About

It took the right role to lure her away from her 12 years in top tier law firms in both Australia and New York into an in-house career, but it is four years on and Johanna O’Rourke hasn’t looked back. Early in her career she worked in New York in Milbank’s strategic sourcing and technology team and it was there that she developed a taste for complex global transactions. After moving back to Australia in 2008, O’Rourke advanced to special counsel at Corrs working on leading technology and telecommunication transactions in Australia (including the rollout of the NBN) however it wasn’t until she was approached by QBE that she realised that a global role, based out of Sydney, was even possible.

QBE Insurance Group is one of the world’s top 20 insurers operating in 35 countries employing over 15,000 people. Reporting to the group general counsel and company secretary, O’Rourke leads the global operations, technology and commercial legal team which has lawyers in Australia, the US, London, Hong Kong (servicing QBE’s Asia Pacific Operations) and Philippines (servicing QBE’s 2000 plus global shared services captive centre) advising the QBE Group on all technology and commercial legal aspects of ground breaking digital transformation, AI, Insurtech, robotics, data and analytics, global transformation and global sourcing initiatives. As a member of QBE’s global legal, regulatory and compliance Leadership team, comprising the general counsels from QBE’s various divisions, she also leads all global legal operations initiatives and is a member of QBE’s global privacy working group. O’Rourke’s team partners with those within QBE that are driving innovation within QBE’s global operations. She highlights that, ‘an innovative mind set is critical in providing legal advice but has also had the impact on encouraging the team to constantly drive continuous improvement and innovation in our legal processes for the benefit of the businesses we support’.