Trisula Dewantara

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

To address the elephant in the room, I don’t think anyone is unfamiliar with challenges that we are facing in the US. As we are a global company with highly capable people doing work in the specialized area, we in the SEA region simply trust our leadership team and our colleagues to deal with these uncertainties. We believe that every part of the organization contributes in their own way to solving the issues at hand. So, we concentrate on things that we can control, e.g. in SEA we continue our efforts to grow the business and make ourselves as trusted partners of SEA governments.

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

In the fast-changing world of tech and how SEA government adapts to these changes, I think it is very important for in-house counsels to be agile, understand the regulatory trends, and be humble to realize that we do not know everything. There is so much to learn from collective knowledge out there and the most imprtant trait I feel is that to not stop learning, both internally and externally.

General counsel often speak of the need to be strategic to reach the pinnacle of the profession. What does being strategic mean to you?

For me, it’s being able to step back and look at things from a regional lens. My team may have the valuable insights into what’s best to be done in a specific region, but my function as regional lead is to bring those into a regional strategic level where contagion effect may be imminent and what goes on in one region may have its domino effect to others. So in other words, having a strategic view means that we shouldn’t discount the fact it may have to other regions.

Trisula Dewantara - Southeast Asia 2017

General counsel | Indosat Ooredoo

A highly skilled in-house counsel with over 14 years of experience both in private practice and in-house, Trisula Dewantara is recognised for possessing a deep understanding of and skills in...

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Trisula Dewantara - Southeast Asia 2019

General counsel and vice president of legal | Tokopedia

Moving from private practice to in-house work taught Trisula Dewantara how ‘the legal world is implemented in the corporate practice’, a lesson which he learnt very quickly and which allowed...

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