Canadian Lawyer

www.canadianlawyermag.com 39 Driving global privacy, cybersecurity, and legal strategy for a telematics technology leader Deepak Iyer joined Geotab in 2024 and currently serves as the company's legal lead. Headquartered in Canada, Geotab is a global telematics company with more than four million connected vehicles in 160 countries. In his role, Iyer supports a wide range of legal needs for the fast-scaling organization, including responding to RFPs and negotiating agreements with customers, suppliers, and partners. Before moving in-house, Iyer practised at boutique law firms in Toronto. His work focused on mergers and acquisitions as well as technology transactions – experience that gave him early exposure to innovation-driven businesses. He later joined the legal department at FCT, an insurance company where he specialized in data and privacy law. That role deepened his interest in helping organizations navigate complex regulatory issues while building sustainable operations. Iyer then moved to Geotab, where he found alignment between his skills and the company's ANDREA WOOD Company: TELUS Title: Chief Legal Officer Reflecting on a Canadian Law Awards in- house lifetime achievement recognition Andrea Wood didn't expect to win a lifetime achievement award just yet. "I feel as though I still have a lifetime ahead of me. I hope so," she says. Receiving the Dye & Durham Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Legal Profession – In-House at the Canadian Law Awards gave her a moment to reflect: "It gave me an opportunity to look backward and think about some of the … fun things I've had the privilege of doing in my career." Now chief legal and governance officer at TELUS, Wood's career has spanned industries. "I'm really proud of being able to shift and learn and move from industry to industry, and to continue to evolve my knowledge of the law as needed," she says. After starting at collaborative, dynamic legal environment. "Geotab is unique – everyone is a generalist, exposed to every part of the company," he notes, praising the culture fostered by the legal team and its leadership. Geotab's legal team relies on a group effort to stay compliant with evolving regulations, leveraging internal expertise and cross- departmental collaboration. The team uses readiness packages and compliance resources to stay ahead of regulatory changes in markets like Brazil, the EU, and Australia. Iyer views this collaborative approach as essential, particularly given the company's global footprint. One of the pressing challenges Iyer faces is cybersecurity, an area he sees as inextricably tied to privacy. With new regulations emerging globally, Geotab's strategy is to exceed baseline legal requirements to future-proof its operations. This proactive approach is guided by what Iyer calls "optionality," ensuring flexibility across global markets. "We don't need to apply GDPR standards to ourselves in certain jurisdictions, but we do because it's the highest standard," he says. Fraser and Beatty (now Dentons), she moved to Alliance Communications. "I moved from being a banking lawyer to being an entertainment lawyer," she says. Her banking knowledge helped secure financing for Johnny Mnemonic. Wood spent 17 years at Alliance Atlantis, becoming general counsel. "We had gone from being a private company to being a public company, so I found myself general counsel of a public company and corporate secretary to a public board," she says. After Alliance was sold, she moved to Wind Mobile. "Within a couple of weeks of me arriving, my current employer, TELUS, wrote to the regulator, the CRTC, and said, 'We don't think Wind is sufficiently Canadian' … that launched me into a five-year fight to protect Wind's ability to continue to operate," she says. At TELUS, she leads a large legal team and stresses adaptability, leadership, and technological proficiency. "If there's one thing I'm encouraging every team to do right now, it is to play with AI and to really deliberately try to learn it," she says. DEEPAK IYER Company: Geotab Title: Legal Counsel

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