Group counsel and senior director | Forcepoint
Marlene Connolly
Group counsel and senior director | Forcepoint
Group Counsel & Legal Director | Websense International Technology
As acting global general counsel, Marlene Connolly played a pivotal role in Websense’s billion-dollar merger with Raytheon Cyber Products completed in 2015. Connolly previously established the cyber defence leader’s Irish...
Marlene Connolly successfully led the cybersecurity company, Forcepoint’s US and international teams through a number of transformative transactions, such as the Raytheon acquisition due diligence, completion and integration in 2015, the Stonesoft acquisition from Intel and integration, and the company rebrand from Raytheon Websense to Forcepoint in 2016. Operating with limited resources, Connolly has kept the teams motivated and focused on delivering exceptional results on time and within budget without facing staff turnover or litigation. ‘This taught me the value of true leadership and integrity in recognising and rewarding the team players who “dug deep” with many competing demands and personified the qualities of loyalty, collegiality, professionalism and tenacity’, she says. ‘As I have built the international legal team over the past 10 years in Forcepoint from a “greenfield” site, I recognise that recruiting, rewarding and retaining the right talent is key. To me the team “fit” and individual positive attitude is more important than any knowledge or experience gaps that might exist and can be bridged with the right attitude and support’. Constantly striving to ‘do more with less’, Connolly and her team have rolled out comprehensive training to Forcepoint’s sales divisions in the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions via in-person and video conferences. Prior to moving to the company, Connolly worked at the telecommunications company Meteor, where she sharpened her skills to be a truly business-oriented GC, while also introducing scalable, low-cost, improved practices and template documentation. She started her legal career at the telecommunications company eir Ireland, where she spent seven years and led the Eircom mergers and acquisitions legal function to successfully complete significant corporate transactions including the Meteor Mobile acquisition in 2005. She also worked on eir’s initial public offering in 2004 that raised $360m equity and project managed eir’s exit from various non-core businesses in 2002.
