Team size: 14 in my reporting structure, 45 in the global legal department

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

After seven years of building the Legal EMEA function and a team supporting ~5,000 staff across ten countries in Central and Western Europe, I was tasked with expanding my leadership to include the Ukraine legal team, bringing an additional 5,000 staff under my remit. Since the Ukrainian legal function had been siloed for twelve years, my objective was to modernise it, align it with global standards, and optimise its processes and talent utilisation. In the few months since initiating the process and talent mapping and integration planning, I implemented the first improvements, reducing the team’s workload by 45%. By streamlining local repeatable tasks, I have enabled the team to pivot toward high-value strategic advice and provided them with opportunities to engage in international projects.

I was also appointed to lead the legal integration of a newly acquired group of companies operating in Germany, Switzerland, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, and the UAE. While I have led numerous post-M&A integrations, this project is uniquely complex. The acquired group operates as three separate sub-groups with independent offices, local management, and disparate processes. This complexity is heightened by the need to coordinate inputs from legal functions based on other continents, requiring me to bridge cultural differences and varied work styles. As the integration leader, I must ensure the successful delivery of results and a positive transition experience for incoming staff while ensuring zero business disruption.

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

I had the unique opportunity to build three international legal functions from the ground up. In 2018, I started building privacy, followed by legal EMEA in 2019. Both functions initially covered three EU countries and ~2,000 staff. Privacy quickly expanded to a global remit and now supports ~35,000 staff across 26 jurisdictions. Legal EMEA now supports ten countries and ~5,000 staff across the EMEA region. In both cases, I internally developed team leaders to manage daily operations, allowing my own role to transition to strategic executive oversight. Lastly, in 2021, I started building a global Compliance function, and have since implemented numerous policies, created processes, and built a training framework.

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

I am passionate about people leadership and growing the next generation of leaders. I believe that succession planning is critical – not only to ensure business continuity within my own function, but also to help the company tackle the challenges of a rapidly evolving business and technology landscape. What started as a focus on building high-performing teams has become my greatest professional passion. There is no greater joy than identifying and nurturing talent, helping people unlock their potential, and watching them grow.