Zeynep Derman Küçükönder joined the Turkish business of Coca-Cola in 2005, initially as a country legal counsel and then as legal director for Turkey, Caucasus and Central Asia business unit. During this period she has maintained a vision that legal should be a business partner that produces high quality, timely legal advice, focusing on efficiency and productivity initiatives. ‘The team has designed and implemented an online review and approval process for contracts, which has increased efficiency and reduced risk throughout the business’, Küçükönder says. More broadly, she says, the team has ‘embraced technology to stimulate change through the creation of a Government Dealings Approval Tool’, which helps the team and the wider company to ensure the reporting is on time, accurate and compliant with local laws and internal policies. As Coca-Cola traditionally has a strong focus on marketing, Küçükönder’s team is heavily involved with promotions, jointly arranged with the company bottlers. To manage its process more effectively, the team has created a process flow chart which is quite adoptable for each promotion. This new implementation has brought much needed clarity to the team, with all each employee now able to easily understand ‘what to do, when to do it and how to do it’. ‘It brings a lot of practicality and things become more systematic even for the most complex promotions’, Küçükönder says. Prior to her tenure at Coca-Cola, Küçükönder set up and managed the legal function at the internet service provider Superonline, where she was one of the key people to draw a new legislation framework, partnering with security services and the government, and giving speeches at all levels. She started her career in 1998 as an assistant legal counsel at HP.