Legal team size: Four

Major legal advisers: King & Spalding, Harper & Bates, Baker Hostetler, McConnell Law Group

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Our company is squarely in the middle of the global travel and tourism industry, is rapidly growing in a very dynamic industry and has an international footprint which is rapidly broadening. We are B2B, B2C, and B2B2C, as well as conducting work on behalf of many political entities in the U.S. as well as foreign governments. We regularly deal with over 25 areas of the law every week, so need to stay abreast very quickly of what’s happening in our industry as well as major geopolitical trends, consumer preferences, changes in the various subsectors where we participate, and the myriad regulations that impact us, our business partners and consumers. Any changes impacting international travel companies or consumer facing issues can be opportunities or disruptors for us. While we focus on supporting our business efficiently with more predictable matters, we also try as a department to daily stay on top of headlines, trends, white papers, industry news, and other important resources that can flag issues for us early on. This greatly assists in creating a triaged approach for how I personally conduct my work, but also for my team and for how we prioritize projects where we collaborate with other departments. It’s critical that there is a crisp, two-way flow of information between us and our internal clients on what they believe is impacting their world with legal repercussions, as well as us highlighting legal or regulatory trends that they may not be aware of which they will need to anticipate and work through.

In your opinion, what are the main trends affecting your work now?

Global sanctions and the changing landscape where business can be conducted, monetary/currency changes, and data privacy regulations are some of my top areas to keep track of which impact many aspects of our business.

What strategic priorities are guiding your legal team into 2025?

Working smarter (AI and other tools), scalability of our core contracts from domestic to international use, staying on top of regulations impacting our industry.