About

Worldwide publishing company Hearst Magazines employ a small legal team in the Italian region to support and organise their business affairs, and Federica Tigani leads the legal support in the country in her role of legal and corporate affairs manager for Italy. Amassing almost a decade of experience within the company, Tigani is a proponent of her team being seen as true business partners in addition to providing technical legal skills; ‘Our goal as legal people is to explain things to our business teams and be seen as partners not as legal specialists, but as people who have the same corporate goals that don’t just offer “no’s and limits”, but “yes’s and positive results”’ she claims. As part of assisting business leaders, Tigani illustrates how she ‘liaises with top management’ and is ‘involved in all strategic choices and works closely with the CEO and CFO of the company on a daily basis’. One such example of this was the creation of Hearst’s Swiss business, where Tigani and team was central to the successful start-up of the subsidiary by arranging feasibility studies and being involved in the HR process at the request of Hearst’s US general counsel office. Tigani calls this change ‘tangible, important and helped redefine’ HR systems within the company. Dealing with an immense amount of regulatory changes that are impacting the publishing field during an uncertain time for many companies in the sector, Tigani and team are assisting in the transformation efforts of Hearst to keep pace with an industry that is rapidly changing. Tigani says: ‘These issues touch many different legal fields from antitrust to corporate, privacy and employment law and require working very closely with the CEO, CFO and the digital director’ showing the team’s cross-collaborative ability. As part of the Hearst global network of legal support and its place in it as a proud “International” team, Tigani explains how the culture she spreads in Italy is in line with the wider global legal Hearst mantra; ‘important principles like the quality of the work and the importance of sharing knowledge within different industries’.