The Elite Group of Women Keeping Big Tech in Check
Over the past decade, data enforcement has exploded in prominence. These are the regulators leading the charge.
Last year, Norway’s privacy watchdog hit Meta Platforms Inc. with a ban related to their processing of user data. It was a risky move for a small office to make, but it paid off several months later when European Union regulators extended the curbs across the region. It also burnished the reputation for the agency’s new boss — one of the most recent additions to Europe’s growing roster of female data regulators out to rein in big tech.
Line Coll, a former tech lawyer, stepped into her role in 2022, joining an elite cohort of officials who can force changes on the world’s biggest companies by wielding the magic wand of the region’s strict data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation. That legislation, which went into effect in 2018, transformed data regulation, once seen as a legal backwater, into a prominent area, and elevated many women working in it into the spotlight.