Get Ahead of the Competition ft. VP & Chief Privacy Officer, Public Policy @Meta, Erin Egan

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This week’s will be about VP and Chief Privacy Officer of Public Policy at Meta, Erin Egan.

Erin Egan is the VP and Chief Privacy Officer of Public Policy at Meta. She leads Meta’s global privacy and data policy team, where she collaborates with policymakers, regulators, advocates, academics and other experts on issues related to privacy and data protection, ensuring Meta’s product and features reflect input from people around the world. Prior to Meta, she was a partner and co-chair of Covington & Burling’s global data protection practice, where she represented technology and media companies on privacy and data security matters.

Parts of this newsletter are freely taken from our interview and adjusted for reading. Everything a person says in the interview reflects the guest's and host’s opinion, not the newsletter's or brand's.

GG: You have worked at a law practice where you convinced senior partners that the privacy and data security field was worth their investment and then built the practice into one of the best in the country. How do you sell this idea to senior partners?

EE: At the time when I was at the law firm, I was focused on the intersection of consumer protection and technology. Every big corporation cares about its brand, they care about trust, and so, you start from a place that you know matters to them. You have to ask yourself "what's the issue that I am helping them solve?" At the time it was around data and how companies were using that (this was the late 90s or early 2000s) and I would show up and humbly say "I'm here to help." My motto is "I'm always here to help." “Let me tell you about this problem that you may not realize is there and here's how I can help”. You have to put yourself in the client’s shoes and understand what they're thinking of, what the tensions they're grappling with, and then find a way to help. When I joined Meta, I received some great advice,"take heat off the engine." Don't come in and try to do a million things, instead, come in and solve a problem someone has.

GG: Some of our readers may be looking to sell a product or service to a large company. How does this typically work and how should they start the conversation about a potential collaboration?

EE: I think that there isn't just one central way to approach a company for collaboration. It often starts with knowing someone at the company and having a really good idea. Internally, people know each other's roles and responsibilities. For example, if it's a new product feature or tool that can help on the product side with data, they might have an engineer and their team take a look to see if it can be incorporated. Meta for example has top engineers and security professionals who are always looking for new ideas on how to do things better. So, if you have contacts, reach out to them. If it's something around data, data use or privacy, you can mention to your contact that it might be of interest to the privacy product team and ask if they could forward it to them. That’s a reasonable place to start.

GG: To the people you were selling to at that point, data privacy was becoming a trending practice in different law firms. When people realized that was where the business was, I bet there were a lot of competitors coming after your clients. How did you make sure that your clients stayed with you?

EE: Creativity is the key. I believe in being continuously creative. When Meta initially reached out to me, my name was on a list with five other ones from top law firms, and they essentially held a competition to get their work. They presented us with a hypothetical problem that involved international issues and how to advise the client on it, and asked us to solve it in 24 hours. I got the job by presenting the most creative approach. What it takes is coming in and not being so strict. It's about taking a 360-degree view of the problem and trying to come up with creative solutions. I understood the legislation that was coming, the corporate deals, the litigation that could happen, the communications, and the marketing, and then I was able to say "In light of all this, you want to look at this entire piece, and here's a way forward, taking into account all those pieces." Every company is different, every client has different needs. You have to calibrate, you have to tailor, and you have to understand where they're coming from. Creativity and sophistication, that's how you keep clients. 

GG: How do you work with the technology team? Do you communicate your ideas on what to build and then they build it, or do you have to collaborate with many different teams and have conversations with many internal stakeholders?

EE: I am fortunate to have a partner, a Chief Privacy Officer of Product that leads a product and engineering team. He, the product team and I sit on the public policy team, and then we have a legal team. These are the three legs of the stool. The lawyers and the policy team look at the future and the trends and decide what should be done. The lawyers then determine what can be done, and the product team implements it and determines whether it's possible to do these things and what the timeline looks like. We work in partnership with other folks in security and marketing and have conversations before going out and getting feedback. If it's an interesting issue, like "how should we provide notice in a virtual reality headset", we might go talk to some experts. We brief global teams on what's coming, and then we get feedback on what could be the best way to offer this feature in light of the culture and the background in their area. It's a circle of understanding what's going on, getting feedback, and bringing it back to shape products and services together with the other teams. It's a very iterative, very collaborative process.

THIS WEEK’S QUOTE

GRACE WEEKLY - THE BEST INFORMATION DIET FOR FUTURE CEOs

What's the key takeaway from this? To turn your career into something to be proud of you have to push boundaries, take risks and know that when the time comes your creativity and stubbornness would set you apart from the competition.

• Take your business to the top it's all about meeting your clients where they are and providing real solutions to their problems.

• Do you know someone at a company that you are trying to collaborate with? Don’t be afraid to reach out, but be sure that what you are saying brings value to them.

• “Taking off the heat” in a company means that from then on they will look at you as a problem-solving resource.

• When looking at a problem, take a 360-degree view of it.

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