Traditional data governance often acts as a gatekeeper, catching issues after deployment and slowing delivery. At PayPal, we’ve reimagined governance through Governance by Design—embedding data governance controls directly into architecture rather than treating it as an afterthought. This shift-left approach makes governance proactive and frictionless, reducing late-stage remediation and accelerating innovation.

In this session, we’ll share how PayPal uses Policy-as-Code, automation, and schema-driven design to enforce governance controls early in the data lifecycle. We’ll explore practical strategies for integrating governance into cloud modernization initiatives without slowing delivery and highlight early outcomes from piloting AI-assisted metadata validation and classification.

Key takeaways:

• Designing governance controls into architecture for scalability
• Automating policy enforcement with Policy-as-Code
• Embedding governance into CI/CD pipelines without friction
• Lessons learned from implementing shift-left data governance in practice

Speaker: Brandy O'Shields, Sr Manager, Enterprise Data Governance, PayPal

Brandy O'Shields, CDMP Practitioner, CPA, CITP, is a seasoned data governance strategist at PayPal who champions governance and AI as force multipliers—not opposing forces. She pioneered a Shift-Left Strategy that embeds AI-powered controls and validation into development workflows, ensuring AI models consume only properly governed data. In 2025, Brandy earned PayPal’s Innovation & Collaboration Award for co-developing an AI-powered data classification solution that guarantees AI models train on classified, compliant data. Her metadata framework provides the semantic foundation AI needs for accurate data discovery and usage. Combining deep technical expertise with experience designing enterprise governance programs, Brandy transforms governance from a perceived barrier into a true business enabler. Her governance programs don’t just support AI—they make it possible. Without governed data, AI becomes expensive guesswork.