First the TLC Group conquered Bermuda, by offering the island’s first certified privacy officer course.

Then the company, run by Bermudians Taheera Lovell and Cha’von Joell, expanded to providing holistic data protection services and training for the UK and the Caribbean.

Now, as co-chief executive officer Cha’von Joell steps down, newly solo CEO Taheera Lovell wants to expand the company even further.

“No community or organisation is truly an island in this global day and age,” Ms Lovell said. “My vision for the company going forward is about helping organisations and individuals identify those issues, compliance or getting their culture in such a state that the people within it understand the requirements and regulations around data privacy. We want to expand further globally. We have been talking to organisations in countries on the continent of Africa. We are looking at countries there we can tap into.”

She passionately believes that the more communities that have data privacy, protection and cybersecurity best practices in place, the better it is for all of us.

Ms Joell and Ms Lovell were both living in the UK when they came together to conceptualise The TLC Group in 2018.

“We have always worked remotely,” Ms Lovell said.

Time zone differences are not really much of an issue for the TLC Group.

“Because we are 100 per cent remote, a lot of the tools and systems we use allow for real-time communications and collaborative working,“ Ms Lovell said. ”I could be dealing with the consultants who are on different time zones. They can pick something up if I cannot. We have had consultants working for us in Bermuda, the UK, India, Africa, Ghana and Nigeria.“

She said it is important to have good time management skills, and the TLC Group is flexible with its working hours as long as the work is done.

The need for its services has only grown during the pandemic.

Ms Lovell said that after March 2020 many of their clients switched their focus away from planned projects to just getting set up and dealing with their customers in the new Covid-19 reality.

“There were challenges in keeping the TLC Group at the forefront for organisations,” she said. “We wanted to say yes, the pandemic is happening, but there are different compliance regulations that are out there.”

She said cyber attackers do not care about the pandemic. The TLC Group saw a number of breaches and cyber attacks because of remote working.

“It really was not a time for organisations to take their foot off the gas,” Ms Lovell said. “A lot of corporations appreciated our approach to helping them manage through that difficult time.”

Ms Lovell has been focused on data protection and cybersecurity for the past 20 years. When she started there were not a lot of other women working alongside her in the industry.

She remembers being sent away for a cybersecurity course in the early 2000s and finding herself one of three women out of 40 participants.

“The statistics are improving,” she said. “There are a number of Bermudian women I engage with, especially the younger ones. We have conversations about how they can chart out their careers in cybersecurity.”

She said the path to cybersecurity does not always have to be a highly technical one.

“There are people being able to give training and guidance to individuals,” she said. “You can go down a path where people are doing more innovation. There are creatives developing the software and how we can use technology. I work with one lady — all she does is write about cybersecurity. Obviously having a good technical background helps, but there are many different routes into cybersecurity.”

Ms Lovell’s goal this year is also to expand TLC’s training to include more self study. Many people find specified course times difficult because of families or other work commitments.

“In my new role as CEO, I am excited to continue working across both our data privacy/protection and technology/cybersecurity teams, and further develop our products, services and training to meet the needs of our clients in a creative, sustainable and future-focused way,” Ms Lovell said.

In the meantime, Ms Joell will be taking on a key public service role in Bermuda.

Her holistic data protection knowledge and expertise will be deployed to support Bermuda-based individuals and organisations as they navigate data privacy and protection activities for compliance with Bermuda’s Personal Information Protection Act 2016 and relevant global regulations.

For more information see www.thetlcgroup.pro or contact solutions@thetlcgroup.pro.