Could you tell us a bit about your significant successes in your role?

These have included:

Supporting the group general counsel in defending ASX against a number of complex, high-profile litigation matters. These are unusual challenges to ASX’s market integrity decisions, involving very large damages claims. They have required careful management, working closely with the business, senior witnesses, and external counsel.

My appointment as secretary of ASX’s new board technology committee to oversee ASX’s technology, data and cyber security strategy and technology project implementation, reporting directly to the committee through the chair and liaising with committee members and senior management

In terms of legal risk management, I have provided group-wide training on lessons learnt from regulatory investigations and litigation, tailored for specific functions, and legal-specific training (including on privilege).

In terms of data and privacy, I have established and managed an ASX data lawyers’ group – with 15 lawyers meeting bi-monthly to consider emerging legal and regulatory data issues. I have also coordinated an external training program for lawyers and non-lawyers on key data issues impacting ASX, including cyber security and data breaches. Furthering this, I have prepared a guide for legal on ASX’s varied and complex regulatory obligations regarding data.

In your opinion, what are the qualities and skills needed to form a strong legal team?

Strong communication skills are critical. The ability to communicate on complex legal issues clearly and succinctly ensures our colleagues can readily understand the key messages, risks, and recommended actions. This means our adapting language and style for the audience and maintaining a solutions-focus in our work.

Effective cross-functional collaboration is important, particularly in a complex organisation. This requires building strong relationships – through developing a deep understanding of the business and what drives and concerns our clients, and transparent and open communication.

A focus on improving ways of working, particularly by leveraging technology, allows us to become a more effective function and understand how we can better serve the business’s needs. Recently in our team this has included better data capture and reporting through new matter management capabilities.

What challenges have you overcome to get to the position you are in today?

Before joining ASX, I was a disputes lawyer at HSF. There, I developed skills invaluable to my current role, particularly the ability to draft precisely, problem-solve strategically, and work effectively in a team under significant workloads. Nevertheless, I had a steeper learning curve moving in-house than corporate or transactional lawyers might experience. ASX is also a multifaceted organisation that operates in a complex legal and regulatory environment.

To become a valuable member of the legal team, I adopted a growth mindset, actively seeking opportunities to broaden my skillset, including advising on compliance with ASX’s obligations as a licensed financial benchmark administrator (and drafting the licence application to ASIC), advising ASX entities on multi-jurisdictional data and privacy issues, and company secretarial and corporate governance matters. I continue to deepen my knowledge of ASX and applicable laws through focused reading and internal and external training.