T.B. (Puma) Smagge

Puma Smagge has some 20 odd years of experience in Data Protection in various roles such as a privacy counsel, Privacy Officer and the GDPR defined position of Data Protection Officer.

Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry (R&D clinical trials worldwide), the financial investment as well as financial services sector, he is well versed with all categories of personal data being processed worldwide and within a complex chain of multiple (sub-sub-sub-)processing.

He holds a firm opinion that data risk, ethics, governance, cyber security and privacy are intrinsically linked and that it does not stand in the way of doing business. In fact privacy should not merely be a must; it can be construed in a business perspective as an enabler and even more as a service. “Privacy as a must, as an enables and as a service”; the latter being the ultimate goal.

Data Protection is simply the license to operate in this modern day and age. This means it is beneficial to a company to have this subject well managed.

He is passionate about this field and expertise. Such passion reflects in the in-depth way he sets up policies, procedures and handling of business requests. Furthermore, as data protection is not an area in which there are competitors, he strongly advocates sectoral intervision and transparency on how to deal with data protection topics.