Career Biography

Gemma Neylon is Head of Legal at Diageo Ireland. She is a member of the Executive Team and leads the legal team across Ireland and Diageo Northern Ireland. Prior to joining Diageo, Neylon was Global General Counsel for OpenJaw Technologies, commercial solicitor at Mason Hayes & Curran and Case Manager at the Attorney General’s Department in Sydney.

She completed her Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL 2004) at University College Cork and her Master of Laws (LLM 2005) at Trinity College Dublin, in which she was awarded first class honours. In 2004, Neylon received the University College Cork Comyn Kelleher Tobin Prize for Excellence in Technology Law. Neylon was winner of the 2008 Law Society Negotiation Competition and coached winning teams for the Law Society in subsequent years. In 2014, she was awarded a scholarship by University College Dublin to undertake an MBA at UCD Smurfit Business School, in which she achieved first class honours.

Neylon lectures on the Law Society Diploma in Technology and IP and Certificate in Commercial Contracts. She is admitted as a solicitor in Ireland, England and Wales and is also qualified as a Trade Mark Attorney.

Her first in-house role after moving from private practice was as General Counsel at OpenJaw Technologies. In 2014, she supported OpenJaw through its acquisition by GuestLogix and through its subsequent acquisition by TravelSky Technology in 2016. TravelSky is the Chinese state-owned airline global distribution system. The acquisition process included liaising with the Industrial Development Authority in Ireland and working to integrate OpenJaw’s legal affairs seamlessly with those of TravelSky. With the resultant boost to its global business, the scale and complexity of OpenJaw’s legal work swelled considerably, resulting in a growing legal team.

She then moved to Diageo Ireland as Head of Legal in 2021. Diageo is a global leader in premium drinks, owning over 200 brands, including Guinness, Baileys, Smirnoff, Gordon’s. The Legal Team plays a critical role in the achievement of Diageo’s ambition to be the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products company in the world.

Having spent ten years in-house in the fast-paced technology industry prior to joining Diageo, Neylon has aimed to embed a digital-first mindset within the Diageo legal team to allow the business to seize opportunities with speed and agility. As a global legal team of 200+ lawyers, they have collectively agreed on the legal team mission to “Clear the Path” for sustainable growth and allow the business to seize commercial opportunities. The behaviours on which they focus as a team are embodied within their strategic acronym – LEAP, which means that they deliver upon their mission by focusing on how we “Lead, Enable, Accelerate and Protect”.

As a member of the Diageo Ireland Executive Team, part of Neylon’s role is designing the legal team to be fit for the future. She has introduced a new concept of Legal Business Partners (LBP), with each lawyer in the team appointed as a dedicated legal advisor to a specific business team within Diageo Ireland. LBPs work side-by-side with their team on specific projects to support them achieving their results. This drives greater alignment of legal goals with business goals. With an LBP involved from the start and throughout a particular project, they are able to advise in real time the entire way through the project and pick up issues before they become serious issues. This has moved the perception of the legal team from a legal support service to trusted advisers and valued business partners: not just advising but collaborating and ultimately innovating.