The network is what opens doors. You can't build relationships alone.
There's a particular kind of professional moment that doesn't show up on a résumé but shapes everything that comes after — the moment when a respected institution looks at your work and says, in effect, you belong here. For a growing number of early-career privacy professionals, that moment has come through the International Association of Privacy Professionals and its expanding portfolio of scholarship programs.
The IAPP's scholarships are not cash awards in the conventional sense. What recipients receive is access: to major conferences, to certification training, to the rooms where practitioners, academics, and policymakers are actively working out the future of data protection and AI governance. The organization runs event-specific scholarships alongside named programs — including the Andy Serwin and Airbnb scholarships, both tied to U.S.-based events — and the 25th anniversary scholarship, which has sent recipients to gatherings from Dublin to Sydney.
Ursula McGlinn, a Global Privacy and Compliance Specialist at Meta and co-chair of the IAPP's KnowledgeNet Dublin chapter, attended the Europe Data Protection Congress on a 25th anniversary scholarship. She holds five IAPP certifications — AIGP, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, and CIPT — and describes the scholarship as something that crystallized a decision she had already been moving toward. The recognition, she said, confirmed that her academic dedication and professional ambitions were visible to a community she was working hard to join. It pushed her toward deeper specialization in data protection, privacy, and AI governance, and it made her more willing to be visible — to take up space, seek out engagement, and contribute publicly to the field.
For Gianluca Pecora, a law graduate at Bird and Bird and a 25th anniversary scholarship recipient, the timing of his conference attendance was unusually precise. When he attended the IAPP ANZ Summit, he was working at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on the Privacy Reform Implementation and Social Media Taskforce, drafting an Issues Paper on automated decision-making obligations. The Summit's panels on AI governance and automated systems, he said, directly shaped which questions the Issues Paper would prioritize. The networking that came with the scholarship introduced him to senior privacy lawyers who shared their expertise freely. Since then, Pecora has been appointed as a fellow at Milan University's Information Society Law Centre and will begin tutoring at a University of Technology Sydney and Microsoft AI hackathon in June.
Caroline Matkom's path ran through Tulane Law School, where she received both the Westin and Andy Serwin scholarships during her final year. The funding covered certification training materials and exam fees — costs that, she noted, many entry-level privacy associate positions effectively require candidates to have already absorbed. Without the scholarships, those credentials would have been out of reach at the start of her career. Attending the IAPP Global Privacy Summit also gave her something her law school hadn't: a genuinely global professional network, built in a field that her program had barely touched.
Not every voice in this story belongs to someone who has already received a scholarship. Muhammad Deckri Algamar, an associate in Deloitte's Cyber Risk Advisory practice in Jakarta, has been building his IAPP involvement from the ground up — contributing to the Jakarta KnowledgeNet chapter, co-organizing collaborations between the IAPP and Universitas Indonesia, and working on government initiatives tied to Indonesia's Personal Data Protection Law and children's online safety legislation. He hasn't yet received a scholarship, but he speaks about what one would mean with striking clarity.
Algamar grew up exposed to invasive technologies early enough that the risks to children on digital platforms became personal, not abstract. That experience, he argues, is exactly what privacy work requires — not just knowledge of the rules, but an understanding of how technology actually behaves in the world. In Indonesia, as in many emerging economies, globally recognized credentials remain hard to access. An IAPP certification, he said, functions as a competence badge that opens doors in professional settings where privacy governance is being shaped. For someone working at the intersection of policy and practice in a country actively building out its data protection framework, those credentials don't just advance a career — they carry standards back to places that need them.
The picture that emerges across these accounts is of a field that is simultaneously global in its concerns and still uneven in who gets to participate in shaping it. The IAPP's scholarship programs are one mechanism for closing that gap. Whether the programs expand to meet the demand signaled by professionals like Algamar — and the many others working in economies where conference travel and certification costs represent genuine barriers — is the question the organization's next chapter will have to answer.
Notable Quotes
Privacy is not only a technical or legal field, but also a community built on shared learning, support, and exchange.— Ursula McGlinn, Meta Global Privacy and Compliance Specialist and IAPP KnowledgeNet Dublin Chapter co-Chair
Receiving this scholarship would open new doors of possibility and provide me with credibility to sit in rooms where privacy governance is shaped.— Muhammad Deckri Algamar, Deloitte Cyber Risk Advisory Associate, Jakarta
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
What's actually different about these scholarships compared to a standard academic grant?
They're not tuition money. They're access — to conferences, to certification exams, to the people in the room where the field is being built. That's a different kind of resource.
Why does that matter more than, say, a cash award?
Because privacy is a community field. The certifications signal competence, but the network is what opens doors. You can study alone; you can't build relationships alone.
Ursula McGlinn already had five certifications. What did the scholarship actually give her?
Validation, mostly. She was already committed. But being recognized by a respected institution at that stage — it made her more willing to be visible, to take up space in the field rather than just work quietly within it.
Gianluca Pecora's case seems unusually concrete — the conference directly shaped a government policy document he was drafting.
That's what makes it striking. Most professional development is diffuse. His happened to land at exactly the right moment, and the panels he attended fed directly into work that will affect how automated decision-making is regulated in Australia.
Muhammad Algamar hasn't received a scholarship yet. Why include him?
Because he represents the demand side of the equation. He's doing serious work — government policy, university partnerships, data protection law implementation — and he's articulating precisely what a scholarship would unlock for someone in his position.
What's the Indonesia angle specifically?
Access to globally recognized credentials is harder and more expensive in emerging economies. But Indonesia is actively building its privacy framework right now. Someone like Algamar could carry international standards back into that process — if he can get credentialed.
Is there a tension in the IAPP running both the certification system and the scholarships that fund access to it?
Possibly. But the people in this story don't seem to experience it that way. They see the certifications as genuinely useful signals in a competitive hiring market, not just gatekeeping.
What's the thing this story is really about, underneath the professional development angle?
Who gets to shape the rules. Privacy governance is being written right now, and the people in those conversations will determine how it goes. Scholarships are one way of deciding who's in the room.