Brett Tarr – Collibra

Growth pains sure beat the other kind, but a booming firm isn’t without potential pitfalls. So says Brett Tarr, who’s now in his fourth year of identifying and smoothing issues that might threaten the fast growth of the international data intelligence firm Collibra.

“Even the most growth-oriented technology companies still need guardrails”, Tarr says. “Many companies follow the path of wild growth and consider the possibility of going public, and only at the final stages do they begin to focus on tightening up processes. You’ve got to channel your growth prudently.”

The focus on process has been paramount at Collibra, a New York—and Brussels-headquartered B2B firm with customers in more than 26  countries, thus having to comply with all regulations. Data privacy is among Tarr’s foremost concerns, and he’s had to apply legal and technological smarts to strike a sensitive balance in risk management.

Collibra manages massive volumes of data on behalf of its commercial customers, prospects, and vendors. Organizing and managing all that information takes some doing, Tarr states, explaining that what’s important to an engineer might not be so to a sales rep or accounting team.

Structured data, organized in a standardized format and stored in databases, differs from the unstructured data of individual documents, spreadsheets, PDFs and other information in general file stores. Given the nature of Collibra’s operations, it must leverage its data widely and quickly yet judiciously. The European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation packs stiff penalties for violators, and other jurisdictions—including a growing number of U.S. states—have adopted similar but not identical laws. As associate general counsel for Collibra’s privacy and information governance, Tarr gets into the weeds with the firm’s departments and creates data storage and sharing standards for structured and unstructured data.

Sharing and caring

Tarr has worked with each business team to understand their needs and how they use data. As a result, the company has developed a detailed structure for its data that supports ease of access and regulatory retention requirements.

An example of this is the sales team, divided by regions, with each team member sharing a Google Drive. All data relevant to a regional team have separate structures for prospects, ongoing negotiations, active customers, team meetings, performance management, requests for proposals and presentations—and Tarr ensures what’s accessible to whom and that inactive information is deleted.

Tarr will be keeping tabs on evolving rules and regulations in all places where Collibra’s active and other tasks on the Collibra legal team. But Tarr seems to be enjoying himself and says he was cut out for this kind of in-house role.

“My background covers so many aspects, and I can advise beyond a narrow scope,” he says. “I always wanted a role where I wasn’t restricted, which tends to be how the firms work.”

Call him well-rounded

That said, Tarr lauds the experience garnered from his 2003-to-2006 stretch at the Atlanta firm of King & Spalding that followed his graduation from Duke University School of Law and, before then, UCLA, where he earned a history and psychology degree and played soccer. Nowadays, one might call him a triple threat, as his legal and technological savvy has been enhanced by an MBA from Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business.

His role at the firm necessitated comfort with technology, but that had long been among his interests. In 2006, when the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were updated to address electronic data, e-discovery, and codification of how firms handled data, the young Tarr’s colleagues looked to him for leadership in transitioning paper documents into electronic records (first hosted locally, and then in the cloud). Basic discovery being like a funnel with volumes of information at the top, he helped filter out extraneous or redacted material.

“Those of us on the ground floor of e-discovery became the experts,” he says.

That skill was expanded upon at Tarr’s next role at eMag Solutions, a Georgia data restoration and e-discovery provider, where he served as marketing director and general counsel. Although a native New Englander, he came to love the Southeast and might still be there until Caesars Entertainment Corp. offered him the chance to build an e-discovery program from the ground up at one of the most recognizable entertainment brands in Las Vegas in 2012.

Again, his role was tech-intense, Tarr implementing e-billing, contract management and matter management platforms, implementing a global privacy program, and navigating Caesars through an alphabet soup of GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, COPPA, TCPA and whatnot. Afterward, he returned to the West Coast in 2019, where he ultimately joined Collibra as senior privacy counsel before being promoted to his present role last year.

Also a travelin’ man

He combines being associate general counsel with his extracurricular position since 2009 as president of Discovery Advisors, an independent legal consultancy for delivering data-driven action plans to assist law firms and companies on info-management, privacy and e-discovery prep.

Life’s better this time around in the City Angels, the now 52-year-old Tarr recalling how his UCLA undergrad years concurred with the Rodney King riots, the O.J. Simpson trial, gang wars and much civil unrest. A sense of stability has returned, and Tarr soaks in the Southern California lifestyle, raving about the beaches, the weather, the music and how Los Angeles has two teams in each of the four major sports leagues. Happily given to wanderlust, he’s got upcoming trips to Alaska and Morocco, and his LinkedIn is illustrated by a photograph he took of an elephant herd marching past a snow-capped Kilimanjaro.

Time for such fun might be compromised as Collibra has grown rapidly in recent years. As the world grows more wired, there’s much opportunity for a data-management specialist, and Tarr says he relishes being part of such progress—provided, of course, it’s prudent.

“We do need those guardrails,” he reminds.