About

With 11 direct reports and a team of roughly 150 reports globally, Dr Marion Welp was promoted from head of law for Europe to global general counsel, merging the previously existing two individual departments in Europe and Asia. Dr Welp quickly adapted to the role, emerging as an excellent international lawyer by adopting an understanding of local culture, heritage, thinking and behaviour. Regarding this emergence she states that she learned ‘how essential it is to understand a foreign local culture first, before thinking global and harmonising and establishing overall standards and policies’. In this capacity Dr Welp wears multiple hats, concurrently leading the worldwide human resources department and global strategy for learning and developing concepts for 11,000 employees in 18 countries with a particular focus on international talent identification and development, as well as leading consistent training on selling approaches for retail store staff to foster globally. Dr Welp holds an impressive list of achievements and restructuring projects under her belt, amongst which she mentions the legal stabilisation and compliance of Espirit’s China business between 2011 and 2014 as well as the establishment of the cross functional and cross hierarchical “Espirit Cares Working Group” enforcing cost neutrally a culture of internal as well as external social caring in 2014. Dr Welp has been behind reducing external legal expenditure by more than 60% while building an internal legal department, an experience which taught her the importance of presenting legal risks and cases as a business case: ‘For lawyers it’s key in order to be seen as a sparring partner and adviser to the management to talk their language and connect your goals to theirs’. Dr Welp takes great pride in her internal influence, having developed an existing minor, legal department into a ‘sparring partner’ of the executive and supervisory board as well as being appreciated as a consulting partner and involved upfront as advisor in all matters that could have a legal impact on the business.