About

David Dobbyn, head of legal – EMEA, joined Lime in July this year and is based at its new EMEA headquarters in Dublin. Lime is a smart-mobility provider that offers cities various mobility products including e-assist bicycles and electric scooters. Lime aims to revolutionise mobility in cities and campuses with cleaner, more efficient and affordable transportation options that improve urban sustainability. Prior to Lime, he was senior director and regional counsel responsible for EMEA and India at Xilinx, another US multinational with its EMEA headquarters in Dublin. During this time he and his team were recognised in the GC Powerlist: Ireland Teams 2018 edition. Earlier in his career, he spent a number of years as a technology and corporate lawyer in a top five Irish law firm. During my time in private practice, he was chosen for three legal secondments with significant clients. When he joined Xilinx, Dobbyn was initially responsible for legal and compliance matters in EMEA. He identifies that he, ‘worked very hard to make the legal function in EMEA a full-service, proactive and highly responsive business partner. This was recognised internally as a success so [he] was also given responsibility for India and a subsequent promotion. Having responsibility for India was fascinating but also very challenging. [He] learned a lot from [his] India responsibilities about building trust across different cultures and how best to identify key risks and prioritise the use of limited resources to mitigate those risks’. Dobbyn also highlights that with no stand-alone privacy function at the time, GDPR implementation was a challenging project during his time at Xilinx. He led the creation of the global organisation’s GDPR implementation and risk prioritisation plan and helped establish the company’s GDPR Steering Committee and served as co-chair. He adds that, ‘my role was central to driving a pragmatic compliance strategy which was successfully implemented. This project helped to develop my skills with respect to strategic planning, change management and cross-functional collaboration across global regions and cultures’. While at Xilinx, Dobbyn also helped to co-found the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland (AmCham), AmCham GC Forum with a number of senior in-house colleagues employed by other corporate members of AmCham.