Edna Essien
PayPal
Head of Privacy and Data Protection, APAC
Edna’s Corridor
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Ghana – England – Singapore
About
Edna is PayPal’s newly appointed head of privacy and data protection for the Asia Pacific region where she will be responsible for the group’s data protection and compliance activities. She was previously director of Data Protection and Technology Compliance, APAC at Scotiabank in Singapore. Edna is a qualified Solicitor of England and Wales and has over 20 years expertise in data privacy and data protection globally. Edna also advises on technology compliance and outsourcing requirements for financial institutions in APAC. She holds the CIPP/Europe certification and the ISEB in data protection. Prior to that, she worked at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore; Accenture; and Centrica Telecoms in the UK.
Born in Akwatia, Ghana, raised and educated in London from age 11, Edna currently resides in Singapore.
Her next goal is to improve her roller-blading technique.
Highlights
From 2019 to 2021 Edna served as Vice President and subsequently as President of AsiaDPO, a registered society in Singapore with data protection officers from different disciplines and backgrounds (law, technology, academia, compliance, marketing, insurance, consumer goods and more). She remains a member of the Management Committee.
Fun Fact
Professional dancing would have been Edna’s chosen career path had she not gone down the legal route and her parents had permitted it, she. Edna took up outdoor running when she first moved to Singapore and started boxing in 2021. Her new activity for 2022 is to improve her roller-blading/skating technique in 2022.
Education
Edna obtained an LLB from the University of Kingston in England.
“Your network becomes incredibly important as you progress in your career and it’s an incredibly small world. Don’t burn bridges and maintain a sense of professionalism in all you do – even when working with difficult or unpleasant people.”
Edna on Networking
Resources
