CRANIUM Alumni Series | Anastasiya Maisenia, Data Privacy Specialist at MSD
Anastasiya Maisenia did not stumble into privacy by accident. She has been building towards it deliberately since 2018, when she landed her first role in the IT sector in her home country in Belarus. An exciting time, as this was right in the middle of the first GDPR implementation wave.
Today, she works as a Data Privacy Specialist at MSD, a global leader in medicines, vaccines and health solutions, where she serves as specialist and steward for the Belux market.
We spoke with Anastasiya about the leap from consultancy to a big corporate, the skills that have stayed with her, and why awareness is the most underrated tool in any privacy professional’s kit.
“It’s the backbone of my professional profile.”
Anastasiya joined CRANIUM in January 2021 and stayed for two and a half years. As a senior privacy consultant, she supported EU, UK, and US-based clients across a wide range of sectors, working on everything from privacy scans to full implementations and taking on the Data Protection Officer role.
The variety was intense. And, by her own account, that was exactly the point. “It was a very steep learning curve,” she says, “but CRANIUM really emphasised training opportunities. The knowledge I acquired goes a lot further than simply data protection. I also learned about more technical topics like ISO 27001, IT-specific topics and so on. On top of that, I really learned a mix of hard and soft skills that still form the backbone of my professional profile today.”
The soft skills, she notes, proved just as valuable as the technical ones. Communication training helped her develop the ability to translate complicated regulatory requirements into language that resonates with people at every level of an organisation.
“When you communicate with a business that has a varying degree of GDPR literacy, you need to be able to adapt. That’s something I learned while at CRANIUM.”
Pharma was always the destination.
Anastasiya’s move to MSD was not accidental. She studied data protection and IP in a pharmaceutical context at university level, and had already worked with pharmaceutical clients during her time at CRANIUM. The combination of academic grounding and hands-on sector experience made the in-house transition feel natural.
“I’ve always been interested in the pharmaceutical sector,” she says. “Taken together with my previous experience working for pharma clients at CRANIUM, this helped to facilitate my transition. It went quite smoothly.”
What she found at MSD was a privacy structure that reflects the complexity of a global organisation. At the heart of it sits a central DPO team, supported by a network of privacy stewards embedded locally in each market.
“Each market has a designated privacy steward who oversees the privacy programme in their market,” Anastasiya explains. “My role corresponds to that of privacy steward for the Belux market.” She also coordinates a broader internal network, privacy stewards placed across different departments, which she describes as ‘boots on the ground’.
People can be both the biggest risk and the biggest asset.
Ask Anastasiya what she considers the most important lever in privacy compliance, and her answer is “awareness”.
“Everything starts with people. People are the biggest risk for information security and data privacy, but when they’re aware of the processes and follow them, they’re also your biggest asset.”
In her current role, this translates into a deliberate, year-round approach to privacy communication. She organises awareness campaigns, job-role-specific training and so on.
“Not everyone is a GDPR expert, so we make it targeted and example-based, ensuring it remains digestible. We also remind people on multiple occasions that we are approachable. If you have a new vendor or a new process, please reach out. We need to assess the risk in a timely way.”
This philosophy, she notes, is not something she developed from scratch. It was instilled at CRANIUM.
“Awareness and good communication always go hand in hand. That was emphasised at CRANIUM, by Bavo, by Bart, and I still carry it with me here. I try to implement qualitative and continuous communication wherever I go.”
Once part of the crew, always part of the crew.
Anastasiya may have left CRANIUM, but the connection has not faded. When asked about her favourite memories, she immediately thinks back to the moments that brought colleagues together, from New Year celebrations to post-work pizzas.
“The James Bond party was probably my favourite one,” she says.
To anyone considering a role at CRANIUM today, she would say:
“Go for it. If you’re looking to build up your career in data protection, whether from zero or with experience you want to expand, it’s definitely the place to go. During my time at CRANIUM, I always felt supported. You have a choice between projects. If you want to try a different sector or something new, the doors are open.”
Anastasiya Maisenia is a Data Privacy Specialist and Belux Privacy Steward at MSD.
