IGHS62 - Phyllis Elin, CEO at Knowledge Preservation

Jim Merrifield (00:00.83)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Phyllis Elin. Welcome, Phyllis.

Phyllis Elin (00:01.903)
Thank you, Jim. Wonderful talking to you. We've known each other a long time and it's really nice to work together like this. Thanks so much for asking me.

Jim Merrifield (00:17.202)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join me on the hot seat. So let's get into this. I know we've known each other for quite some time, but I'm sure there's some listeners that wanna hear who Phyllis Elin is and what you're up to these days. I know you're all over the place and very busy. So can you please provide a brief introduction of yourself, your current role and one fun fact about yourself?

Phyllis Elin (00:41.75)
Okay, I'll end with the fun fact, which I've thought about already. So I'm Dr. Phyllis Elin. I'm founder and CEO of Knowledge Preservation. Knowledge Preservation is the global information governance and data privacy consultancy. It's actually the one that came after the Elin Group, which is one that I started several years ago, which I closed because of a family health issue. But I have been in the field of

records and information management, information governance for over 40 years, have worked for a lot of the largest companies, and for over 20 years have worked on my own with teams. We are a global practice. We have offices throughout the US and some offices in Western Europe, also an office in Singapore, and we do a lot of work in Australia.

I've become known as a subject matter expert, both in information governance and just in management consulting. Over the past couple of years, as I've mentioned to you, I've gotten really very popular to be a subject matter expert. Over the past couple of years, I've won such awards as Global CEO of the Year, Empowered Woman of the Year. I was actually on the Jumbotron.

in Times Square recently, and I've been asked to do it again on Valentine's Day, which is exciting. I received a major international award in Nashville a couple of weeks ago, and I'm getting the same award again, which is CEO of the Year and Empowered Woman of the Year in Vegas next Christmas. So a lot's been happening for me. And also, which I'm sure I'd love to talk a little bit about later,

I've published four books on our discipline in the past couple of years. So all of a sudden, I think life begins sort of at the mid to end of one's career because that's really what's been happening with me lately. So I'm very excited for all the accolades and so forth. Most of which I actually attributed to having a very large following on LinkedIn. And my fun fact is that I'm an advocate for pit bulls.

Phyllis Elin (03:02.536)
I would have, I have six and a half acres and I would have pit bulls on every acre if I possibly could. I've rescued a lot of pit bulls and when people think of me, they think I might be more of a fluffy dog type, but I absolutely adore the breed. If you treat them well, they're the one most wonderful. And I recently lost my first honey. was 18. So if you treat them well, they can live a very long life.

So that's my fun fact, which is also a sad fact, but I'm always happy to talk about honey.

Jim Merrifield (03:37.475)
So you're a fellow dog lover. I love it. That's great. And congratulations on all the accolades. I know I've seen your following on LinkedIn, saw you on the Jumbotron. I saw the wonderful posts. I know you have a blog every Thursday. So thanks for all you do for the community.

Phyllis Elin (03:44.189)
Thank you.

Phyllis Elin (03:52.53)
I do. I do.

Phyllis Elin (03:57.365)
I've been in what was originally known as records management since I was a kid. And, I actually got involved in the industry because I'm a paralegal. I actually also have a PhD in English literature. That's why I'm Dr. Phyllis, but, they weren't paying much for me to teach 18th and 19th century English novel and Chaucer and NYU, which is my alma mater. So.

I went back to my paralegal degree and I got involved with TAB products a long time ago and I've stayed within the industry and I picked an industry that has really metamorphosized through the years and is probably sexier today than it was when I was a kid starting out.

Jim Merrifield (04:42.235)
Yeah, I'd say so. So let me ask you a question about your company, this company, Great Knowledge Preservation. What inspired you to start your company and how has the vision for the business evolved over time?

Phyllis Elin (04:57.128)
Actually, what inspired me was that the companies that I were working for were not doing enough legal research, enough consulting, they were selling products rather than solutions. And I really liked the consulting piece of it. For example, when I worked for Tab Products years ago, we were selling filing systems and supplies, but I was one of the first people who decided, you know what,

let's offer conversion services too. So I was one of the first to actually decided when you were purging documents or turning something from a straight numeric to middle digit to terminal digit or whatever, you really needed teams of people to do that. You needed people to actually in the old days make color coded strip labels to attach to folders. So I had this idea that there would be cottage industries that would be value added.

And that's basically how I got involved in consulting. And then there weren't many people who were studying about records retention. Certainly nothing about privacy in the old days and so forth. But I learned as much as I possibly could, both from library schools and also for everything I could get my hands on. And I actually did some basic training as far as actual training about records management best practices.

I had gotten involved with the ALA and I taught a records management course for them. And then I just kept learning and so forth and all the learning turns into consulting expertise because people were not doing much consulting in the old days. So it actually started out with conversions, going to an Iron Mountain facility, literally, and interfiling folders, terminal digit, middle digit.

Jim Merrifield (06:36.273)
Yeah, for sure.

Phyllis Elin (06:48.303)
purging folders from old retention schedules that were not as good as the ones we use today. And then ultimately, I was still selling filing systems and supplies. I got involved in systems furniture, worked for a steel case dealership to put a lot of various disciplines together. And that's basically what started my foray into consulting.

which obviously these days is really strict consulting for information governance and data privacy. But in those days, I just put everything together and sort of mixed up in it, it worked out very well. And also, I was very fortunate there weren't very many women in business in those days. And I remember when I started working for TAB and I became branch manager, they actually had to use a euphemism for me because I was a branch manager.

But the president at the time didn't want women in management. So I think they said I was a systems analyst or something, but didn't really tell them that around the branch. So I really broke the glass ceiling like forever ago. And I've never had any problems with women in business and anything like that. Cause most of the people through the years were men who worked for me. Cause I was also in sales management in addition to other things.

Jim Merrifield (08:04.643)
Excellent. Well, you've had a fulfilling career and you're still going. And I know, yeah, you're still going and in connection with the consulting and, your company knowledge preservation, you've also published several books around IG privacy and ESG. can you please tell us about those books?

Phyllis Elin (08:09.599)
I am. I'm still going.

Phyllis Elin (08:25.687)
Sure. interestingly enough, was through again through LinkedIn, I was approached by my publisher, Business Expert Press, and they actually wanted me initially to write some books for librarians. So even though I'm not actually schooled as a librarian, I actually did my consulting practice actually started in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area. So I was a visiting professor at Simmons University.

And my first book was actually Information Governance for the Librarian. One was for the government librarian and one was for the corporate librarian. And in the beginning of those books, I actually talked a little bit about how I got involved in the industry. And I was actually trained when I was a kid, when I was in my early 20s, by women who would actually work for the government during World War II.

in records management responsibilities. So I actually learned Norma Hines and Dorothy Cass were their names, I'll never forget. And that's how I got very involved in records management itself. So it's, and then it's just metamorphosized, but I did tell a little bit about that story in the preface of both of my librarian books and then did another librarian book for ISO, which obviously is very important. And then most recently,

wrote a book with my partner, my business partner, Max Rappaport, who's also an attorney. He's also the COO of Knowledge Preservation in ESG, which is environmental sustainability or social and governance. And that's really a very big buzzword. We'll see them in financial reports, annual reports for a lot of the Fortune 500 and other companies. And it's become a very, very lucrative consulting niche for me through my clients and otherwise.

So yeah, my books are doing very well. There's a fifth one on the docket and doing very well with my books. It's interesting. My husband, who's passed away, was also an author, metaphysical fiction. So I really love it because there aren't many Elins. So our books are not the same discipline, but they're actually next to each other on the shelves. And that's very exciting for me too.

Phyllis Elin (10:47.84)
But as I said, I always wanted to write. have a PhD in literature. Didn't think I was going to write about records management, information governance, and privacy, but that's what's happened. And that's really led me to a lot of the awards that I've been receiving and a lot of the other accolades as well. Thanks for asking about them.

Jim Merrifield (11:05.413)
Yeah, that's no, that's excellent. And where you can get these books on Amazon, right? You can probably download.

Phyllis Elin (11:10.545)
Yeah, you can get them on Amazon and actually if you look on my website, you'll see all four of them and there's a link to Amazon. Interestingly enough, I've Googled them and I see that they're actually selling all over the world. And I mean, they have not been translated, but I see like London bookstores, see like tiny bookstores all over the world that are selling them. I see that they're actually being used for

some different types of library science courses and so forth. and again, I honestly haven't done very much as far as marketing them, although I think I probably will. And I would love to get it into the ARMA bookstore, for example, but somehow they have legs and I know they do because we do get royalty checks for them.

I'm as astounded as anybody else about them, but I love writing, although I thought I'd be writing fiction, but one never knows what one turns into, so yeah.

Jim Merrifield (12:10.845)
Yeah, that's great. Congratulations. I'll have to check out your website and I'll, when this episode gets released, happy to link to it as well. Perfect. So let's talk about AI a bit. I'm sure every company, you know, consulting or even a software company is thinking about AI solutions and things. You know, how do you ensure that your company develops AI solutions or even uses AI solutions that are both innovative and ethically

Phyllis Elin (12:12.337)
Thank you.

Phyllis Elin (12:19.473)
Thank you.

Jim Merrifield (12:40.549)
responsible while maintaining strong information governance. I know that's a mouthful, but it's a valid question, I think, to ask.

Phyllis Elin (12:44.903)
Well.

Phyllis Elin (12:48.891)
Well, ethics is extraordinarily important because that's obviously the foundation of all the work that we do in information governance. I'll give you an example. People have been talking about this. So for example, you know, we create records retention schedules based upon legal research. Research is obviously updated constantly, research specifically for the industry, jurisdiction, and so forth.

However, a lot of people recently have been saying, what do we need consultants for? We can just put our older retention schedule into AI and we'll get what we want. We don't have to hire consultants, so we don't have to do it internally. So I've known a couple of firms that actually did that, not to actually use it as a retention schedule, but to see and compare. And it absolutely was horrible.

everything, not everything, but so much of it was fallacious. So many of the retention periods were wrong. So much of the taxonomy did not agree and so forth. So some people say, my goodness, you're not going to have an industry very long because AI is going to take really everything and just do everything, your records retention, your policy and procedures, your training manuals and so forth.

So we actually then attempted to do it ourselves and take a look and compare it to what we use. We use a database of over 300,000 citations that are constantly updated from one of our partners. Actually, Max, who I mentioned is my partner, was head of the legal researchers for Iron Mountain for many years.

We use other people's databases. We also have our own information and so forth. So we have to make sure that everything that we give our clients is legally defensible, best practice. And that's why we say, please, you know, bring this to your corporate legal, your general counsel's office, bring it to the law firms that you use and so forth. These are our recommendations. We want to make sure that you agree with them.

Phyllis Elin (15:10.017)
So, yeah, it's extraordinarily important. And another part of it is that I'm seeing, for example, we talked about LinkedIn and blogs. I mean, I'm not sure, but a lot of the blogs that one reads now, I'm sure are almost straight out of ChatGPT or without tweaking too much and so forth. So, AI has its usages.

But you really have to be very honest and ethical when it comes to these things. And sure, we look things up, but that's not where we stop. And because we are a group of attorneys, legal research people, paralegals and so forth, the honesty and ethical basis of AI is extraordinarily important.

Jim Merrifield (16:03.384)
Yeah, that makes sense. mean, I think there's still a human component to utilizing AI. And you mentioned blogs and articles and things. you still got to, whether you're a lawyer or a business professional, you still got to check your work, right? It's critically important. Yeah.

Phyllis Elin (16:18.476)
Yes.

Yeah, because I remember, I mean, oftentimes when you develop a retention schedule, then you actually do meet with the legal professionals of the corporation that you're working with. And not naming names, but sometimes some of the legal research was not approved and that was using databases from others that I did not develop myself. So that's why I decided that I obviously have to spot check

or people who work for me now because I'm much more in the marketing and sales aspect of my firm these days. But definitely have to take a look from that point of view because you want to make sure that everything is up to par. And unfortunately, when you do deliver your retention schedules to clients, sometimes they don't even spot check. So you want to make sure that you're giving them everything that's possibly up to date, especially with GDPR and cross national.

And a lot of our clients are global. So oftentimes the retention periods, as you know, would be longer in Europe than they might be here or in Canada than if they might be here. So then you have to decide if you just want to use some sort of a golden rule to the longest period, or you actually want retention schedules specifically for every jurisdiction. And that's really what I like. I'm not crazy about using the golden principle.

Although if a client decides that that's fine for them, that's okay. But I usually default to having the specific schedule for the jurisdiction where it emanates from.

Jim Merrifield (18:01.831)
Makes perfect sense. Well, I know, Phyllis, we've talked about a lot here. I'm sure we could talk for several more hours on this topic, and I'm sure we'll have a part two to this discussion. But is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience before we let you go?

Phyllis Elin (18:08.887)
sure.

Phyllis Elin (18:17.013)
I think that what I would like to share is that our discipline, information governance, data privacy, and all the various manifestations is a wonderful career path. And I'm still very involved with ARMA, not as most on the international scale anymore, but my local chapter and so forth.

It's just such a wonderful industry and I would just love to see more younger people get involved in any possible way because I know we have like two or three younger people who recently joined our chapter, but that's just two or three. And I remember when I first started with ARMA, which was quite a few decades ago, all of us were young and I would just love to bring students and younger people into our discipline.

because it is a very interesting industry. It's brought me everything from the federal government to doing a project for the group Aerosmith and everything in between. So information governance absolutely can be fun. It is a sexy industry and it's kept me for decades very enthralled. So if my parting words are really consider this as a career path because I have learned so much through the years.

through it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks. I always like to give my pitch. And one more thing, training, training, training. Let's just not, you know, just do policy or procedures, but let's make sure that the people and the staff that we do it for really understand what we're developing and why. That's really important. Training programs are paramount as well.

Jim Merrifield (19:40.731)
percent.

Jim Merrifield (19:47.165)
Sure.

Jim Merrifield (20:02.407)
Yeah, couldn't have said it better myself. think too, you know, sharing information like this with the early or younger generation is helpful. So thanks so much for, for hitting on that. Phyllis, I'll give you some, some positive news at the ARMA Infocon this year. There was a first timer reception and there was about 200 people in there and most of them were, were very, very young. It looks like students and things. So I think there's.

Phyllis Elin (20:24.72)
Wow.

Jim Merrifield (20:31.353)
As you hit on, think ARMA has a very bright future and of course, you know, talking to people like you, veterans, you're very willing to share your knowledge with others. So we appreciate that.

Phyllis Elin (20:44.818)
Absolutely. And thank you. did not know that statistic. That was very encouraging.

Jim Merrifield (20:49.053)
No, absolutely. Yeah, you got it. So listen, thanks so much for spending some time with me on the hot seat. You know, if you'd like to be a guest to our audience, like Phyllis here, all you have to do is submit your information through our website, infogovhotseat.com. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Phyllis Elin (21:08.687)
You too. Thanks so much and happy holidays, Jim.

Jim Merrifield (21:11.742)
Thank you.