Paul Twynam, our Data Protection Manager, is celebrating 25 years working at Hft!
Before starting at Hft, Paul worked as a trainer where he had the opportunity to work with charity and learning disability clients. It was this link that he felt made him a good fit for Hft initially. So, in 1997, Paul started at Hft as a Management Trainer, making up one half of the small team at the time.
Over the past 25 years, Paul has taken on a number of roles at Hft. In 2017, he worked on the process of moving the organisation towards compliance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) that were coming into force the following year. And after leading on this project, Paul was offered the job of Data Protection Manager which he views as an extension of his first job at Hft; the themes of learning and improvement have continued.
When asked about how Hft has changed as a whole in 25 years, Paul said, “Hft has improved immeasurably as an organisation and still has the heart and passion to do the right thing”.
He described the improvements he has seen in Hft’s processes, responsibilities and governance, which have all effectively moved towards giving the people Hft support a more independent and realistic life.
Over the course of his career, Paul has had some fantastic experiences including an opportunity to teach management training courses in countries across Europe including the Netherlands, Ireland, Romania and Bulgaria. He shared a fond memory of running a management training course under a cherry tree on a farm in Budapest where he was later invited to ride (or attempt to ride) a black stallion belonging to them.
Paul described these experiences as “hugely challenging but weird and wonderful”, noting that the good achieved in the end made it all worth it.
Looking into his future, Paul is going to keep doing what he has been doing for the past 25 years. His job is ever evolving and he has always made an effort to ask lots of questions and go wherever the job takes him. He’d like to improve the utilisation of data and work on an integrated approach to policy as it evolves.
Paul finally wanted to recognise the incredible people he has worked with over the past 25 years and the friendships he has made along the way.
