Data privacy is a team sport with Bettina Lippisch

On this episode of Navigating Forward, Lisa Thee chats with Bettina Lippisch, VP of Privacy & Data Governance at Omeda. With a background that includes stints on marketing and product teams in addition to operations, Bettina is passionate about connecting teams and helping them understand each other’s language. Also joining in the conversation is Doug Kachelmuss, Director of Data Architecture & Engineering at Launch Consulting. 

The trio discuss data privacy and governance, how it’s constantly changing, and how there’s a misconception that proper governance stifles innovation. They delve into preparation for when data breaches happen and how developing muscle memory can help with mitigation when the inevitable happens. And, last but not least, they explain why privacy doesn’t have to be a four-letter word for product and development teams. 

Find Lisa at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisathee
Find Bettina at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bettinalindner
Find Doug at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougkachelmuss

Transcript

00:00:01:29 - 00:00:24:03
Narrator
At a crossroads of uncertainty and opportunity, how do you navigate forward? This podcast focuses on making smart choices in a rapidly changing world. We investigate the challenges of being at a crossroads and finding opportunities that arise out of disruption. Listen in on future-forward conversations with the brightest luminaries, movers, and shakers. Let's navigate forward together and create what's next.

00:00:25:08 - 00:00:47:10
Lisa Thee
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Navigating Forward podcast. My name is Lisa Thee and I'll be your host today. We love to collect the most luminary movers, shakers, and industry thought leaders to help us navigate through these uncertain times. And today is no exception. Really excited today to talk to Bettina Lippisch and Doug Kachelmuss about the topics of privacy and security and governance.

00:00:47:24 - 00:01:09:07
Lisa Thee
And so today we have the luxury of having Bettina here, who is a data steward for her company, and somebody that really helps make sure that all the data that's collected on behalf of consumers is used in the way that it was intended with transparency and with a lot of cybersecurity. And she is going to be here to teach us all how to do a better job at that.

00:01:09:11 - 00:01:10:25
Lisa Thee
So, thank you for joining us, Bettina.

00:01:11:10 - 00:01:18:01
Bettina Lippisch
So excited to be here talking about one of my all-time favorite things: privacy, security and most of all, data.

00:01:18:26 - 00:01:34:22
Lisa Thee
Awesome. And I also have a guest from the Launch Consulting side, which is Doug Kachelmuss, who is our Director of Data and AI at Launch Consulting. And we are going to be having an exciting, dynamic three-way conversation. So welcome to the podcast, Doug.

00:01:35:15 - 00:01:37:23
Doug Kachelmuss
Thank you. Happy to be here. Really excited for this topic.

00:01:38:17 - 00:01:48:22
Lisa Thee
Awesome. So, Bettina, for somebody who doesn't know anything about your area of expertise, can you give us an overview of what you do that perhaps a grandmother or a young child might understand?

00:01:49:21 - 00:02:13:00
Bettina Lippisch
Yes, I'll do my best to do that. But in the most simplest of explanations, I really consider myself, as you said, as a data steward, making sure that the data and the information the organization holds either on our own behalf or on behalf of our clients and customers, is really protected, can be trusted, and also instills that trust.

00:02:13:06 - 00:02:43:02
Bettina Lippisch
We have hundreds of millions of records that we govern for our clients, so a lot of responsibility and with that much responsibility comes also a lot of requirements nowadays, specifically in the space where we have a lot of regulations coming into place. It started off really with the GDPR in the EU and now we're seeing a lot of regulations coming up in the U.S. We’ve got California, which is the big one, and we had several other this year coming into play.

00:02:43:25 - 00:03:20:20
Bettina Lippisch
And of course, we have a national privacy regulation on the horizon, which, fingers crossed we might or might not see this year, but definitely nothing that an organization can shrug off anymore. It's a requirement. It's mandatory. And I'm really here to help the organization not just understand what we're required to do to keep the data safe and keep the data governed in a way it's required for our clients, but also to make sure that from a cultural perspective, this is something that we want to embrace across the organization and everything we do should be with the trust of the data in mind to make sure that nothing there goes wrong.

00:03:21:15 - 00:03:43:03
Bettina Lippisch
Lots of privacy harms, lots of security risk making data governance a priority. And I think it's fair to say that these days all companies are data companies, after all, because I don't think there's a single company, even if you don't have client data or customer data or any other data, you likely have HR data that is very sensitive.

00:03:43:04 - 00:04:02:06
Bettina Lippisch
You might have health care data, other things that are even stricter governed than what we do. But I think that's really the mantra is every data is a data company and we need to invest, and we need to really focus on having a practice in place that governs that data as needed. Wouldn’t you say so, Doug? Being on the data side as well?

00:04:03:20 - 00:04:26:17
Doug Kachelmuss
Absolutely. And that's what we're seeing quite, quite a bit in the industry, is everyone's really on the journey of becoming a really data oriented organization. And it's really up to folks like Bettina and I to really spearhead some of those initiatives and really help guide them in their journeys to where they want to go and understand what that North Star is. So absolutely.

00:04:27:05 - 00:04:37:21
Lisa Thee
Wonderful. So, Bettina, can you tell me a little bit about Omeda and what they do and why you have so many customer records so people can relate to maybe some of the business challenges that you guys face as a company?

00:04:38:16 - 00:05:11:09
Bettina Lippisch
Sure. So, in general, we are a marketing and data management company, in the simplest of terms. We are providing subscription services, we have an email platform, and all of that sits on top of a centralized database where we provide our customers with a single view of the customer. So, any kind of customer data they collect, they can access and can distribute through our channels and market to those customers, activate those customers, acquire those customers.

00:05:12:04 - 00:05:31:23
Bettina Lippisch
And of course, with that comes a lot of governance in the sense of permissioning and with the sense of consent management at getting the data in, but then also processing the data as we all or many of you would have heard, data processing is one of the big things that is covered in many of the existing and new privacy laws on the horizon.

00:05:32:09 - 00:05:56:10
Bettina Lippisch
So, the reason we have that much data is because we are having this data on behalf of our clients in our databases so they can use it in a well-governed way and also make sure that it sits in a secure single place where they can access it and do things with it and reconcile it as well. And I think that's really one of the things that a lot of companies nowadays face.

00:05:56:10 - 00:06:39:11
Bettina Lippisch
They have so many different places where their data lives and we're providing them a tool and a repository where they can bring that data together under a single customer record. So, let's say you sign up over here with your personal email and you request a subscription over here with your work email, we can reconcile that data together so somebody can market to that person or send them an email and know it's the same person, which also ties back to data governance, because now you don't have to go into all these different places if somebody opts out and say, I need to remove them here, I need to remove them here, there's a lot of automation involved to make sure that we can pass on those data governance tools within the platform to our clients to do it the right way.

00:06:39:26 - 00:06:58:18
Lisa Thee
So, it sounds like you guys have really focused on an enterprise type solution that really takes the needs of the business leader in mind of, I'm here to sell a product or a service. I want to find the right people that might be a great target for that product or service. But I also want to be respectful of how I use their information and that it's in a way that they've consented to.

00:06:58:18 - 00:07:34:05
Lisa Thee
And if they’ve not, that I have a framework for addressing that effectively. As a person who lives in California, we definitely have some pretty progressive privacy laws. And so, I have seen in the past how difficult it really can be for businesses to meet the requirements of those laws. So it's really wonderful to see that innovation at scale and becoming that trusted partner with the business leaders that are responsible for this data, because nobody really wants to wake up with their face on the news because of a data breach. I haven't met that person yet. 

00:07:34:05 - 00:07:35:00
Bettina Lippisch
You don't want to be that person.

00:07:36:20 - 00:07:53:23
Lisa Thee
Becoming a cybersecurity, AI, and data expert overnight is not a very realistic obligation for somebody coming out of an MBA program. I think that each one of those domains could be a lifetime of a career. I know I've certainly invested quite a bit in mine, and I don't feel like I could do all three of those things at once.

00:07:53:23 - 00:08:16:08
Lisa Thee
So, Doug, can you talk a little bit about why you might want to look at consulting to come in and help you in some of these areas? Because I think people have a lot of pressure to meet goals in a cost-effective way and really thinking through the return on investments that they make, especially with budgets cutting back, why would you want to focus in this area? What are you seeing out in the market with some of your clients?

00:08:16:17 - 00:09:05:19
Doug Kachelmuss
Great question. And really what I’ve been seeing is it really goes back to when I was slinging code back in the day and we'd have the compliance or security folks come into the room, immediately we were saying, oh, we're going have more work on our hands. And so, you'd want to dodge them, and you'd want to say, okay, what are the things that we can get through, we can get through faster and we can avoid these folks within the organization. And there's a huge shift going on right now that we know we're seeing really across industries from, hey, we're going to gather as much data. And that was success back then. So now really driving innovation and something that really drives, I'm seeing innovation within organizations is data privacy and security.

00:09:05:27 - 00:09:39:08
Doug Kachelmuss
And that's not a popular thing that people don't really think of that. But folks like Bettina and others really help provide those guidelines to really foster really an environment for innovative thinking and really progressive organizations have this mindset to leverage and partner with folks in data privacy and security to really drive some really incredible things that we're seeing and we're starting to see in various spaces like AI, RPA, and some of the analytics solutions.

00:09:39:21 - 00:09:44:19
Lisa Thee
Yeah. So do you mind sharing with our audience that might not know what RPA stands for, what that is.

00:09:45:04 - 00:10:11:00
Doug Kachelmuss
Oh, sure. Robotic Process Automation, and really a lot of folks are seeing this to help reduce costs within their organization and think of some of the manual, repetitive processes that you may have going on in your organization to really take that work off of folks doing manual data entry and build a consistent, repetitive way to really foster some of these processes so that you can actually focus more on innovation.

00:10:11:07 - 00:10:20:00
Doug Kachelmuss
And we're seeing lots of organizations focus on this and actually complement tools with AI and ML in this as well to help with some of their decision making.

00:10:20:09 - 00:11:01:11
Lisa Thee
Yeah, it is an interesting time that we're living through in that there's a lot of data that's been collected over the last decade, but even when you look at, you know, just in the last year, the volume of data and the different types of formats of data that are being collected is just exponentially diversifying. And so, it's not so much anymore a how do you trap the information problem that it used to be. And now it's how do you glean the wisdom out of all these disparate data sets in a cyber secure way that allows you to have those aha moments where you're hearing the voice of your customer, where those big innovative things, thinking could come because the people that are on the front lines that are your subject matter experts have enough information to make an informed decision.

00:11:01:20 - 00:11:30:12
Lisa Thee
And until you get to a place where the data is not so siloed that people are only seeing their little corner of the elephant, it's really difficult to come together as a team and collaborate. So, Bettina, can you talk about an example of a time when you guys have been in that situation where you were looking towards leveraging more of the data in a responsible way, but also thinking through how to be cost effective and where to even start? I think a lot of people don't know where their risks really are. Can you talk a little bit about how you navigate through some of those challenges?

00:11:31:09 - 00:12:06:17
Bettina Lippisch
Yes, it's a very big question with a lot of different answers, depending on which of which part of the organization you sit in. But I think the core where it comes down to is making sure that your data, practice data hygiene and understand what data you hold, where does it live and how can it be accessed, by whom can it be accessed, especially regarding security and risk management, but also really trying to understand which of the data I'm actively using and what I should be using.

00:12:06:29 - 00:12:25:26
Bettina Lippisch
For example, I was on the client side before I came to my current company and the mantra has always been very reactive. It's like, let's get everything and the kitchen sink and we'll figure it out later. Data storage was cheap. Nobody cared, just put it somewhere. And if we ever do something with it, great. If not, it's also not hurting anything.

00:12:25:26 - 00:13:13:14
Bettina Lippisch
Those times are really over. And I think the big challenge here for many companies, especially some of our clients, even, it's like, how do you take that new paradigm of data minimization and really understanding what data you hold, then also willing to clean it up and get rid of the data that's bad or redundant or no longer current and really pivot towards a model and also the way you monetize the data that is focused on very specific products or very specific things. It's not like, you know, in the past, it's like, oh my, my email list has 30,000 people, my competitor's only has 25,000 people in it. I win. The idea of not ever thinking about the engagement or what are the people that are on this list actually do with my product?

00:13:13:28 - 00:13:50:11
Bettina Lippisch
Can I monetize on that? This conversation is rapidly changing, not just with the better analytics that we can add to that data to figure out what's working and what's not, but also with some of those restrictions. So, my guidance for any organization would be, have good retention policies and practice really good data hygiene and also understand like what data do you need to support which products, and then take the data and really deliberately use it to create monetization models and not just think like, oh, eventually I'll come up with something because nowadays that doesn't work anymore.

00:13:50:11 - 00:14:17:24
Bettina Lippisch
And if you were to be breached or likely when you be breached, because I think it's not no longer an “if,” it's a “when” situation, you want to make sure you know exactly what data could have been stolen. There's all kinds of like, notification requirements, mitigation requirements. The last thing you want to go to a regulator or do you want to go to law enforcement or your cybersecurity insurance and say, oops, my data got stolen, but it was a lot, but I don't really know what it was.

00:14:19:03 - 00:14:55:20
Lisa Thee
So, you don't want your data lake to turn into a data swamp and then have your records stolen and not know any kind of map of what you had there before. So, in that instance, there's a lot of regulation that's driving some of these changes. Can you, you mentioned a little bit earlier in the podcast that there's a lot of different laws that are coming to fruition over the next 12 to 24 months that you're paying attention to in terms of helping it to steer your innovation. Can you share a little bit about what are some of the most recent laws that you've navigated around? And then what are you preparing for in the future?

00:14:56:19 - 00:15:02:21
Bettina Lippisch
Just as a disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer, so this is not meant to be legal advice, which I always have to say.

00:15:03:19 - 00:15:09:11
Lisa Thee
Thank you for saying that, and we all learn from each other. I'm not a lawyer either, but I have a lot of clients that are.

00:15:10:03 - 00:15:58:13
Bettina Lippisch
So, I don't want to go into each of the individual laws specifically. But, you know, Utah has been on the news, Of course, California, we’ve got the federal privacy regulation. There's several other states that have launched or will launch this year. I think what's more important is looking at the common denominators that are coming with these laws. And each one is slightly different, but they all have certain themes in common. One is a big focus on data subject rights. So, it's really making sure that you can fulfill those subject rights. You know, anything from like what's similar to what we're seeing with some of the GDPR, like the forget me laws, like delete this person from your database. So again, this ties back to good data hygiene and understanding where your data lives, because when you get those requests, you are now required to remove that person from any one of your data repositories and from any kind of processing.

00:15:58:13 - 00:16:24:13
Bettina Lippisch
So for organizations, that means they've got to be prepared if they have a big kind of like data lake and they have to go into all the, you know, kind of you drive around the shore and find every little place where that person might live or you have you have good tools in place, like Doug mentioned earlier, that help you do some of those things in a more meaningful and automated fashion.

00:16:24:26 - 00:16:57:02
Bettina Lippisch
Other requirements are also around security. Many of these laws are now starting to come up with requirements about governing the data, not just from a compliance and from a consent perspective, but also from a security perspective, which I think we're seeing with some of the frameworks that are gaining popularity. A lot of companies I'm hearing are using something like NIST, which is which is a security framework, and it also now has a privacy arm to it, which are great frameworks for organizations to look through and become compliant.

00:16:57:16 - 00:17:50:14
Bettina Lippisch
But in general, these laws really put the responsibility on the company to safeguard the data they’re holding, no matter if they're just a repository or if they're actually like the controller of the data to use a GDPR term here, which I think between those couple of things, those are for me, the highlights that I encourage every company to have their ducks in a row to make sure that they can fulfill those data subject requests, safeguard their data, and also understand how they're collecting, and last, I think processing is becoming more and more of a big topic that requires transparency around how the data is being processed at the point of entry. GDPR takes it to a whole new level. But for the U.S., mostly we're seeing more and more regulations coming into place where a company is required to disclose like, how am I going to process your data?

00:17:51:04 - 00:18:09:16
Bettina Lippisch
Who am I going to share it with? And it can't be just a blanket statement to third parties or partners. It has to be specific. So, these privacy notices that people click through on the website will become a big topic of making them transparent and keeping them updated if you are a company that collects a lot of public data.

00:18:10:04 - 00:18:40:03
Lisa Thee
So, Bettina, what I think I’m hearing is that we have some frameworks that have come in from Europe and the cybersecurity space, things like GDPR that give us at least a level playing field across the industry of what the minimum effective dose of cybersecurity needs to be in order to be compliant. We're now starting to see a similar pattern in the privacy space of new laws coming in to protect consumers and give them more autonomy about how their data is used, how it's collected, if it's kept, things of that nature.

00:18:40:29 - 00:18:56:27
Lisa Thee
So, it puts a lot of burden on industry to be thinking through what are the standards in the frameworks that we want to use. You mentioned NIST, which is always super helpful because at least you have a lot of varied perspectives contributing to these standards to give you at least a baseline of maybe some blind spots you might not see around.

00:18:57:10 - 00:19:28:12
Lisa Thee
Doug, I would love your perspective as somebody who is kind of leading in the consulting space. For somebody who's like, I have this gut feeling that I have data in a lot of different places, and I don't know it. I have this gut feeling that there is some risk here, but I don't even know where to start. How do you engage somebody to help you navigate this path towards confidence that the, not the if, but the when something doesn't go right, that you're well-prepared as a business leader and you're doing your fiduciary responsibility to the company?

00:19:28:25 - 00:20:10:13
Doug Kachelmuss
First thing I would echo is what Bettina was mentioning earlier is go through the exercise of if you were breached, what would you do? You know, I think of, I've got three kids and they go through fire drills all the time at school. And it's to really build that muscle memory of if something were to happen, hopefully it doesn't, what do you do? So, walking through these and relating it to cybersecurity, you know, compliance is, every year it's a little different and it's like your fire drill changing each and every year. So, building that muscle memory. And it also is forcing you to understand the roles, responsibilities of folks during if one of these things were to happen. So that's first and foremost.

00:20:10:14 - 00:20:33:25
Doug Kachelmuss
I don't believe many companies are actually doing that these days. It's something that we tend to ask, and we get looked at with, oh yeah, sure, we'll get around to that at some point. Then it's really navigating the overall data landscape and understanding where do I begin? Back ten years ago, I was going and collecting as much data as I possibly could from every single source from the sun.

00:20:33:25 - 00:20:53:02
Doug Kachelmuss
And I'm just not sure. So, it's really doing an assessment of, and I look at it as like a heat map of your data infrastructure. What am I using? Where's the hot data? Where's the stuff that I'm leveraging most often and where's the cold stuff that we're like, maybe I haven't accessed in quite some time, and put together some policies to help do this.

00:20:53:15 - 00:21:25:01
Doug Kachelmuss
And I'm seeing this actually even in some of the vendors these days, that vendors are making it much easier for organizations and they're building it into their data platforms even to help with this. Some of the cloud vendors as well are really getting into this space and making this a priority to really help organizations provide this insight. So, understanding where you're at right now and then having a vision and helping craft that vision and where do we want to go, the organization, and tie that to your business needs and then really putting that plan in place to help get you there.

00:21:25:09 - 00:21:46:02
Doug Kachelmuss
That's really, you know, what I see. We work with many organizations on what does that roadmap look like and really executing on that to really focus on what's the minimal amount of data that you need so people are not swimming in this ocean, that they can actually find their data in a fast and secure manner so that they can really drive very quick business insights.

00:21:46:13 - 00:22:10:16
Lisa Thee
And it really is about having the right information at the right time. So, there's definitely moments that matter and your customers’ journey with you and your innovation journey as a company. And so having a clear path for the governance of your data, the security of it, and maintaining the privacy requirements that are coming in through legislation is key.

00:22:11:06 - 00:22:34:29
Lisa Thee
In order to do that, though, most companies are running in a zero-based budget kind of methodology right now. Like you have to go find the money to make the money. So, one of the questions I have is how do you turn your IP into a product, assuming that you put correct privacy requirements guardrails, how can you monetize some of the information that you do have the right to use in order to fund some of these better innovations?

00:22:36:00 - 00:22:54:14
Doug Kachelmuss
What I’ve seen in many organizations, and I joke with many of my clients, it's typically the first thing from a budget standpoint that gets cut. So, as we're going through, whether it's an assessment or whatnot, say this is likely going to get cut. So, in anticipating that, how can we drive that value?

00:22:54:22 - 00:23:35:10
Doug Kachelmuss
And it's really tying understanding what are the organizational goals, what we want to be a data driven organization. We want to monetize more assets. We want to become more focused on data products and whatnot. And I mentioned data products because understanding how could we bundle a product that's going to add the most value to the organization and privacy compliance. All this is part of that. So really just make it part of your workflow. Don't make it its own separate thing. It becomes natural then, and folks are actually doing this. I've had some organizations that if you were to say data privacy or security or data governance, they were like four-letter words in the organization. Don't say ‘em.

00:23:36:00 - 00:24:06:17
Doug Kachelmuss
So, we actually had to do these without actually going out and saying that we're doing it and there's a change management aspect to that to really build the adoption in the organizations to help kind of build this as part of your processes. And then really all you're doing now is you're just, you're delivering value, delivering data products to folks that are driving value. Oh, and by the way, we happen to be doing some data privacy and security in there, but it's baked into these products that we're delivering, that are delivering value and are tied to ROI. Bettina, have you have you seen the same thing?

00:24:07:04 - 00:24:37:12
Bettina Lippisch
Yes, I think that's something that I do on a daily basis. And to your point, I'm sometimes living exactly like those four-letter words. It's like I always joke when I walk into a room, sometimes I see eye rolls. It's like when Bettina shows up, it's adding more work. That is like a big perception when privacy and governance kind of gets involved because it's often perceived as stifling innovation and really like putting the end to free creativity because now there's rules.

00:24:37:26 - 00:25:18:11
Bettina Lippisch
I like to flip that on its back more or less and really approach it from a couple of different angles. And it's a work in progress. It's like, you know, change management, it takes time, and cultural change is often the last one to really kind of fully, fully emerge. However, I feel like there are a couple of different angles to do that. One, of course, is building better products. I also love to look back at the user experience and say, If I'm a consumer or if I'm a client and I use a product, especially when I contribute or my personal data is involved, I want to make sure that I have very clear and transparent ways of understanding what will happen with my data.

00:25:18:11 - 00:25:45:22
Bettina Lippisch
I think nowadays we can't just assume that consumers are dumb and don't care about their data. That's not true. I think study after study has shown that consumer confidence is directly tied to transparency about the use of their data when it comes to a brand, especially after some of the breaches we've seen of, some like, some of the mishandling of data that have resulted in the news and fines. I think that's really a big one to kind of tie it back to that.

00:25:45:22 - 00:26:36:13
Bettina Lippisch
Like if we're building a product, it needs to be something that somebody wants to use and wants to use it with confidence. With that also comes trust. And it's not just trust of a client or a customer, it's also a trust from within the organization. Because we're holding organizational data for employees, we're holding potentially the doctor's notices we're hosting, you know, vaccination records or whatever it is, even though we're not a regulated industry like health care or other entities. But the data has to be trusted in the hands of an organization. And I think consumers or customer trust translates to retention, translates to new revenue, because who do you want to do business with. A company you trust. And I think that is something that I've been trying to foster and drive forward and that also needs to be supported by actually having the right tools and practices in place.

00:26:37:06 - 00:27:05:24
Bettina Lippisch
Anything from, like getting certification like SOC for your organization so you can share that with prospects or like updating your privacy notice or being transparent about where the data goes when somebody signs up for something. Or having easy ways, you know, California, we talked about it, to opt out of being included in marketing. So, I think this whole idea of, like, making privacy an innovator and driving new product development has to embody all these things.

00:27:05:26 - 00:27:45:20
Bettina Lippisch
Anything trust, operational, or organizational culture as well as a mindset of everyone in the organization to do privacy and security by design in everything they do. It can be one person in customer service that puts a credit card on a sticky note and throws it in the trash and you have a data breach. It can't just be siloed in the engineering team or in the marketing team or in the product team. Like I always joke and say, privacy is a team sport, so everybody has a say and also has a stake in it. And that needs to be embraced as an organization, not just somebody’s preaching it down from the privacy office and say “now do this.”

00:27:46:15 - 00:28:30:15
Lisa Thee
Yeah, And I think it's like an organizational maturity process, right? You have to be at a place where you recognize the value of the information that you hold and that it can take you 20 years to build a brand. You can destroy it in a minute with one bad choice. And it doesn't have to be intentional. It can be very accidental and oftentimes it is because people are looking. Criminals don't follow the rules, right? They're going to look for those loopholes. They're going to look for those opportunities to see the gap in what you intended for something to do and what it's actually doing and take advantage of those moments. So, I think helping us all think about as business leaders, how do we mature our practice with our services to make sure that they are truly enterprise deployable and ready.

00:28:30:23 - 00:29:18:06
Lisa Thee
And that really includes that cybersecurity, that privacy, and that safety elements to it. And that you don't have to do it all by yourself. There are many industry associations that can help keep you current in terms of what the right standards are. There are many consultancies that can come in and bring in a lended expertise to help you set things up properly the first time so that you can follow along with that methodology. I would like to ask you maybe a little bit of a tender question, Bettina, and that is, I think as humans we learn much more from our failures than our successes in life. Can you share with us an example of a time when you thought that you were doing the right thing and it didn't go the way you expected and what you learned from that to maybe prevent other data leaders from making a similar error?

00:29:18:29 - 00:30:06:16
Bettina Lippisch
That's a that's a good and tough question that I think everybody kind of struggles answering. But I think for me, it's, it is really like it wasn't just a single thing. I've been at this for 20 plus years, so there were probably more than just one bad decision I made there. So let me answer it in a little bit more general terms. I think the biggest thing is to embrace the bad decisions and really like learn from them, especially when it comes to data and other things. Having been on the client side, for example, things, at some point we all tried to build our own unified databases, and I thought that was like the latest and greatest. And then like five years later, we're all like shake our heads and pretended we never wanted to do that because it was a good wasn't a good way of doing it anyways.

00:30:07:07 - 00:30:48:02
Bettina Lippisch
But in general, I think sometimes you've got to go down that path, and you fail, and it tells you what not to do. And I think that's really like the number one thing. Even when you look at the developments of privacy and security, it's like single things like back in last year they told you to change your password every three months. Now new guidelines say don't change it at all, just make it a phrase. I mean, there are so many different things that we learn from that change on a dime. I think as fast as technology is moving, as fast as privacy regulation, security things, you were talking a little bit about the fact that, you know, like developing products from data that that are really good.

00:30:48:02 - 00:31:10:13
Bettina Lippisch
I think the bad actors or threat actors, they're masters at developing good products from data because they're constantly evolving. They're scamming and phishing and vishing and God knows what practices. So, I think it's really making sure that it's safe to make that mistake, but don't make big mistakes because like a little bit of, you know, kind of a mishap is good.

00:31:10:13 - 00:31:48:23
Bettina Lippisch
A big data breach is not so good. And yes, there are some big learning experiences here. And I'm lucky that, to say that I haven't had to manage through one yet, but it's like one of those things. It's like you don't want to learn while you're making the mistake. You want to have, have to have enough insights and build up to it to be able to mitigate it and also make it safe for others to make mistakes. Because that's one of the number one leadership lessons that I was lucky with good mentors that I was taught. And that experience, just like don't hold people, like their feet to the fire if they make mistakes while trying to innovate. Help them learn from it and be better.

00:31:49:11 - 00:32:20:06
Lisa Thee
It is, in fact, the price of admission is to have a psychologically safe space to innovate. So as an AI founder, and somebody that was holding lots of sensitive data under my company umbrella, there is no way to move forward and learn if you do not have the room to make mistakes. But as I like to share with my team and myself, don't make the same mistake twice and try to keep your mistakes in the affordable, not life-altering category.

00:32:21:02 - 00:33:00:25
Lisa Thee
Those are probably the two most important things to keep focused on because we won't be able to prevent every problem. But if you've gone to the lengths to be as responsible as you can, that's the best we can do. So, with that in mind, I would love to hear, last but not least, on the days where you're tired and it's been a slog and sometimes getting the team to align on how we're going to move forward or the executive leadership to understand their fiduciary responsibility is to innovate the space. What is your why? What inspires you to bring your best foot forward on those days when maybe you need a little extra nudge?

00:33:01:22 - 00:33:26:13
Bettina Lippisch
Now that that's a really good question and something that I think I found in being a connector. I spent 20 years living and breathing in many parts of the organization, started marketing and advertising, went through product development into the business and operations side. And if I learned one thing is, like, we're all wanting the same thing at the end of the day is for all of us to be successful.

00:33:26:13 - 00:33:52:15
Bettina Lippisch
And if I can walk away at the end of the day and feel like I was able to connect people and to get them on the same level by helping them translate their agenda and their requirements. You know, the technology team, they speak a very different language and to the same language as marketing or the business understands. Then I have done a good days of work because that way I have helped foster collaboration and innovation.

00:33:52:15 - 00:34:27:02
Bettina Lippisch
And that's really one of the most joyful things for me to see is if things click and run like clockwork. I'm a big process engineering geek. I love to kind of like map out how things and knowledge flows through the organization. So, when I can make that happen and it's really, kind of like there's no more bottlenecks, or no more dead ends in a process or in a workflow that really makes me happy. And I love to get up and re-engineer things to foster that collaboration. Both on the data side, but also on the human side, because I think they're interconnected.

00:34:27:18 - 00:34:58:10
Lisa Thee
Oh, Bettina, you're speaking my love language as an industrial and operations research engineering major. Very good. And I agree, the magic is when the people can come together and create, co-create something better than any one individual could. So, helping to streamline those interactions and make sure that people aren't missing each other with the message is a really, really cool why. And I think it's definitely why you are very in demand in the industry. Doug, do you mind sharing a little bit with us about what invigorates you to focus in this area?

00:34:59:07 - 00:35:49:07
Doug Kachelmuss
Absolutely. And you know, similar. I'm a complete data geek, so any time I get my hands on the data and the new technology, I'm all in. But there's so much out there that it's, it sometimes can be challenging to navigate and at the end of it, giving some insights to some folks. But I look at, I reflect on my background and my father, growing up, he was a carpenter, and he was building stuff. And he actually built every house that we lived in. And I look at that and he was able to stand back and say, this is something I built with my hands. And getting that gratification is very important to everyone. And the things that we're doing, with data, it's hard to look back and say, this is what I built because it's really somewhat intangible.

00:35:49:23 - 00:36:19:13
Doug Kachelmuss
And something that, really I've rallied around is that it's not a tangible asset per se, but it's really the satisfaction comes in helping out people achieve really some of the impossible. Sitting in a room with folks and getting a large challenge thrown at us, say all right, let's rally behind this and move forward. And, you know, folks say, hey, you'll never be able to get, let's say, privacy and security within our organization.

00:36:19:24 - 00:36:52:22
Doug Kachelmuss
And I speak to those customers a couple of months later and they're like, yeah, we're doing it every single day and whatnot. So, the change management aspect to it really is something that I rally on when it comes to data and technology. I still love getting my hands dirty, playing with the data, but that's the tangible aspect that I really rally behind is the people around the data. And it's really when people have the cliché — people process technology — and in data I rally behind the people, because it's really the one of the harder aspects, but I think it's the most gratifying as well.

00:36:53:04 - 00:36:59:06
Lisa Thee
Awesome. So, Doug, for people that could use some help in that change management process, what's the best place to reach you?

00:36:59:09 - 00:37:15:21
Doug Kachelmuss
Absolutely. So, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so feel free, I love talking data with folks. I'm in the Chicagoland area, so love meeting with folks and just, you know, speaking with data. I also do a lot of publications on there as well. So, feel free to reach out anytime. Love to connect.

00:37:16:03 - 00:37:26:03
Lisa Thee
Thank you, Doug. And Bettina, do you mind sharing for people that want to follow your journey and learn from your expertise, deploying this at scale in the industry, what are the best ways to stay in touch with you?

00:37:26:12 - 00:37:50:17
Bettina Lippisch
I second Doug here. LinkedIn is definitely the best way to connect, and I love to connect with other data professionals, privacy, security. I always love to learn from others, so don't hesitate to reach out, connect so I can see more of the world of privacy and security and data. And also I'm in the Chicagoland area, so definitely love to hear from anyone that wants to learn more.

00:37:50:26 - 00:38:19:22
Lisa Thee
Wonderful. And if anybody wants to connect with me, I'll triple down on LinkedIn. But I'm really passionate around confidential computing and how to handle regulated data sets that require more governance. My background is trust and safety, and I apply that in government, health care, and financial services industries that have some more strict requirements. So, if we can be of any service in helping you to make more use out of the information that you have to accelerate your business goals, that's what we're here for.

00:38:20:04 - 00:38:26:11
Lisa Thee
So, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time, Doug and Bettina and I learned a lot from our conversation. Thank you.

00:38:26:23 - 00:38:28:26
Bettina Lippisch
Thank you. It was a pleasure. Great to be on.

00:38:29:10 - 00:38:30:06
Doug Kachelmuss
Absolutely. Thank you.

00:38:32:12 - 00:38:43:12
Narrator
Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Navigating Forward podcast. We'd love to hear from you. At a crossroads of uncertainty and opportunity, how do you navigate forward? We'll see you next time.