Team size: 15 direct; 73 dotted line

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis is about balancing immediate risk mitigation with long-term resilience. I approach legal management with a focus on safeguarding compliance, preserving stakeholder trust, and building long-term resilience. This means being on the one hand proactive by anticipating regulatory shifts or building flexible contracts where warranted and on the other hand being adaptive to enable swift decision making.

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

I am passionate about promoting a culture of ethics and compliance through clear policies, fostering an environment where employees understand and follow legal and ethical guidelines. Compliance is the outcome of an organisation meeting its obligations. It is made sustainable by embedding it in the culture of the organisation and in the behaviour and attitude of people working for it. Equally passionate about positioning the legal department as a strategic partner within Eurofins involves demonstrating the value of legal expertise in achieving the company’s goals, fostering strong relationships with other departments, and ensuring proactive involvement in key projects.

Otherwise, I am an avid sports passionate pushing my boundaries. It callouses the mind by seeking out and embracing discomfort to build mental toughness, resilience, and discipline – all transferable skills that can be used professionally.

How does your team contribute to the overall business strategy of the company? Can you share an example of a recent legal-led initiative that had a significant impact?

Positioning the legal department as a strategic partner within Eurofins involves demonstrating the value of legal expertise in achieving the company’s goals, fostering strong relationships with other departments, and ensuring proactive involvement in key projects. It requires a thorough understanding of Eurofins’ business model, strategic objectives and to stay agile. To this end, with our legal (operations) team together with the IT and development team, we have created internal tools which integrate certain regulatory or statutory approvals with internal approval processes via an end-to-end platform which also connects to a data-room. Furthermore, we have implemented processes that require legal review and sign-off at various stages of projects, where we can bring our legal expertise to the table, with a focus on providing practical, business-friendly solutions rather than just identifying risks. Other legal led initiatives are taken up in the last 2 paragraphs of the first answer.