About

An internationally proficient lawyer, Sarah Woodhouse has been with Unilever for over 15 years and moved to the Netherlands to take on her current position in July 2018. Prior to this role she was based in Singapore as general counsel for South East Asia and Australasia (SEAA) between November 2013 and July 2018. ‘Developing Unilever’s SEAA legal team was a great highlight for me. In high growth markets ensuring we had a strong legal team was imperative and a team that was fully embedded and truly part of the business’, says Woodhouse. Prior to this role she was based in the UK and held roles including category counsel for hair and category counsel for ice cream. Today Woodhouse is integral in assisting Unilever in its aims to provide its global team of lawyers with career development opportunities. ‘We do this with secondments across the world but this does not work for everyone due to mobility issues and the number of opportunities that we have’, she explains. Consequently, in 2018 she helped set up a collaboration with a start-up company and the legal team to trial a more dynamic and transparent way of sharing projects where lawyers needed help from others around the world. ‘Our lawyers can flex a lot of their time to work on these projects which supports their development and experience of different legal jurisdictions around the world. This pilot is currently underway and proving popular with teams and a great way to deepen connections with other lawyers around the world’, she adds. Over the last three years, together with her team in Southeast Asia and Australasia, Woodhouse has been involved in a number of deals from the acquisition of Weis Ice Cream in Australia to the setting up of a large joint venture company in Myanmar. ‘Since moving to Rotterdam in the summer of 2018, together with the team here, we are supporting the integration of Pukka and our more recent fantastic acquisitions of Graze and the Vegetarian Butcher’, says Woodhouse.