacy Pro
• What you need to successfully find the perfect privacy job for you

This is the episode that will supercharge your career!

Priya Bhardwaj is a data privacy powerhouse with a decade of experience safeguarding some of the world's largest financial institutions and renowned Big 4 firms.

Priya holds a certificate in Data Privacy and Technology from Harvard Business University, CIPM from IAPP and is a top Data Privacy voice on LinkedIn.

Follow Jamal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmjahmed/

Follow Priya on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priya-bhardwaj-1b293340/

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When I started sharing my thoughts on LinkedIn, I just wanted to share my knowledge, whatever I'm learning in a daily basis . I focused on providing value through practical tips, industries updates and thought provoking articles. Don't keep the knowledge with you only you have to share. As much as you share you will get more from other people and from other areas.

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Welcome to another episode of the Privacy Pros podcast. Now data breaches are making headlines daily. Just yesterday I was reading about BBC employees whose data has been hacked, but is your company truly protected? It takes more than just policies. It's about people. It's about processes and having the right technology.

And today we're going to get the inside scoop from our amazing guest, Priya Bhadwaj, a data privacy powerhouse with a decade of experience, safeguarding some of the world's largest financial institutions and renowned big four firms. Currently, she's the assistant vice president within the data control and regulatory office of Global Investment Bank. Priya holds a certificate in data, privacy and technology from Harvard Business University, the CIPM from the IAPP, and she's also been awarded a top data governance voice on LinkedIn. On this podcast, she'll be exposing the weak links in your privacy toolkit, how you can empower your teams to become privacy champions. And there'll be so many other insider secrets on how to build your influence in the industry and really accelerate your career, regardless of where you are right now.

I'm your host, Jamal Ahmed, award winning global privacy expert and founder of the Privacy Pros Academy, where we're building a community of high performance professionals who empower businesses to adopt honest privacy practices, and I'm thrilled that you're listening to us today because this episode is brought to you by the Privacy Pros Academy. The world's leading provider of practical privacy education programs for world class privacy professionals. We've helped over 500 people around the world to secure their first role, get promotions, and also become industry thought leaders. And I'd love to help you too. So if you want a thriving privacy career, get in touch today. And to claim your free chapter of my international bestselling book, the Easy Peasy Guide to the GDPR visit best gdpr book.com/free. Priya, welcome to the show.

Thank you. That was so good.

Well, I love your pink top. Pink has become my favourite colour since I've had a daughter and so I'm loving the tone on that.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to dive straight to getting into your mind. And the first question I want to ask you is in your experience, which of the three pillars of governance, people, process, technology, tends to be the most challenging to get right.

So governance is a big, big chunk and if you go in the governance and identify the data, data is an ocean. That's why governance has been divided into three pillars, people, process, and technology. And in today's digital landscape, data has emerged as both an invaluable opportunity and a significant obligation.

So if I have to pick one which is very challenging is the people because you know Technology we can implement because there are a lot of technologies coming and we can implement in the organization and we have processes also but acceptance of that technology and processes is the most important part which will come from the people. So People pillar is often the most challenging thing, which I saw in my entire career, let me take the example of the GDPR, right?

So it came in picture and we were messing around, we were going like how we have to learn that new thing is coming. Obviously the enforcement is the new thing and regulation is something which I mean, anybody cannot read, right?

So we have to simplify that and to simplify that, for the people, for the individual, it's our duty . And I saw acceptance of any new thing coming in the market and the organization is a very challenging part. So we have to provide the comfort zone to the people to accept things.

We have to train them, we have to provide certain workshops, and also we have to highlight the risk. And in my experience, whenever something new is coming, people get scared of it, right? And that scaredness takes them in the zone where I don't have time to do this. I can't take time. I have another work to do I cannot work on this thing.

Thank you for sharing that. And I also agree when we say if it was to pick out of those pillars, which one is the most difficult, I would say it is people. And one of the reasons for that is the technology you can predict. Okay. There might be errors, but you can predict. The process doesn't change unless you go and make some changes to it. So both of those things are constant and predictable.

Yes.

People, my gosh, are we unpredictable or what?

Yeah, yeah,

The challenges that we face because this is what people add to the mix, right? And that's what makes it all fun. Otherwise it'd be pretty boring. If everything just went smoothly and just did what it was supposed to, then we'd probably get quite bored quite quickly. So I agree in my experience people is the difficult part. And one of the challenges I find is first of all, appreciating that change management is always going to be difficult. So one of the things I encourage privacy professionals to do is to really upskill on that change management side of things. And one of the models that I love to share with my mentees at the Privacy Pros Academy is the Tuckman's model. And what he talks about is the different phases of the development. So in the forming to the storming, to the norming, to the performing, and then to the adjourning, whatever people like to call that phase at the end. And I find that once you can understand and appreciate those stages a little bit better, and you know what the characteristics and the strategies are for each of those, then it helps us to make those stages and transition much, much smoother.

Exactly. True. And we actually face these challenges in day to day work also, because whenever we wanted to go to stakeholder, they just don't accept, like, why should we do this? So we have to just provide them the support, we are just not asking to do that. We are there to support so that you can just provide us the information and we just gather the information and sit with them and do that. .

Okay. Very useful insights there. Thank you. Now, continuing on the theme of people, people are often cited as the weakest link in privacy. How can we transform people from being a potential privacy risk into a proactive privacy champion?

The comfort zone and the acceptance is the most important part for people. And transforming people into proactive champions required a multi faceted approach, education, engagement, empowerment. Workshops and comprehensive training programs, open communication channels, and also we can build the one on one awareness sessions so that they can pick because everybody have their own expertise in their areas. Right. And if we talk about the data privacy, because a lot of risks arise in the data.

And we can't skip that. And if people are not aware, the importance of that particular privacy around them. So they cannot think that this is the right thing for them, this is the wrong thing for them. If we talk about social media, so we use social media on a daily basis everywhere, we share our photos, personal information. In fact, people are sharing sensitive data also. So there is a lack of awareness where we have to transform people for awareness thing.

It's the most important part where we can reduce the risk and reduce the breaches. Also what is happening nowadays with AI, and emerging technologies and Social media is a big chunk where breach is happening and that can impact the organization, to the day to day people, individuals.

So we're providing the right awareness training and also organization should build , the communication channel and communication model where they can transform people and they can mitigate the risk, especially in terms of privacy significantly, and people can pick and implement that in their day to day work and obviously in their life too.

That's really fascinating. If I was to sum it up, what you're saying is as, leaders, as organizations, what we should do is actually invest in our people. And just in empowering them and almost inspiring them to move them from privacy risks into becoming privacy advocates and privacy champions. And it's only by actually giving them. Options, giving them a range of different things, identifying different skills, weaknesses, and seeing where different groups of your people need support, will we truly be able to shift them from a problem to an asset?

Yes.

Congratulations on your LinkedIn top, data governance voice, what's your secret to building credibility and influence in the industry and what advice do you have for other privacy professionals listening?

Honestly, when I started sharing my thoughts on LinkedIn, I just wanted to share my thoughts, my knowledge, whatever I'm learning in a daily basis in my work to the respective audience and I can also learn from their insights. So then I thought I should also start collaborating and I was not aware this is a feature where we get the badge. When I got that, then I realized, Oh, really? I mean, it is happening. They are appreciating people in that way. So I really appreciate that. At least you are recognized and awarded for sharing.

Right.

Yeah and I focused on providing value through practical tips, industries, updates. And thought provoking articles. So over time, this become the consistent thing. And I realized I got the data privacy top voice. Then I have not stopped there. So I thought if I have the knowledge on privacy, if I'm sharing that, if I have the knowledge on governance side, I should share that also collaboratively. So I started that and I get the badge of governance and it's not stopped me. Whatever the topic, if I have some sort of knowledge on it, if I've worked on it and it's useful for the audience, I share that. You should learn and you should share that to the people. Don't keep the knowledge with you only you have to share. As much as you share. You will get more from other people and from other areas. I've learned from my childhood sharing is caring. So i'm following that.

Okay, great. Thank you for sharing. So I guess the secret to Your credibility and influence on linkedin is actually not keeping secrets. It's sharing and Being somebody who is showing up with value. And I really love that because that's what i'm always drumming into my mentees is i'm saying look You can have a library full of information. You can have a library full of knowledge, but it's useless unless you actually Do something and apply that or share it. It doesn't make any difference you and I believe the best way to learn is to teach and we don't all have an opportunity to stand up in a classroom and teach or do a webinar or all of these things but I found that a way to hack that when I was learning earlier in my career is to take that information and then to summarize it and condense it like you were saying make it simple enough to make sure that I've understood it well enough and then share it and see how people respond and see if people also get it and if they do then that means great. It means that i've understood it well enough if I haven't understood it well enough then people will be confused I'm, like, what are you talking about or start correcting you? And so you have to be open to failure because that's actually feedback. There's no such thing as failure It's only feedback and for me It was a really powerful way of also showing up on linkedin and saying I want to be somebody of value And if I can just help somebody who is one step behind me Two steps behind me, three steps behind me, then I'm showing up as a valuable person and I'm sharing. And that's exactly what happens is when you start helping the people that are a few steps behind you, they actually push you forward at a much faster rate than you could have taken yourself. And it's really interesting to hear that you've had a very similar experience and you have the same mindset.

Let's create as much value as you can. Let's just help one person. And if we have enough people to do what they want most, then we're going to get the help of doing what we want most. And what goes around comes around. So yeah, that's definitely been true for me. Now you mentioned something about your earlier days in your childhood. So I want to learn more about your story. A little birdie tells me that you started off as an ethical hacker, over a decade ago. So can you just give us the rollercoaster reel of your stories. What I want you to think about before you share your story is maybe a particular challenge that you faced in your career. And as you share your story, if you could tell me what that particular challenge was in yours, how you tackled it and what the lessons were that allowed you to really catapult your career and work for some of the big brand names that we see you on your CV and on your LinkedIn.

Yeah. So I have done my engineering, right? And after engineering, I was about to do the MBA, so I picked this course that is cyber law and information security from national law university. There, I learned a lot about the cyber laws, regulations and also the technical side of it, like security. I was into the technology side, not the coding side. So it gave me interest to do hacking. I did my internship in the hacking side. So I was a certified ethical hacker from one of the Institute. When I proceed with my career journey, that gave me the experience, yes, I have good amount of experience of the hacking side, vulnerability assessment, pen testing and other side, but when I started my journey, I got the opportunity to learn different areas like. The ISO standards, how to do the internal audits, how to face the external audits.

There are a lot of standards we have to perform in the organization like providing the surety and the trust to the client. So in my first organization, my senior he saw yes, I have the knowledge of hacking side. And I wanted to learn more about how it has been captured. So he gave me work on the logs area, the alert side. The real time alerts are coming and it's generating the logs. So that was also good experience. Then I started with the process side, like, yeah, this is the audit. So I got the taste of everything it comes under the umbrella of cybersecurity. And it gave me the aspiration to learn more and more.

So when I joined another organization, one of the big four. Then I got the opportunity to work on the privacy side where that was so challenging because in that point of time GDPR hits, right? So then I picked like, no, I want to learn this. Then I told my seniors. Please. I wanted to learn. Give me some project on this. This is so good. They told me this is challenging. You have to prepare a lot of things. I like to accept the challenge. I like the challenging work. I wanted to do this. I'm reading the regulation. It is giving me that kind of kick that you should learn this area too. Then I picked that and I got the opportunity to prepare the DDPR privacy framework where I have simplified the language and also it was so good thing. So I mean, starting journey from the ethical hacking, which is implementing with the process. And now continuing my journey in the pillars, exactly we say in the people process and technology. So it's very good. And challenges were there, ups and downs were there. But the important part is you have to accept the challenge because you have to learn it.

You have to read, you have to go insightly, deeply from where it is coming. You should understand, you should learn the foundation and the concept. And I always learn in a fun way and enjoying it. You always have to enjoy your work. Whatever you are doing, so just enjoy that journey.

That's actually quite fascinating. You sharing your journey, how you went from ethical hacking and focusing on the technology and those logs. Then you went into the actual auditing and governance side of it, and then you moved into data privacy because of the GDPR coming in. Nobody ever pushed you into those. It was you saying, Hey, I want to learn more about this. I'm really keen on this. And people really show that, Hey, Priya is actually really into this. You're really passionate about this. And she's got the knowledge and skills and she wants to develop more. So let's give her more of this. And that's, what's helped you to navigate your career and have a good career progression is because you enjoyed what you was doing. You found the fun in it and you took it upon yourself to become a subject matter expert. Like you use the word foundation knowledge so many times. It was really inspiring because what I really focus on at the Privacy Pros Academy with my mentees is that you need to become subject matter experts, right?

You need to know your stuff. And that means starting off with the basics and the foundations. I'm going to spend as long as we need to on the foundations, because if we don't have strong foundations, it doesn't matter what we put on top, it's going to collapse. But when you have strong foundation, you can layer things on. And what we want to do is layer different pieces of skills, different knowledge, different know how, people management skills, all of those things. So you become a world class privacy professional. So I really resonate with, what you were sharing there. Now, what are your top three pieces of advice for somebody who is stuck or frustrated with where they are in their career right now and they're looking to advance and for whatever reason they're not getting their luck and they're getting ghosted or they keep missing out on those offers.

So three piece of advice I wanted to give. First of all, understand what you want and, to understand that you need the guidance. And you need the mentorship, right? And good community. So for that, you have to build your network. You have to connect with the right people. Because people are seeing the lot of emerging technologies are coming what to pick from where to pick. And in fact, lawyers are also thinking like this. I always, tell to my juniors and my colleagues, first you should understand what you really want to do and secondly, you should find a mentor. You can get from any industry, you can get from any platform.

Maybe you are connecting on LinkedIn and you are reading some article. You can connect with that particular person because they are posting something for the sake of the people, for the sake of the audience. So you can identify that. And if you are not able to identify any mentor, you can join the network where you can communicate openly and ask the question. So first understand, second have the mentorship and guidance and third, join the communication channel. There are a lot of channels where you can get insightful information where you can openly talk about Your thought, process, what you want and that will give you the direction, this is right for me, this is wrong for me, what to pick for my career path. And it'll come eventually.

It'll not come directly like, yeah, something I have picked and I become so expert in that. No, you have to, understand what is good for you. And good come with the guidance and guidance come with the networking. So that's the linking part from everything. And you have to pick the right direction for your career path and you have to choose wisely. You cannot choose each and everything for you. You have to choose first one thing and you have to understand this. I can learn this. I can pick, and this I can grow it. So that comes eventually and connecting and communicating with the people.

Okay, great. So it sounds like what you're saying is make a decision. So decide what you want to do and be very particular. Pick the thing that's right for you. After you've made that decision then take massive amounts of action towards your goal and find a mentor to guide you, find people who have already achieved what you need to achieve And also start connecting. You need to create a powerful network You need to make sure that you're surrounded by the right people. So don't isolate yourself. Don't be alone on your journey. Go and seek the right people and connect with them. And once you bring all of those things together, all you need to do now is focus on growing and empowering yourself and you'll be able to achieve all of the amazing things that we've seen you achieve.

Yes.

All right. Awesome. Now, Priya, we always let the guest ask me a question at the end of the podcast. So I'm going to extend that same courtesy to you. What would you love to ask me?

I wanted to ask about your journey, how you started. You are so influential. I always read your articles, your thought process and were so influential. From where you started, how you've decided like you have to pick this thing.

It's a very good question. So how I started was I remember waking up more than one morning, but there was this one particular morning I woke up and I didn't want to get out of bed. It was a working day. I didn't want to get out of bed. And the reason I didn't want to get out of bed was I didn't want to go and do another day of dull, mundane, boring, same process. Nothing changes, no reward, no progression, same faces, same rubbish coffee machine. I just didn't want more of the same. Like it was so unfulfilling. It was so uninspiring and I just felt so heavy and I couldn't get myself out of bed. And I remember thinking this is not what life is about, right?

I didn't spend all of this time on my personal development, on my education and my academic achievements to just be coming and doing a process, which I think anyone that leaves school could do if you train them for three weeks, I couldn't see what was so special about what I was doing.

And I was like, no, my talents are being wasted. I'm not where I want to be in life. I'm not making any meaningful contribution. Nobody would care. If I turned up to work tomorrow or not, they could either find somebody to replace me or now they could probably get AI to do a better job. Nobody else would miss me in the role if I wasn't there, like I'm not making any kind of impact and I'm not actually having much of a meaningful contribution to the world either. And so I was on this journey where I was like, I need to do something about this. And I don't want to be stuck here in a few years time where I'm feeling like this. Like whatever I want to do next, it has to be like, that's what I want to do for the foreseeable future. Yeah. And so I started looking at different things. I started speaking to mentors and I remember there was one mentor who said to me, find something and be the best at it.

Right. So he said, pick a niche and become the best at it. And for a number of reasons that I speak on other podcasts, and I won't repeat that here too much, privacy really resonated with me. And the reason it resonated with me was I could see the challenges that come across when people's right to privacy get violated and infringed upon. I understood the ethical concerns that we have regarding this, I could see how meaningful the work would be. And I also saw how challenging it's going to be with all these new regulations coming in, changes, technology, always moving. This thing isn't constant, whereas compliance is very constant, right? We might get a new update or something. Everyone gets excited about PSD2 or whatever it is, but otherwise it's still pretty much more of the same thing. So I wasn't very fulfilled there and I wanted to actually go and jump in, into something and really make up for the lost time. And so the reason you see me working so hard, the reason you see me with all of this stuff is because I'm trying to make up for the lost time, doing something that I love, something that's meaningful, something that I connect with on a vocational level, a mental level, as well as a spiritual level.

And so it's really fulfilling. And the other thing is, if you listened to some of my earlier podcasts, you know, that I lost three children. So God blessed me with three children and he took them back. And I was in a very bad place, after I buried my third child. And the only way I got out of that was by actually being a kind and decent person and helping other people, but I didn't want to work in the charity sector. , and so I thought, what could be my contribution? What could be my legacy? And I decided, you know what, I'm going to create a world where every woman, every man and every child enjoys more freedom over the personal information. And I'm going to do that as a tribute and a legacy to my three children. And so that's when I set up the Privacy Pros Academy,

that, we just focused on the consultancy. And what I realized is. I can't achieve that vision on my own. It doesn't matter how big the client I work with is, it's still going to be a drop in the ocean. But you know what I can do is I can build a community of like minded professionals who want to be really good at what they do, help them to become world class professionals. So they have a rapid career progression. They get the recognition, the status that they want. And at the same time, because we're all coming together to empower businesses to adopt those honest privacy practices. Once we get enough of us in every single organization, in every single government, everyone that's collecting organization, we would have achieved that dream and that reality.

And so that's what we're working towards. And that's what brings us all together. And that's why you will see like a lot of people don't understand how comes we have this camaraderie, how comes all of my mentees are always talking about these things on LinkedIn and sharing their stories and celebrating each other's wins.

It's not the norm and people are like, what's going on here? Is this guy running some kind of a cult? I think somebody once accused me of running a cult, but no, it's because we're really passionate. We're like minded people and we all want to make progress and we want that not just for ourselves, but for the people around us. And we want to inspire our children. We want to inspire our grandchildren and we want to leave a legacy and a mark on the world. So hopefully that answers your question.

It's inspiring journey. I mean if I have to start something that's so inspiring, I'll connect with you.

Thank you, Priya. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. We've covered so many valuable areas. You've shared the biggest challenge when it comes to governance and you've shared why people are the biggest challenge and also how to overcome those challenges. We looked at how we can take people often seen as our weakest link from privacy risks to actually becoming privacy champions or proactively looking after your clients. Data. And you've also explained how you can actually go and start contributing to build up your own reputation in the industry and create that influence. And you've given us some really good advice on privacy professionals on what they can do to really, and any profession actually, what they can do to rapidly progress in their career. So thank you so much for all those valuable tips. And I hope to catch up with you again soon.

Sure. Pleasure of mine. And thank you so much. It was very nice connecting with you. And looking forward to connect with you again.

was an absolute privilege. And now if you've been inspired by Priya and you want to connect with her, then listen, look out for the show notes. We're going to plug in her LinkedIn profile. So make sure you connect with her. And if you're somebody who's listening to this podcast, the first thing you need to do is start sharing and showing up and getting visible on LinkedIn. And the easiest thing to do is just share your takeaways from this podcast. Tag Priya, tag myself. We'd love to hear what you have to think, and we'll definitely come and show you some love on your profile. All right. Until next time, peace be with you.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, like and share so you're notified when a new episode is released. Remember to join the Privacy Pros Academy Facebook group where we answer your questions. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you're leaving with some great things that will add value on your journey as a world class Privacy Pro. Please leave us a 4 or 5 star review. And if you'd like to appear on a future episode of our podcast, Or have a suggestion for a topic you'd like to hear more about, please send an email to team@kazient.co.Uk. Until next time, peace be with you.