Team size: Seven

What are the most significant cases, projects or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

My team covers all matters commercial, M&A, regulatory, compliance, investor relations and regulatory outreach. The key accomplishments of my team in the last year are 1) Completed commercial agreements with telcos around the world leading to 169 million users in SE Asia and EMEA 2) Completed two 5 M&A deals to execute our growth by M&A in Asia, UK, Africa. 3) Helped launch new products such as Binary Hub – a super app for Telco users, BNRY games lab to deploy web3 games to telco users, Launched digital wallet to help decentralised finance capabilities 4) Put in place GDPR and Cybersecurity compliance programs 5) Helped closed 3 investment deals to fund the growth of the company 6) Participated in regulatory outreach to SEC and other regulators to help shape the regulatory landscape.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

CLO’s role is to help the CEO, and the board manage through legal and regulatory obstacles while managing the growth and profitability. I do that by closely partnering with all the business units to truly understand their business so that I can help them not only on legal issues but also commercial issues. We are a web3 company where laws and rules are changing on a weekly basis. To enable stability, you need to “read the direction” of the regulatory landscape and then proactively put in place processes and mechanisms to deal with them. When a crisis and conflict arise, oftentimes passions are heated.

As a highly experienced CLO, the first thing I do it to take the emotion out of the situation and “be the adult” in the boardroom. Then objectively analyse the situation and come up with options that balance the risk with business imperatives. Being in control means, you need not to be flustered, threatened or intimidated by any crisis (such as new regulation, new lawsuit, a cybersecurity incident, etc.) and handle it calmly and objectively based on facts and risk-based approach. I have 20 years’ experience in dealing with legal issues at companies like Microsoft, Chewy and Etihad Airways – which are some of the largest companies in the world. With experience you develop judgement and confidence and that is how I help manage crises for my company.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

The unique thing about my career is the international aspect of it. I am a California lawyer but I have lived and worked in the US, Brussels, Dubai and now Bangkok. Such a career has given me an amazing international perspective and that’s why I get hired to power international growth.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

I think here are the key attributes 1) ability to understand the business model like business executives – without this you can’t be effective 2) Ability to anticipate risks and partner with business to structure deals in such a way where you optimise for growth but manage the risk 3) be fearless in taking smart risk based decisions 4) Ability as a people leader to inspire and. grow your legal team.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

Gone are the days when commercial lawyers who can redline the contracts best grew their career. Business today looks for business executives disguised as a lawyer.