About

As general counsel, Sarah Qadeer leads the legal department of Home Depot Canada which consists of two senior corporate counsel, a corporate counsel and a legal specialist. Supporting over 30,000 employees at the number one home improvement retailer in Canada, the legal department operates as a lean and optimised business partner. It is widely sought out for its practical and strategic business advice, alongside its role in protecting the brand and the reputation of the organisation. Qadeer identifies that, this is achieved by ‘a deep involvement and engagement with the business, including spending time in the field and with customers to best understand the needs of the organisation’. Recently, the team has expanded to bring in new areas including the insourcing of employment law and health and safety matters from outside counsel to in-house. This has resulted in significant cost savings and the transformation of talent into digital-savvy, privacy and data-educated lawyers who can support new technologies, AI and data governance priorities. The team has also promoted two corporate counsel to senior corporate counsel as a reflection of the new complexity and breadth of their portfolios. The team is commended for its successful management of the largest payment card data breach in Canadian history, the launch of a fintech solution to offer consumer loans for renovation projects, the acquisition and integration of a Canadian maintenance, repair and operations company (MRO), as well as the launch of multiple app and mobile-based professional and consumer solutions. The latter will enable a world class supply chain solution including warehouses, transportation and technology solutions for an integrated and optimised supply chain and delivery organisation. Qadeer adds that the Home Depot Canada legal department is ‘foremost a business partner providing enabling advisory services to the business, ensuring incremental growth in revenue over the last decade. With an exceptionally lean team, the ethos of the department is to remain nimble, curious and efficient, and effectively prioritise sales driving activities. All lawyers are generalists, and jump in to learn where the business is going and acquire the required skills to move speedily forward on initiatives’.