Some of New York City-based attorney Alesya Nasimova’s career goals for 2020 included becoming a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP-US). While she knew even back then that circumstances can change, she didn’t expect her life to look entirely different following the March 2020 U.S. lockdowns.

“I actually signed up for the class and I had the test date already set back in January before COVID started here, and I guess between work and home responsibilities I never got around to it. But with COVID, for all the people that said, ‘I don’t have the time’ we [suddenly] had all the time in the world. It helped me to buckle down and study for the exam,” she said.