What are the key projects that you have been involved in over the past 12 months?

There have been a number of high impact projects I’ve been involved in over this period, which have all been about helping Shopify continue to evolve its services and grow internationally.

That included managing the roll-out of a suite of measures to help our merchants get tailored and detailed AI-generated answers about Shopify’s privacy program and how to best use our platform to facilitate their compliance with applicable privacy laws (via Shopify’s Help Center); and to equip Shopify’s merchant-facing teams to better address many standard privacy questions they face from merchants (via the use of playbooks, recorded trainings and FAQ templates).

Over the last 12 months, I also counselled our product teams on the launch of a range of new privacy-by-default features for our merchants. These will set them up for success by helping them better navigate changing international privacy laws, including those regulating the use of cookies and similar trackers, privacy transparency, and privacy rights facilitation.

Another big focus has been partnering with Shopify’s Revenue and Sales teams to attract and onboard more and more enterprise merchants to Shopify. These merchants all have complex multi-national operations with sophisticated privacy, due diligence and contracting needs. This has demanded a thoughtful approach to preempt their privacy needs, to facilitate expeditious negotiations and their ongoing needs once they have been onboarded.

One last example involved a team-wide collaboration to implement and maintain an internal AI agent to respond accurately and correctly to a significant volume of internal and external privacy queries escalated within Shopify. In terms of impact, this has really equipped the Privacy Legal Team to respond to far more queries at scale, harmonise and iterate responses, and focus on more complex work.

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

There’s no blueprint per se, but those I rate the highest include: good judgment and having the confidence (and knowledge) to provide a recommendation to the business; excellent communication skills that make your advice accessible and application-ready; having a bias to action; keeping a laser focus on getting results and getting to yes for your client; really understanding the business and thinking commercially; having a strong emotional IQ and treating everyone with respect; being intellectually curious (don’t be afraid to ask questions and be careful about making assumptions); staying empathetic to your clients and their interests and pressures; and always be open and lean in to new tools and technologies.

When you solve a problem, consider if there’s a wider opportunity to add value by creating a guideline, generating a template, starting/fixing a process, or helping the business avail itself of an untapped opportunity. Stay positive and have fun as often as possible – the work is easier as a result and people prefer working with you. Share in the wins and always recognise great work by colleagues.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about?

It sometimes feels unfashionable to say, but I’m a committed Europhile and am passionate about the complex, imperfect and ambitious international peace project that is the European Union. It has been a huge catalyst for progress, and I’m proud of the role Ireland has played in that story.