Have you had any particularly unique or defining experiences during your legal career? What has been your biggest career challenge or highlight?

I have been Group General Counsel and Company Secretary of L&G for only four months, but in many ways the appointment represents the culmination of the 17 years I have spent with the organisation. I succeeded Geoffrey Timms, who served as Group General Counsel for 27 years. The last time L&G recruited for this role was in 1996. I am only the second person appointed to it in three decades, and the first woman.

I am enormously proud of what that represents. But being the first matters most if you make it easier for others to follow. I want talented people across L&G to look at senior roles and believe there is a path for them, irrespective of background. An important part of leadership is creating the conditions in which other people can fulfil their potential.

Professionally, my appointment has also marked an important transition. As a lawyer, you spend much of your career advising others on difficult decisions. As Group General Counsel, Company Secretary and a member of the Group Management Committee (our Group Ex-Co), I share responsibility for the decisions themselves and for the success of the enterprise.

I have taken on that responsibility at a particularly significant moment for L&G, as we execute our strategy to create a growing, simpler and better-connected business. That combination – stewardship of an institution I know deeply, while helping to shape its next chapter- is both the greatest privilege and the greatest challenge of my career.

What are the most important attributes of the modern GC and what advice would you give to those aspiring to be an in-house lawyer?

The modern GC needs to be an enterprise leader first and an exceptional lawyer always.

Legal expertise is the foundation, but it is no longer sufficient. The qualities I value most are judgement, curiosity, courage and the ability to build trust. At the most senior level, you cannot contribute effectively if you understand only the legal dimension of an issue. You need to understand your business’ strategy, financial performance, customers, clients, shareholders, people, reputation and external environment, and how those things interact.

As a member of L&G’s Group Management Committee, I do not see my responsibility as simply protecting the organisation from legal risk. I share responsibility with my colleagues for the success of the whole enterprise. Sometimes that means challenging a proposed course of action; equally often it means working together to find a way to make something important happen.

My advice to aspiring in-house lawyers is therefore to be curious about your business and the market long before somebody asks for your legal opinion. Understand how your business makes money, what matters to its customers, clients and shareholders, and what keeps your colleagues awake at night. And invest in relationships before you need them. Technical expertise earns credibility; trust is what gives you influence. The real test of a trusted adviser is whether people seek you out when the answer is not obvious, and whether you have the courage to tell them something they may not want to hear.

Please provide a brief description of any internal transformation/development projects within your legal team over the last twelve months, such as AI usage, new legal panels, expansion/restructuring of legal team, DE&I initiatives etc.

Since becoming Group General Counsel and Company Secretary, I have launched a multi-year transformation of our Legal and Governance function. A fundamental principle for me is that we do not have a separate Legal and Governance strategy: our strategy is L&G’s strategy; we are one team. Our purpose is to help deliver that strategy and L&G’s ambition to be the best company to invest and retire with.

Lawyers and company secretaries are naturally diligent people; our instinct when new work arrives is often to absorb it. I want us instead to ask: does this work really matter, and how does it contribute to delivering L&G’s strategy? Being busy is not the same as making a difference. We are therefore being much more deliberate about the work we do, the work we stop doing, and where our expertise and judgement can have the greatest impact for the business and, ultimately, for our customers, clients and shareholders.

Technology is an important enabler of that ambition. We are already deploying AI in Legal and Governance work and piloting new tools. I am interested not simply in using AI to do today’s work faster, but in using it to rethink how we work; in order to create greater capacity for the strategic, complex and judgement-led work that contributes most directly to the business strategy.

The other critical element is culture. I want our lawyers and company secretaries to have the courage to speak up, challenge constructively and push back when necessary. I have run off-sites focused specifically on these behaviours, including psychological safety and creating an environment where people feel able to offer a different view. Our responsibility is not to tell colleagues what they want to hear; it is to exercise judgement and speak up when doing so will lead to a better outcome for L&G and the customers, clients and shareholders we serve.

Importantly, I do not want transformation to be something imposed from the top. I am responsible for setting the vision, expectations and culture, but wherever possible I want us to co-create the future of the function. I have therefore established colleague-led squads focused on transformational activity: AI and tech, legal spend, culture and connection, and defining the work we will (and will not) do. That creates ownership throughout the function and ensures transformation is delivered from the bottom up as well as the top down.

Ultimately, my ambition is to create a Legal and Governance function that is lean, purposeful and courageous: one that sees the business’ strategy as its strategy; focuses relentlessly on the work that matters; embraces technology; spends L&G’s money as carefully as its own; and measures its success not by legal output, but by the difference it makes to L&G, its customers and clients, and its shareholders. I want our people to feel both excited and privileged to play their part in that. L&G is a fantastic organisation to be part of.

The role of general counsel has evolved significantly into that of a strategic business partner. How do you balance commercial objectives with legal risk?

I do not regard commercial objectives and legal risk as opposing forces. Good legal advice should enable the business to take the right risks, not eliminate risk altogether.

For me, the critical issue is when Legal becomes involved. If lawyers enter the conversation only after a commercial decision has effectively been made, their role can easily become one of approving or stopping it. When we are involved early, we can help shape the decision itself, bringing together legal, regulatory, commercial, governance and reputational considerations and identifying routes to the desired outcome that may not initially have been apparent.

That requires lawyers to understand what the business is actually trying to achieve and the internal and external environment in which it is operating. It also requires judgement. Not every risk is created equal, and an organisation cannot grow by avoiding all uncertainty.

I therefore want my Legal & Governance team to be known for two things that can sometimes appear contradictory: the courage to challenge and the determination to enable. The best outcome is not necessarily the one with the least legal risk; it is the one where the risks are properly understood, consciously taken and appropriately managed in pursuit of L&G’s long-term success.

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

I took over leadership of the Legal and Governance function on 1 February 2026, before formally becoming Group General Counsel and Company Secretary in May. Since then, the business has gone from strength to strength, and I have been fortunate to lead a team that has delivered a number of significant transactions and strategic initiatives.

One of the most significant was the completion of L&G’s USD$2.3bn transaction with Meiji Yasuda on 2 February. This was much more than a disposal: alongside the sale of our US insurance business, it established a long-term strategic partnership supporting our US pension risk transfer ambitions, released significant capital and enabled substantial returns to shareholders. We have also continued to execute significant transactions across our core businesses, including the recent GBP£1.65bn Wood Pension Plan buy-in, securing the benefits of 16,400 members, and important investment and partnership activity supporting the growth of our pr|ivate markets business.

Alongside this external activity, one of my biggest priorities has been the transformation of Legal and Governance itself. I have established a multi-year transformation programme and been very deliberate about strengthening the leadership team and bringing forward outstanding internal talent. Developing and appointing fantastic leaders, and giving talented people the opportunity to step up, is something I care deeply about. I want a function with real succession depth and leaders who are excited about what we can build together.

Our transformation is centred on a simple proposition: our strategy is the business strategy. We are here to counsel, deliver and protect, focusing our resources on the work that makes the greatest difference to L&G and to our customers, clients and shareholders. We are already deploying AI, piloting new tools and fundamentally challenging what work we do, how we do it and what we should stop doing.

Some of the work I am proudest of, however, will never be announced to the market. It is the work behind the scenes: supporting our Boards and senior leaders through difficult decisions; anticipating and managing regulatory, legal and reputational risk; protecting customers and clients; maintaining strong governance; and intervening early enough that potential problems never become actual ones. That work does not always produce a headline. Sometimes the best evidence of an effective Legal and Governance function is what doesn’t happen. For me, success is having a lean, courageous and commercially minded team at the heart of the business, helping L&G deliver its strategy, protecting what makes the company special and creating sustainable value for our customers, clients and shareholders.