About

After a few years as a legal associate at Canon Europa, Mathilde Fabre decided it was time to broaden her horizons and took on the role of in-house legal counsel at PVH Europe (Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein). She joined the company in 2011 and has since deployed and increased her knowledge on IT, privacy and data protection. She became the first IT legal counsel of the legal team at PVH, setting up the IT part of the legal team by engaging and building up the relation with the IT, e-commerce, CRM and ISG departments. She became a senior manager legal counsel in 2014, advising the business mainly on privacy, data protection and IT matters. Along with one of her colleagues, she became the first privacy legal counsel of the legal team at PVH, setting up the privacy part as well as the full company-wide GDPR programme, which Fabre describes as ‘quite challenging but I am very proud of what we have built and achieved within the company’. When new GDPR legislation was announced, Fabre pro-actively constructed and implemented a GDPR programme for the Netherland headquarters and the European local offices to ensure compliance. ‘That was very well received by the company and resulted, last March, in my current position as legal director global privacy, reporting directly to PVH Corp in the US’, says Fabre. This led her to her current role, working now for PVH Corp on privacy globally and compliance Europe from the Amsterdam office. ‘I like to contribute to the success of the company. To do that, as a legal counsel, I see it as my job to facilitate the business, to enable the wider company to reach its goals. That means that instead of responding to inquiries from the business rather passively, or – in respect of compliance – ticking off check lists and drafting policies, I put a lot of effort in truly understanding the business, so that I can add value and provide sustainable support.’ says Fabre.