Telma Candeias is Head of Privacy for EMEA at Howden Group, where she leads privacy, data protection and AI governance across nearly 30 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. A lawyer with more than 20 years of experience in legal, privacy and compliance roles, she specialises in translating regulatory requirements into practical, risk-based governance that works across complex multinational organisations.
Her current work focuses on improving privacy programme maturity, harmonising regional controls, operationalising privacy processes, and embedding clear accountability across business, legal, technology and local privacy teams. Telma also leads the development of Howden’s EMEA AI governance model, including practical guardrails and alignment with Group governance. She holds CIPP/E, CIPP/A and CIPT certifications and has a postgraduate qualification in law and technology.
At Field Talk
Field Talk · November 2026
The AI Governance Gap: What Happens When the Business Moves Faster Than the Framework
AI governance in practice is rarely the clean, framework-driven exercise the textbooks describe. In most organisations, by the time governance structures are being designed, AI tools are already deployed. Telma draws on her experience building AI governance across EMEA to map the gap between theory and operational reality — what it takes to identify existing use cases, assess risk across jurisdictions, engage business stakeholders, and create governance that supports rather than blocks. The messy, difficult, necessary work of building the plane while flying it.