Team size: 25

What are the key projects that you have been involved in over the past twelve months?

CEPI is celebrating its ten year anniversary in 2027, so we are currently on the cusp of completing our second strategic cycle, or CEPI 2.0, and building the foundations for the CEPI 3.0 strategic cycle. Over the last twelve months, we have successfully and fully integrated the Compliance, Risk & Assurance department into the Legal Division: a bold and catalytic thought partner, advocating a risk and principles-based approach to problem-solving and direction-setting, which has a robust and reliable foresight. The new division now has clear functional pillars, established functional teams with the appropriate expertise and competencies and established a strong divisional leadership team.

Parallel to the establishment and strengthening of the division, I have also led the CEPI Legal Team in launching the very first CEPI Legal Summit, which was participated in by around 60 legal colleagues from different partners in the global health and emergency preparedness ecosystem, such as the WHO, UNICEF, Word Bank, GAVI, European Medicines Agency, UNITAID, Africa CDC, Medicines Patent Pool, AVAREF and many others. In this inaugural summit, we examined legal frameworks for equitable access in publicly funded research, reviewed progress on pandemic agreement implementation, and discussed liability risk management, biosecurity, biosafety and AI. The agenda included panel discussions, scenario-based exercises assessing legal capacity for outbreak response, and steps toward a Legal Preparedness Playbook. Following the successful summit in October 2025, my team and I are now establishing the identified working groups and leading discussions on the legal preparedness frameworks at regional and country levels, while also preparing for the next Legal Summit in October 2026.

The last twelve months also generated a significant volume of key agreements with various sovereign investors, funding partners and grant recipients. At the same time, it is a pivotal period as CEPI launched its investment case for the CEPI 3.0 financing cycle. CEPI 3.0 is an ambitious, science-driven plan to transform the world’s ability to tackle epidemics and pandemics, delivering faster protection and stronger resilience for everyone. Our plan will harness CEPI’s decade of experience, alongside the best and latest scientific advances, to strengthen the vaccines, rapid-response platforms and global networks needed to respond to known or emerging viral threats swiftly and equitably. To unlock this transformational potential and secure the future against epidemic and pandemic threats, CEPI is seeking $2.5bn in new funding against a total budget of $3.6bn.

Aside from ensuring that the Legal, Compliance, Risk and Assurance Division helps build strong ethical, legal, compliance and risk foundations for CEPI’s next strategic cycle and ensure its organisational health and sustainability, I have also stepped up to support the executive team with partner and country engagements. I have taken on a more strategic corporate role, demonstrating that aside from being a trusted legal advisor, the legal function can also be a strategic business leader.

As the world continues to face geopolitical, technological and economic uncertainty, how do you manage legal risk while still prioritising commercial objectives?

Maintaining a pragmatic and balanced approach is essential to ensure that strategic investments are effectively prioritised while also developing the broader portfolio, aligning financial disbursements with milestone achievements, and harmonising deliverables with our resource capacity.

The rapidly evolving geopolitical, technological and economic uncertainties have an impact on our organisation’s risk profile, so we are putting more emphasis on a risk and principles-based approach rather than rigid rules or checklists. It is also important to continue to monitor and review the evolving external landscape and be prepared to adjust or course-correct our risk management framework so that it remains agile and responsive to these changes.

Managing legal risks in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment also requires shifting from a purely reactive legal function to a proactive, integrated strategy. Key approaches include developing organisational agility, strengthening contractual protections, leveraging technology for real-time monitoring and fostering a risk-aware culture.

As the in-house role continues to evolve from legal advisor to business partner, what strategies have you found most effective for stakeholder management and aligning legal advice with business strategy?

In an in-house role, a lawyer must possess a comprehensive skill set that goes beyond legal or functional expertise. One of the most important is strong business acumen, making us strategic partners who provide insights that drive business decisions. We need to go beyond the traditional in-house counsel role of identifying and mitigating risks and evolve into one that also identifies or even creates opportunities for the organisation. Another important attribute is the ability to cut through noise and bring order to the chaos of the organisation. This is a key leadership quality, which gives the other functions the confidence that they have reliable in-house counsels who could help filter through mass information, hone in on the key risks and opportunities, and provide clear options and pathways that have solid legal and ethical foundations. It is critical that in-house counsel should also be able to embrace a problem-solving mindset, stay up to date on legal trends, can simplify complex legal concepts into understandable language, and are resilient to changes in the environment.

We must keep in mind that once we move to an in-house legal role, we are no longer the profit-generators that we once were in a law firm practice – we are now an overhead, a line item as far as the business is concerned. But this should encourage us to pivot our mindset to establish influence on the basis of trust and credibility, not because of hierarchy or our legal title. Our identity is measured on the basis of impact, how the business is able to move forward.

In my organisation, especially considering the nature of our mission and purpose – innovation – is in our name, there is an expectation that all functions should have an innovative mindset. So, one of my key strategies is to develop the legal, compliance, risk and assurance functions as bold and catalytic thought partners, advocating a risk and principles-based approach to problem-solving and direction-setting, and demonstrating a robust and reliable foresight.

But the most important trait that underpins all of the above should be an unwavering ethical judgment and integrity. In-house counsel are gatekeepers and protectors of corporate ethics and compliance and are responsible for ensuring that the organisation operates within legal and moral boundaries.

How do you prioritise diversity and inclusion within your legal department, and what initiatives have you implemented to create a more inclusive work environment?

Providing an inclusive environment within my team is anchored on the principles of respect for diversity of opinions, ideas and perspectives, psychological safety that enables courage and comfort to speak up and participate and ensuring that systems and decisions provide fair chances to succeed.

One of the things we have also implemented within my team is to ensure that our partner firms are able to demonstrate to us their DEI commitments and progress. This is part of the criteria for the selection of our partner firms in the CEPI Preferred Legal Alliance. Our recruitment and promotion processes likewise take into consideration DEI principles, to ensure that we have equitable representation and fair opportunities.

We also lead in speaking up for underrepresented groups not only within the legal and compliance teams, but also across the organisation, in situations where it becomes more challenging for colleagues from global south countries to travel, secure visas or relocate from their home countries to our offices in the global north.

Beyond your core legal role, are there any causes or initiatives you’re passionate about?

I am very passionate about global health and enabling access to medicines and treatments, especially in the most underserved regions of the world. One of the global health leaders I have worked with said that our medicines and treatments are only as good as the health systems and health infrastructure that receive them. Based on my experiences in the last several years that I have been working in the global health space, this is indeed true. As I have also witnessed this on several occasions on the ground, I am committed to dedicating the remaining years of my legal journey to enabling and innovating legal and compliance solutions, pathways and opportunities in the global health space.

As I also learn more about public health emergency preparedness, and the impact of climate change, biosecurity threats and diaspora or migration on global health and public health emergencies, I am now even more keen to drive meaningful changes and solutions from a legal and compliance standpoint to the challenges that I see in terms of aligning and harmonising to the extent feasible in the country, regional and global approaches to these issues.

At the same time, I am also very passionate about growing and developing people, which is why talent development is always a top priority for me in all the teams I have led and worked with. It makes me very happy to see team members or colleagues that I have led or mentored over the years, growing in their roles, being elevated to higher levels across the organisation, or even being tapped by other organisations. I am very passionate about knowing their aspirations and development areas and helping them navigate to find the right opportunities to learn and grow. Being part of their professional success gives me such joy.