About

Kevin Derbyshire, vice president and general counsel at industrial supply company Acklands-Grainger, is responsible for all legal matters and, as of October, 2013, the company’s corporate global real estate and procurement functions. For the last three years Derbyshire has been helping to promote the diversity agenda, something he believes generates great benefit for the legal team while delivering a ‘powerful business advantage’ for the company as a whole. For Derbyshire, companies that adopt diversity and inclusiveness will be ‘responsive, resilient, and successful in meeting the complex challenges that lie ahead in a competitive global environment’. Derbyshire began practicing law at a Toronto-based global firm focusing primarily on M&A and corporate and commercial work. He says that concluding deals in private practice gave him great insight into the corporate decision-making process. ‘Working on large international deals also made it clear to me that teams deployed to complete these deals with broader, diverse backgrounds would result in a better result for the client’. In 2000, he received an offer to join Bell Canada Enterprises and was responsible for providing legal support for the company’s procurement function. He was promoted to assistant general counsel within 18 months and became general counsel of Bell ExpressVu in 2002. Soon after this, the CEO restructured the legal department and charged Derbyshire with rebuilding the function at the company. In 2015, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Bell launched a joint venture, Virgin Mobile Canada, a new cell phone company in Canada. Five months before the launch Derbyshire was recruited for the vice president and general counsel position and joined the founding executive team. At the time Virgin Mobile had no legal department at all, Derbyshire immediately began implementing the legal, regulatory, and corporate-governance frameworks for the new venture.