About

Supporting Coca-Cola’s African business across 20 geographies, Antoinette Absaloms handled the launch of “Coke Studio” across five African countries, including all media and digital marketing components.

During her previous role at Unilever Tea Kenya, she played a pivotal role in the brand’s ‘first-of-its-kind’ takeover and delisting. Absaloms feels the unique ‘diversity’ of her remit at Coca-Cola has considerably broadened her skillset and made her much better at what she does.

‘The role demands that I intimately understand my client’s business. As a result my knowledge has grown in non-legal areas like commerce, finance, human resource management, marketing, regulatory affairs and government relations; giving me an edge in providing effective legal solutions’.

She would like law firms to act more like ‘business partners’, offering ‘innovative legal solutions’. She also feels a greater understanding of clients’ legal functions could be helpful.

‘In-house counsel are many times looked at as only pushing paper – perhaps an exchange program should be arranged’.