Team size: Four direct reports

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

On 12 January 2022, our company announced its intention to float (initial public offering on Euronext Amsterdam). This project was by far the most extensive my team and I were involved in. To put this in context: WeTransfer was founded in 2009 and is active in 190 countries. When I joined in April 2019, there was no legal department, so there was an incredible amount of work to do. This consisted of building a legal team, building legal awareness, developing processes, contracts, legal tech, training the business and product teams, crafting the governance structure and documentation, mitigating risk and department spend.

My goal was to get legal awareness into the DNA of the organisation and that will only work if we show its added value: quality and speed. A year and half later, the decision was made to IPO on Euronext Amsterdam. On one hand, I had my “normal” work as general counsel and corporate secretary, ensuring full representation with regards to the ordinary day-to-day business and managing my team. On the other hand, I took full ownership of the legal part of the incredibly intensive IPO process, whereby new compliance issues arose. It filled me with pride that all work was heavily tested during this intensive IPO process and approved by all lawyers and banks involved.

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?

The pandemic has changed the working methods and team rituals significantly. Working from home automatically means a decrease in informal moments of contact and information gathering at the proverbial coffee machine. The balance between work and private life becomes diffused, while relaxation is crucial: one cannot be on standby mode 24/7. Therefore, I set additional goals for myself, such as keeping a close eye on my team members’ health and happiness. I built in extra moments for personal contact, organised walking meetings, and introduced weekly team chit chats only on non-work-related stuff.

What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how do you intend to assist with this?

The focus will be post-IPO compliance with additional regulations and reporting requirements that became applicable to us as a listed company. The legal team needs to own compliance with this and train the board and employees on these matters. I’m very proud that I built the legal framework at WeTransfer from scratch to a listed company level, whereby legal awareness is now strongly embedded in the DNA of the company. I feel confident and satisfied to hand-over a highly effective, knowledgeable and pragmatic legal team, consistently outperforming expectations.