General counsel, Australian food group and competition | Woolworths Group
Nerilee Telford
General counsel, Australian food group and competition | Woolworths Group
Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?
We actively strive to foster an innovation mindset across our whole legal team and have provided space and focus for this through the creation of our legal Innovation Hub. The Innovation Hub inspires and empowers all our lawyers to think about process excellence in our workflows, and new ways to provide best in class legal input.
One of the recent success stories coming from our Innovation Hub is the automation of our securities request and approval process using the Checkbox tool. This has dramatically reduced manual work for our CoSec team as well as increased the speed of approval for our shareholders. Demand for our Innovation Hub services are now spreading across the business, our clients are now also drawing on the Hub to help streamline our supplier onboarding processes.
What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?
My legal team has been involved in three major acquisitions recently including the proposed acquisition of a controlling interest in Petstock, the acquisition of a controlling interest in MyDeal, and the acquisition of Shopper Media.
Furthermore, the team has been involved in managing control of soft plastics stockpiles following the collapse of REDcycle. However, most significantly, the team has played a crucial role in identifying a modern slavery case in Malaysia and spear-heading the worker remediation.
What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?
I am passionate about our company taking a leadership position on sustainable circular economy issues, such as soft plastics recycling, and fair working conditions for all across the supply chain. I am also in constant admiration of our store teams who work so hard to put our customers and team first, even when managing through fires, floods, the pandemic, and challenging economic times, including escalating cases of customer violence and aggression.