Unleash the Power of a Thriving Career in Privacy with Insights from a Legal Powerhouse

Join us as we delve into the world of privacy law with one of the industry's top voices and uncover the secrets to a successful career pivot.

Hi, my name is Jamal Ahmed and I'd like to invite you to listen to this special episode of the #1 ranked Data Privacy podcast.

In this episode, be prepared to:

• Master the art of creating privacy awareness in your organisation and beyond
• Transform into an action-taker and conquer the fear of failure
• Discover the key to making your privacy trainings unforgettable and impactful

It's an episode you can't afford to miss!

Karollayne is a Brazilian Lawyer and an active member of the Brazilian Bar Association for privacy and data protection in her state.

She has her own office called Dias Marinho & Coelho Advogados where she works with the Brazilian GDPR (LGPD) and EU GDPR by delivering consulting services and providing awareness training to help build a privacy culture inside different organizations.

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

Follow Karollayne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karollaynemarinho/

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Good morning, good evening, and even good afternoon, depending on what part of the world you're listening from today, I am going to be speaking with an amazing guest based in South America, and she's going to tell us all about the kind of culture they're seeing in relation to privacy. We're going to find out a little bit more about her journey, and we're also going to learn a little bit about what are the differences between how privacy is practiced here in Europe compared to South America. So all of that great stuff to come in a moment, but in the meantime, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's following me on LinkedIn. I'm so excited to announce that I've just reached 20,000 followers on LinkedIn and I couldn't have done it without your help. So I'm really grateful for all of the support and encouragement, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you that's been supporting me on my journey so far. And therefore, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my knowledge with the world and for giving us the opportunity on this podcast to go and speak to some of the most brilliant minds in privacy and share their learnings with you as well. Connecting with great minds across the globe is amazing, and it's really helped me to take my practice to the next level. And I know from the messages you've been sending me how much value you've been getting as well, and we’ve got an amazing guest who's going to add to that legacy a little bit more today. It's my honour and my privilege to be able to help inspire others along the way by sharing stories of my successes, my failures, and the lessons I've learned along the way. And I'm looking forward to expanding my professional network and finding new ways where we can work together to motivate each other to reach our goals, whether they’re personal goals, whether they’re professional goals, or whether they’re health goals. When one of us succeeds, all of us succeed. And we have to come together to fulfil the vision so every woman, every man, and every child on this planet can enjoy freedom over the personal information. So let me go and introduce our guest today. Today we have Karollayne. Karollayne Marinho is a Brazilian lawyer and an active member of the Brazilian Bar Association for Privacy and Data Protection in her state, she has her own office called Dias Marinho & Coelho Advogados where she works with the Brazilian GDPR (LGPD) and EU GDPR by delivering consulting services and providing awareness training to help build a privacy culture inside different organizations. Karollayne welcome to the Privacy Pros Podcast.

Thank you, Jamal. And congratulations on your 20,000 followers. That's a real achievement.

Thank you, Karollayne. All right, so we always start off with an ice breaker, and normally Jamilla comes up with some brilliant ones. So the question we have for you today, if you could be an animal, what animal would you choose to be and why?

That's an easy one. That would be a dolphin. Why? It's my favourite animal, and I think they're really intelligent.

Dolphins are really intelligent, as are you. So can you tell us a little bit more about the privacy culture in Brazil right now?

Thank you for sharing. That's really fascinating, because one of the things I found is that in more developed parts of the world, people respect their privacy more, individuals and the public. And when you go to less developed areas of the world, they seem to care less about their privacy. And the attitude is, almost even in Europe we hear people say, well, I've got nothing to hide, so why should I care about my privacy? The interesting thing is, three years ago I was at the Parliament, and there was a delegation that came over from Bangladesh and they were looking to do business or create more business opportunities with the UK. And one of the things I was speaking about to all of the CEOs and the government ministers was, listen, the challenge is Bangladesh doesn't actually have adequate data protection laws in place as things stand right now, it doesn't have an adequacy decision. And therefore, for any UK company to want to do business with them, they have to have reassurance that they can offer guarantees that any personal information they share over there will actually have the same level of protection that people would enjoy in Europe. And unless you can actually guarantee that, it's going to be very difficult for a lot of businesses to want to even think about doing business with you. And then there was this one CEO that sat up and said, Jamal, I've been listening to you, you've been talking about all of this privacy stuff. That's great. But you know what? The thing is, if I go back to my village, anyone there would be willing to give up his privacy rights, his father's privacy rights, and his grandfather's privacy rights just to download one song for free. And that really made me think like, wow, it is such a cultural thing, and it is something for the privileged, because people who are under privileged, they are more willing to trade their privacy rights just to access some things that we take for granted. What are your views on that Karollayne?

Totally agree with you, and in fact, I believe that the only reason why Brazil has a law on data privacy now is because of the whole business side of it. Because otherwise, I don't think we would be ready for this, for such a challenge, which is having that data privacy in place. And we still don't have an adequacy decision yet also. But I think we're working towards that. And I totally believe, and I totally agree with what you just said, that people are willing to just get their personal data to do whatever it is that they want at that time. And I don't think it's because that is necessary, because they need that information or that song to be downloaded. It's just because they don't have this awareness of how much their personal data is valued. They don't understand that their personal data is very valuable. So for them, giving their full name or their ID is nothing, because that is worth nothing to them. And I think this is the problem here. We have to make sure that people are aware that their data is worth a lot nowadays and that they are not getting their song downloaded for free. They're actually paying for it and paying way more with their data than they would pay if they had to sign up to a music platform.

Yes, absolutely. And I think one of the things I admire about what you're doing is you're actually, as a privacy professional, you're not just saying, hey, we're advocating privacy for businesses to be compliant so that we can do more business. But I can see that you're spending so much time, energy, and effort trying to raise that cultural awareness of why people should value their privacy. What's been some of the challenges that you have with that and what motivates you to keep going?

Well, a lot of challenges. So this is part of the work I do for data privacy here in Brazil. And the community was created to raise awareness regarding privacy, but for lawyers, because we saw that even lawyers were not following LGPD in their office and in their day to day life. And it's sad when you see that lawyers are not complying with the law. So we were like, oh, you have to do something about this, and let's do this for lawyers. Then we realized that that was not enough. Like doing this only for lawyers was not enough, and we had to do more. So we started doing this job in a way that we could reach more people outside of the law. And it is really challenging to make people see what I just told you, how important their personal data is. I think this is the most difficult part for me. When I'm delivering training to the companies that I'm working for, I see that people are like, okay, they understand what they have to do to follow the law, but why do we have to do this? Nobody even cares. I don't care if some company has my data and they don't handle it the way they're supposed to. I really don't. Why are we going through all this trouble to do this? To be compliant with the data privacy legislation? So I think building raising this awareness, making people understand why this is important, is definitely the most difficult thing that we have to do as a privacy professional here in Brazil and even companies, in the beginning, it was so hard to have data privacy in the office because we didn't have any clients. And we would approach companies, small companies, big companies, medium sized companies, and they all would say the same thing data privacy is not something that we are willing to worry about right now, or that we can afford worrying about right now. And we were like, yes, but you have to understand that it's not only a law, but it's a matter of protecting your customers, right? And it's a matter of doing a good marketing for your company as well. So this is going to come back to you. You're going to see all this investment coming back to your business. And they just didn't care. They just didn't care. They were like, yes, but it's not that important. There are no fines in place, no company has been fined yet, nobody cares about data privacy. This legislation is not going to be a thing in Brazil. And this was really difficult. Now, as I told you, I see that there is a difference in how the companies at least, or the business people see data privacy. They're more aware. And they started to look for us now, say, now I understand. Now I see why data privacy is important. And now, because of the fines, because we still haven't been given fines in Brazil, but because they understand better now, but for the people, we're still not there.

It's interesting. And there's challenges here in Europe as well. For example, even across Europe, there's lots of different cultural differences between how people view their privacy. So, for example, in France and the UK, people really value control over their information. Whereas if you go to other parts of Europe, like Scandinavia, they have a public book that says how much you earn, who you live with, who your neighbours are, how many kids you have. And it's just like all of the information is public. Something like that in the UK or France would not even be imaginable. But what is actually more interesting for me is some of the clients we're getting now to help them with their compliance as part of our consultancy. They're not actually coming to us because they want to be compliant or because they're part of an investigation or trying to win more business. We're seeing an increase in that customers are actually demanding that they demonstrate to them that they're going to protect their data. And we can see now that, especially in parts of Europe, it's being driven by the public. Whereas a few years ago, that was never the case. People weren’t really too concerned about their privacy. And one of the things you mentioned culturally, there is a common challenge I come across when I'm working with some international clients is they see this as a consumer right, something the business needs to be doing because there's a law, and it's almost like, well, it's just a checkbox exercise. However, in Europe, it's seen that privacy is a fundamental human right. Do you think that view of seeing it as a right versus something that we have to do to be compliant has a big impact on the culture and the way people view the requirements when it comes to meeting the requirements of the LGPD?

Definitely. Jamal and one thing that I think we're also doing wrong as privacy professionals in Brazil is that we focus for a long time on trying to make the business people realize that our privacy was right and that it was important and that they had to be compliant with it. Whereas we were supposed to be talking to the people themselves and say, hey, this is your right. You should be worried about this. You should be doing this. You should be charging the companies. They are processing your information, because this is an important thing. This is your right, and you have to care for it, because if the people were more aware than they would be talking to the company, hey, to the business, hey, I know you have my data there. I want you to take better care of it, and I want you to prove that to me. And the companies would have no choice but to comply with data privacy and to understand that that was actually a right and that their customers were demanding this from them. But we started the other way around. We started with the companies and say, hey, you have to comply. Then the companies didn't see why, because nobody was asking them to comply before. Nobody was telling them, this is my right, and you have to follow this legislation in order to provide me with my fundamental right. Nobody was doing this. And now we are trying to reverse this. We're trying to make people understand so that people can do themselves, can go to the company themselves and say are you complying with data privacy. And I think this changes the whole game. If people see that this is the right that they have, they tend to just go crazy about it and run for it. And I see this I saw this a lot with consumer law because our consumer law is really young in Brazil too. It's only 32 years old. And in the beginning, people didn't understand it. And then later, as soon as they understood that they had rights, they were going to the companies and say, hey, you're doing this, but this is wrong, because I have the right to do that and that and that. And I think this was our mistake as privacy professionals when raising awareness regarding privacy being important to the companies and not to the people, to the customers in general.

Yeah, that's a very interesting way of putting it, is focusing on the businesses. Actually it would have been more powerful if we focused on the individuals and helped them help by empowering them to understand what their rights are and what they should expect and what they should be saying is a fair a way to handle the personal information. And Karollayne, I know you've been doing lots of brilliant work speeches, giving talks and doing everything you can to empower individuals. And in fact, you first caught my attention when I saw you giving an empowering speech to a group of lawyers. And as part of that speech, I remember you quoted a Brazilian leader. I would like you to tell us more about that leader for people who might not be familiar with who they are. And I want you to repeat that quote in English this time and just explain why it's so powerful.

Definitely. So the leader you're talking about was a Brazilian lawyer, like one of the most famous lawyers we had in Brazil. And so it's funny because he was known for his human rights activism. I'm sure that if he was alive now and he's still lawyering, he would be a privacy freak just like us, trying to protect people's privacy as well. The quote was about how people see lawyers as these people that cannot be trusted because lawyers don't have fair games when they are trying to achieve what they're trying to achieve. And he said they should see us as heroes because we're providing people with the opportunity to fight for their rights. And that's what he did when fighting for human rights. And I'm sure that's what he would be doing now if he was alive regarding data privacy here in Brazil.

Yeah, I'm sure he would exactly be fighting for those privacy rights if he was with us right now. Karollayne, that was actually really inspiring when I saw you give that speech. Thank you for sharing that with our listeners. On the podcast earlier you mentioned you were doing consumer law, and as you were working on a client case, you started getting more interested in actually protecting people's information. And then you realized, Europe’s already got this law is coming into effect. We don't have anything in Brazil. And the more you looked into it, you said you suddenly found your passion for privacy, and then at some point, you decided you're going to do this for the rest of your life or for the foreseeable future. It must have been a scary journey going from being a top consumer lawyer, saying, I now want to pivot my career to privacy. Can you talk us through how you managed to successfully go from becoming consumer lawyer to becoming a privacy lawyer in a country who is not yet valuing privacy and seeing it in demand and still make a successful career out of it?

It was a slow process. There was no like one day I woke up and I said, I'm going to be a privacy lawyer now. I just decided that I want to know more about privacy at first, and I tried to seek for this knowledge, and I read the GDPR, and I watched several videos about data privacy in Europe. I studied the whole thing, and then I said, well, I'm going to do this now. Now I think I'm ready. And as I told you, we tried to implement this slowly in the office, and we thought it didn't work because nobody was worrying about data privacy at the time. So I let go of that project, and I just held on to some individual separate projects, like the privacy commentary, which is really recent, but before that, just doing personal projects that were regarding data privacy. Sometimes I did it on my own. Sometimes I found people that were willing to work with me on those projects. And when I saw I was already doing privacy work, I was already spreading the word about privacy. Everywhere I went. I was like, hey, do you know about privacy? How are you taking care of your data? This and that. Sometimes I saw someone post something on social media, and I was like, hey, you shouldn't be posting this information. It should be confidential. This could be something bad for you. Or I saw lawyers post information about their clients, and I just reached out to them and say, hey, besides the ethics, I think if you're sharing this, perhaps you could be disrespecting your clients privacy rights. And it started like this really slow, and it was more like an awareness work. As I told you, I started spreading the word about privacy, talking to people about privacy, asking people in order to learn more about what privacy was and what was their view on privacy, until the potential rose for me to actually work in data privacy. And now I am focused on providing training for data privacy to companies. This is my only thing that I'm doing at the moment. And it's what I love. I love to do it. I love to raise awareness. I love to try to build this culture of data privacy. I love talking about privacy. It's really exciting.

Yeah, I agree. I spend so much of my time delivering training both to individual companies so they can become empowered to become world class privacy professionals. And when I'm, with my actual clients in the businesses, empowering them to understand how to really use the policies, the processes, the training we're given, not just to be compliant, but to actually go beyond compliance, to cultivate trust, to inspire confidence, and ultimately have a more successful company that everybody values and respects. And what they notice is when you get that cultural shift, you get more buy in from the employees. The employees are happy that their data is being handled respectfully by the company. Their records are not going to be seen by anyone, so they feel more open having all these conversations with their managers. And all of that translates on to the customers, because your people are your biggest assets. They're the ones that are speaking to your customers. And when they can get that assurance from the people that speak to in your company that their data will be dealt with respectfully, then it really helps people to open up, trust more and do more business with you.

Yes, I agree with you. Jamal, when I first started talking about privacy, people called me crazy, like you’re being a freak because I was worried about social media. I deleted a lot of the accounts that I had. And when I looked back at the person I was before I started working with data privacy, I'm really proud now because I was among those people sharing a lot of personal information about myself on social media. I was that person. And now I look to these people and I still understand where they're coming from. I know that they don't have the awareness like I didn't have at the time, and that we should bring this to them so they can protect their own right, so that they can fight for it.

That's so powerful. You're saying as part of our accelerator program, we have a module on privacy leadership. And one of the things I teach my mentees to say that if you want to be an empowered privacy leader, you have to have the belief and the assumption that everyone is doing the best they can with the knowledge and resources available to them. And if you see something that is below what it should be or isn't quite right, then it's up to you as a leader to take responsibility to empower them. So, Karollayne, we have a lot of listeners from across the world who are very interested in pivoting the career to privacy or really taking the career to the next level. And a lot of the things that you said about your journey, I can resonate with because I remember when I first wanted to say, yes, I'm going all into privacy. It's not just like, yeah, I opened the door, somebody knocked on my door and said, hey, we're going to hire you as a privacy pro. And also it was very slow and I was advocating and I was talking about privacy and I almost became the annoying privacy police at one point. And I remember at one point, I actually was very unpopular within a certain group in the industry. So in the UK, we have a really big charity sector. And one of the challenges I found with the charity sector was, on one hand, they say, trust us with your money, but it's not just trust us with your money, it's your asking for trust, but we can't trust you with personal information. A lot of people don't want to donate because they get their details and those guys shared with all the other charities say this person donates to charities and they get phone calls and letters and they just get annoyed. And there was one woman, actually, we had a case in the UK where a woman, she was an elderly woman and she was someone who had a very soft heart and she would give money to charity and somehow her data was shared with all sorts of charities saying, hey, this is the person who donates.

And they would keep calling her and writing to her and trying to get money to the point where this woman decided to take her own knife because she couldn't cope anymore. And when the family went to the house, all they saw was how much mail she had about different campaigns and how many phone calls were coming in about charities asking for money. And they realized that this isn't something that can go on. And thankfully, in the UK, things have changed a lot more. So that was one side of it. The other side of it, the thing that I found very disturbing was there's aid workers going out and doing some amazing work. Let me be very clear here, I respect aid workers so much, they go and give up their own welfare, they give up their own safety just to help others in need. And sometimes they need to capture what they're doing so they can actually share the great work with people. Sometimes they have to show the charity boards and other people and the stakeholders and make sure that they actually delivering what's supposed to do. But a lot of the time they will take those information and some of the volunteers that go with them, some of the members of the team, as they're helping vulnerable people, they're filming everything on their phones, they're taking photos and just uploading whatever they feel like on social media. And for me, that hurts because, look, some of these people, they've had everything taken away from them, either through a disaster, through some kind of war through something. They've lost their family, some of them have lost their job, some of them have lost all of their possessions.

The only thing they have left is their dignity. And you're stripping them of their dignity by uploading whatever you want, just to get a few likes on social media and show everyone what a great person you are. Actually, you'd be a greater person if you didn't share all of those things. And you relied on your creator for your reward for doing this amazing work. And I was very vocal about that and I realized I was going about it maybe a bit too aggressive. And the more aggressive I became, the more I got resistance from the industry and the industry leaders, almost to a point where I was almost like public enemy of charities, number one. Right? And then I decided, you know what, I have to actually change my approach here. Rather than calling them out and attacking them for what they're doing, why don't I find ways of helping them? So I started finding ways to go and advocate for them, offer free training, get onto panels and talk about the importance of this stuff. And now we're seeing a massive change. That also means we're actually working with quite a number of charities now as well. So from being an enemy to being best friends with them and actually supporting them and helping them to meet their objectives and have a bigger impact has been a long journey and I've learnt so many things along the way. And what I resonate with what you were saying about your story was it wasn't just a hero to zero or from nowhere to success overnight.

You actually had to spend time building your personal brand, speaking about these things, finding opportunities to volunteer to do this stuff, either yourself or partnering with other people. And so what I'm trying to take away from this is when anyone is thinking about pivoting their career to privacy, one of the things that's going to hold you back is your lack of experience. There are things we can do about that, but here is a way Karollayne has just showed you what she did. What I did when we first started on our journeys, when we found this passion for privacy, is we started looking for what we could do in our roles, in our organizations, in our communities, to start getting some practice. And understanding how to actually take the theory of the GDPR or whatever, the privacy laws we've read and start implementing that in a way where we start building that competence. We start making a positive impact and over time, our reputation precede ourselves and now we can pick and choose the clients we want. We get asked to do speeches, keynote speeches all over the world. We get to do some lots of amazing and fun stuff. But it's so rewarding as well, because one of the things Karollayne and I both do is we teach. And we don't teach because it pays well. We’re consultants, but we teach because it's so satisfying when you're with individuals and you can help them to understand their privacy rights when you're with professionals and you can help them to unleash whatever is holding them back. That imposter syndrome, that self doubt, that lack of wanting to put themselves out there, and suddenly they get this boost of energy. They have total understanding and they're very clear on how to operationalize privacy law. They go and they make amazing results. And it's only by empowering enough people will be then able to achieve our vision together of making sure that every woman, every man, and every child enjoys their right to privacy wherever they are on the planet.

It's funny you mentioned Jamal, because before being a lawyer, I was a teacher. I used to teach English and I taught English in several different schools. And my first move when I actually became a privacy lawyer was to reach out to this company that I had worked for and say, hey, what are you doing about data privacy? How would you feel if I came in, stepped in, and I gave a training to your employees? So that was the first thing I did besides talking to the people that are already around me, family and everyone. That was the first active move I made on being a privacy professional. And I think this is something anyone can do. And just look around yourself and see who you could help regarding data privacy. You need the experience and they need your knowledge.

There's two key things, Karollayne that you've really highlighted there. Number one is you have to be an action taker. Like, you didn't just sit there waiting for opportunities to come to you. You went knocking on doors, you made phone calls, you wrote emails, you were taking action. You did whatever you needed to do to grow as a professional. And the second thing you said there is that it's all about making sure that you're in the right place at the right time. And the way you put yourself in the right place at the right time, it isn't luck. Like opportunity favours the prepared mind. And your mind was prepared because you're looking for opportunities. And therefore it was no coincidence you were the right person at the right time because you did everything to put yourself in that situation. So the first thing I want to say there is really commend you for being an action taker and really putting yourself out there. And the second thing is you actually took risks. People could have said no to you, but you were resilient enough to say, it doesn't matter if they said no, it's just an opportunity to serve. And this second mindset is such a big thing. And that's the difference between the people who actually do amazing things and the people who stay stuck where they are. The ones who stay stuck where they are asking, what can I get? How can I get a pay rise? How can I get a promotion? How can I go and work for a better company? And the ones who are actually achieving the amazing things and you see is they're thinking, how can I serve? What can I give? But you decide. I have all of this experience as a trainer. I have a relationship with the company. I can come and give some value there. I can come and empower them to understand their privacy rights. I can add value here through creating educational post on LinkedIn. I can help this company with awareness campaigns and stuff. And it's when you start asking yourself, what can I give? Things start really changing for you and the needles start shifting on your professional career. Tell us more about that, Karollayne. What made you, number one to be an action taker and how did you develop this mindset of what can I give?

It's not easy. We all know about impostor syndrome, but I've always been this person. I've always been this person to try out things, just see what happens. And I did this with English. When I started teaching English, I knew how to speak and I was like, why not teach? And I tried out and it worked out and then I did this without data privacy. So I think the first thing that you have to do is just tell yourself that nothing's going to happen if you don't try. Like, we always have this idea that we don't want to fail, but it's from failing that we achieve things, that we learn, that we grow. So tell yourself that if you're not willing to make mistakes, then you're never going to make the impact that you wish to. And I think that's what everyone wants in the end. Everyone wants to make an impact. Sometimes we just settle for less because we're too scared to take the leap. But eventually, that's what everyone wants. So if that's what you want, don't settle for us. Go for it. Try it out, because that's the only way you can achieve anything.

I agree fully 100%. One of my mentors actually said to me, Jamal, if you want to grow, then remember, growth only comes outside of your comfort zone, right? Growth only comes outside of your comfort zone. And I have that written in my notepad, on the front of my notepad, so it reminds me every day. So if I want to grow every day, then I have to go and do something that makes me a bit uncomfortable. And one of the things that actually we'd focus on doing this week is taking videos and posting them on social media or specifically LinkedIn. And usually I like to kind of prepare if I'm going to do a video and have somebody edit it. And I was like, oh, yeah, these are all the things that need to happen. But I was like, you know what? Progress over perfection. I'm just going to shoot, point, and record. No edits, no second takes. And if you look at some of my earlier videos, you'll see that I'm struggling to stay focused on the camera lens, and I'm looking at where my hand is holding the actual button. But that's the thing. Like, you have to go over that. I have to get over the fear, and I have to go and do it anyway. Otherwise, I'm just going to hold myself back saying, I'm going to wait for this to happen. And when I get this happen, and then when I make more money and I hire a studio and a professional cameraman, and I'm going to like, there are so many excuses we can make. And the problem is, a lot of the time we have the wrong mindset. We focus on all of the things that could go wrong rather than asking ourselves, wouldn't it be great if? And another one of my mentors actually taught me that. He said, every time you have a doubt or a question, replace it with instead of saying what if? Because your brain is always going to give you the negatives, because our subconscious ones protect ourselves. Change it to wouldn't it be great if and see how that changes the questions you ask yourself. And another one of my mentors actually said to me, the quality of your career, the quality of your life, will depend on how powerful the questions that you ask yourself are.

That's great. Jamal and I just thought about, like, sometimes a lot of times as privacy professionals do this, when it comes to raising awareness, we tell ourselves, nobody wants to hear that. I mean, nobody cares about the data. And if I tell this person, she's not going to like what she's going to hear. And sometimes we don't do the privacy work. We don't spread the word. We don't talk about privacy because we think we're boring people, or people don't care about data, they don’t want to know. But if we tried, perhaps something bad wouldn’t happen, we would plant a seat behind the person's mind in the back of their mind, and later they would realize how data privacy is important and they would think of the first person who told them that, which was Jamal or Karollayne. It was really scary at first because nobody was talking about that data privacy. And I was like, hey, you shouldn't be doing this. Hey, you know data privacy? And people were like, just didn't care. Privacy is not a thing that's just not going to happen in Brazil. And I heard this many times, and this could have stopped me from raising awareness, from continuing to do what I like to do, but I didn't because I knew that at some point, those people they will understand. And the first person who told them about data privacy was me. They're going to remember that.

I love that resilience and I love that tenacity of I have to keep going. And you know what? Whoever said privacy is not going to happen for Brazil is probably eating their hat right now because it is happening for Brazil and it's growing faster in Brazil than any other South American country or state that I've seen. And what we're seeing is more and more companies from outside of Brazil want to do business with Brazil. And those companies need to demonstrate that they can also meet the requirements of the GDPR and they're hiring also privacy pros like you Karollayne to come and deliver the training for their team, put in place the processes, identify what technical measures they need to be able to win that business. So you were in the right place at the right time, and the fact that you kept going means now you have a reputation as one of the leaders in Brazil, as a leading privacy pro. And as your career progresses, it's only going to be thanks to the work that you put in at the beginning when it was tough, but you still kept going. And I think that is like a really key message I want you to take away if you're listening intently now, is that it's all about having that resilience, having that belief in yourself and keeping going instead of fearing all the things that could go wrong. Just ask yourself, wouldn't it be great if and when you get stuck and you find yourself feeling a little bit of doubt or like an imposter? Just remember Karollayne's story that Karollayne is living proof that if you keep going and you have the right attitude, you can achieve all of your dreams. And even beyond that, Karollayne, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing. Now one of the things Jamilla gets to do when she's actually hosting. And by the way, guys, I'm sorry if you're missing Jamilla today. I know she is the star on the podcast. Unfortunately, she's otherwise engaged. But Jamilla always gives the guests an opportunity to ask me a question, whatever you like. So I'm also going to extend that courtesy to you.

I know, I understand that you mentioned today that Privacy Pros Academy is dedicated to helping privacy professionals thrive in the data privacy world. And I understand that you have mentored and still mentor a lot of people. So my question to you goes to regarding raising awareness on data privacy. With your experience, how do you think privacy professionals are playing their part in this? What best action have you seen them take when it comes to raising awareness on that of privacy?

I think the best thing privacy professionals can do when it comes to raising awareness is finding opportunities to go and give back. So, for example, earlier this week, I was invited to go and talk about children's online internet safety. And I could have said, what's in it for me? I don't work with children. Children are not my customers. There's no B2B clients there. But actually I said, you know what, it's my responsibility to give back. And I know I can go and I can talk about online harms and I can talk about why privacy and sharing and oversharing information could actually lead to negative consequences. And I can bring in a lot of expertise I have to help these children and their parents to understand how they can keep them safe online and I can also introduce the idea of privacy and why it's important and why we shouldn't just give up all the information. And we should be careful with who our children share information with and how we should have those conversations, to empower them, to make choices, and also to feel comfortable coming to us when they feel a little bit unsure or uncomfortable. So it's looking for opportunities that are not directly related to your line of work, that's not directly related to you winning a client or winning a new role, but that actually is giving back. So people recognize, hey, this person is making sense. Yeah, this privacy stuff is actually quite important. I never actually thought just by me sharing a picture of me celebrating my birthday and that I'm 20 years old on this day. Which means somebody now knows my date of birth, and that someone else, they can get my email from somewhere else, and they've actually seen the road I live in because my friend posted a picture of them coming to pick me up. And with that, they can actually go and create an account and pretend to be me and collect more information. And the next thing I know, someone's taking out a loan in my name. They've got a car and I can't even get a mobile phone contract. Why?

Because I was careless with my information. So it's about actually, stop talking about what the law says, stop talking about the legal requirements, and actually talk about people in their day to day lives and how it impacts them. And from that, like you said, Karollayne, you plant the seed, you nurture that it grows. And when there is a need, you're going to be the first person they think of, but the first person they recommend, and eventually it will come back and pay it for you anyway. And this is only achievable if we focus on what we can give rather than what we can get. I hope that answers your question.

Definitely. And just before we finish. I experienced this so many times when we were trying to train lawyers, who were getting into data privacy, that they were like, oh my God, this is a lot of work, this law came to ruin our lives, blah, blah, blah. All of these things that we all heard about data privacy and it was so hard to make them understand that what we were telling them was actually something that they had to care for themselves because they were also a data subject. They also have personal data that they have to take care of, not only their clients. And I think this is so difficult to do when you are doing privacy work, when you are trying to raise awareness, make people see that they are not only trying to protect other people's data, but also they have to protect themselves.

Yeah. So that's what I actually try to do when I'm delivering training and when I'm working with clients and their teams is I try to make it realistic for them. So instead of talking about the law requires you to do this, are you painting examples of how it would actually impact them? And I say if it impacted you like that, imagine how you feel. Do you want your customers to feel like that? Would you want your family members who might be doing business with you now or later down the line to feel like that? No. How would you want them to feel instead? And then suddenly the penny drops and they get the AHA moments and we have to put them in that situation where they can actually see and get out of, this is so boring. And why this data privacy stuff? Who is this guy? And when you make it real for them, you give them real life, tangible examples and you break it down in a way that anyone can understand. You get awesome buy in and you really create a shift in culture in those organizations.

Yes. I just wanted to say, Jamal, I think you're doing great work when it comes to raising privacy awareness. And a lot of times I'm inspired by you post on LinkedIn so that I can post myself because I must say that's a hard test, something hard to do. And I see you're posting so many times, so I'm like, I'm also going to do this about privacy. So if anyone out there wants to take any action regarding data privacy but is just scared to take the leap, to try it out, don’t, just do it.

Yeah, absolutely. Karollayne, you are so kind. Thank you very much for your kind words and those words of encouragement at the end. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Folks until next time, peace be with you.

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