Joining RB over a decade ago in December 2007, Ariadna Grañena was originally in charge of the company’s tax legal and company law matters, but within two years had assumed an expanded role which saw her head legal and tax for the company across Iberia. In late 2013 she added Iberian management team responsibilities to this, as well as becoming part of the company’s board of directors. Her advice for dealing with such a demanding set of expectations in this role is to ‘prioritise effectively and keep pace with the pressure while making time for everything using vigorous assessments’.

She states her main innovation with the legal function is a change in how it is perceived by the management element of the business, describing how she has contributed to the function being seen as a ‘business enabler’. To achieve this, she explains that ‘you have to balance your business knowledge to understand what the business needs so that you can supply proper opinion from a legal perspective’. Grañena is keen that the lawyers under her keep their skills sharp, and advises other in-house lawyers to keep this in mind: ‘Something that is key as an in-house counsel is that you have to keep yourself updated on legal skills and not just rely on external lawyers and external support’.