Regulatory Readiness Programs

Cross-functional programs to anticipate, evaluate, & address risks of emerging regulations

Digital Services Act (DSA)

 
 

Background

When the DSA arose as a regulation that would impact Indeed, we identified two major issues that needed our attention: (i) tracking and reporting on monthly active users to determine VLOP status; and (ii) building non-profiling alternative UX for recommender systems.

My Role

I led the operationalization of DSA requirements in partnership with an attorney counterpart.

What I Did

VLOP Reporting

  • Worked with R&D, Business Intelligence, and Marketing to rework how we measure user traffic, developing a new methodology with thorough documentation for internal audit purposes

  • Owned ongoing reporting and maintenance, building an automation in our internal equivalent of SQL to support the new methodology

  • Reported user traffic figures and trends and predictions to senior leadership on a monthly basis

Non-Profiling System

  • Audited all known products available in the EU for features that would constitute a “recommender system”

  • Convened lead engineers and product managers for each such project to serve as a task force for design and implementation of alternate UX

  • Met weekly and project managed efforts through to design completion, incorporating ongoing sustainability measures

Unique Outcomes

  • The measurement methodology we used was adopted for other non-regulatory purposes, with my documentation serving as a template for other functions to follow when developing new reporting metrics

  • Over the course of non-profiling system dev, we identified and solved other backend data integrity issues that impacted other products

Learnings

  • Under the right circumstances, regulatory requirements can have a meaningfully positive impact on ordinary business operations (see tracking)

  • Leveraging regulatory requirements can also help R&D functions overcome existing technical limitations by justifying more resources

 

§230 Compliance & Contingency Roundtable

 
 
 
 
 

Background

§230 is a critical layer of protection for online platforms like Indeed that rely on user generated content. A Supreme Court case in 2024 (Twitter vs Taamneh) introduced concern that we may not always be able to rely so heavily on §230, so we identified a need to have a contingency plan for any ruling in the case.

My Role

In partnership with Sr Counsel, I was tasked with coming up with a way to attain full leadership alignment on the actual risk of weakening §230 and unanimously supported contingency plans for all predictable outcomes of the case.

What I Did

  • Designed a leadership roundtable concept from the ground up in order to attain the necessary alignment in a short period of time

  • Prepared roundtable charter, documentation, working materials, and legal education materials to contextualize the issues at hand

  • Led roundtable discussions and collaborated with Sr Counsel and Government Relations to distill results into actionable contingency plans

Unique Outcomes

  • Convened this particular group of more than a dozen VPs and above for the first time, allowing them to build stronger cross-functional relationships amongst themselves by way of roundtable participation

  • Convinced this group that contingency planning is a worthwhile exercise despite the risk not being actualized at the time due to the high potential impact to the business, resulting in unprecedented readiness to enact a business strategy pivot if need be

  • Templatized a novel roundtable format and playbook that allowed colleagues and leaders of other functions to identify when and how to conduct such an exercise in the future

Learnings

  • Controlling a room full of leaders is a starkly different challenge from presenting to a room full of leaders

  • Well-understood (and communicated) risk is a powerful tool for unifying busy leaders with disparate priorities