About

Managing a team of 300 spread across Calgary, Montreal and Houston at the major North American energy company TransCanada, Kristine Delkus prides herself on creating a strong and versatile legal department. Delkus’ career has always been focused on the energy sector. She started off in the energy regulatory practice of law firm Morgan Lewis in Washington D.C., before moving to TransCanada around 20 years ago to work as senior counsel for US regulatory affairs. Due to her strong familiarity with TransCanada after two decades of rotations across the business, Delkus was promoted to general counsel and compliance officer in 2014. Apart from this role, Delkus also holds responsibility for internal audit, the regulatory group, government relations, communications and land and regional affairs. With a specialty in regulatory matters, Delkus has been able to utilise her skills in her new role: ‘My number one job is to understand our legal cost relative to that of other companies’, she says. ‘The legal group here grew organically. When I came here I wanted to understand whether our client service model was working and what I found through benchmarking was that we were high on both our internal spend and our external spend, so one of my priorities now is to move away from the hourly rate and to different kinds of relationships with our external providers and so forth’. As well as this focus on cost reduction, Delkus actively contributes to the strategic development of the company through her participation in the strategic management team. As the company implements new and sometimes ‘controversial’ projects, the board of TransCanada often utilises Delkus’ experience by asking her for guidance. Among a number of achievements in her professional career, Delkus is credited for her work on the merger between TransCanada and Nova Corporation, a major deal that has shaped the company into its form today. Delkus feels that the changing regulatory environment has made it somewhat more challenging to implement new projects. ‘The world has fundamentally shifted, particularly as a result of climate change’, she clarifies. ‘Now we try to build a project in a space that is governed by digital media among other things. The fax has given way to the internet, which is in fact a social movement that contributes to the politicisation of certain projects’.