Team size: 20

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

I think the role of the in-house lawyer and the qualities required have change significantly over the last decade and even more so just the last couple of years. Historically, key qualities to ensure a strong partnership with the remainder of the business has been to apply a strong commercial mindset, coupled with good basic financial understanding and then the will and ability to align your own strategic targets with those overall strategic targets of the business. These are still very valid and have been requirements over and above the “license to operate” skillset, i.e., the ability to have top-notch legal skills and couple those with the business. In the last couple of years, the requirements have in my view grown significantly in two areas.

Firstly, the ability to take a more holistic enterprise-wide risk perspective on the business. Businesses of today face new and historically unseen challenges that we as a legal and compliance teams need to adapt to (and much faster than historically) and be able to mitigate to safeguard our company and to allow our business to grow. The second area is that of technology. The rapid development of technology and AI will fundamentally alter the way we work (recent studies show that the legal industry will be the most impacted industry of all by AI). If we do not manage to embrace and use technology in the right way, but also understand how it impacts the way our business is impacted by it, we will not be able to maintain the position as the strategic sparring partner of our business colleagues, but will be left on the station when the train leaves.

How have you fostered a closer collaboration between the legal department and your business counterparts?

The main levers have been dialogue and asking for feedback. In my first 6 months with Urban Partners, I have had more than 60 face-to-face meetings with our key business stakeholders across our six main geographies. I have spent my time in those meeting listening, being curious and asking questions on what they believe we should do more of and what we should do less of. I have also tested some of my initial hypotheses for where I believe we could add more value and strategic impact and take my business counterpart’s feedback on that – to allow myself to be challenged and to adjust my hypothesis.

In addition, I have spent a vast amount of time with the team, both individually with each team member, but also in several joint workshops to review what we could do to foster an even stronger collaboration with our business colleagues, how we could increase our strategic impact and what initiatives we should launch to create that additional value. We are now in the process of developing these initiatives into actual action plans, which will allow us to take them to our business colleagues and ask for their feedback. This will in turn ensure they resonate with the business and are seen as value accretive, but also ensure they are refined and fit for purpose.

Do you have a cause, business-related or otherwise, that you are passionate about?

One of four main reasons that I joined Urban Partners was our purpose (the other three were the culture, the people and the strategic ambition). But the fact that our company has such a strong and clear purpose and cause was an important and integral part of convincing me that Urban Partners was the right place to work – we strive to do good both for our investors but also for the planet. We know that cities consume most of the world’s resources and generate most global emissions. With half of the world’s population now living in a city, cities are at the forefront of our greatest social, economic, and environmental challenges. Cities are complex living ecosystems – much more than just roads and buildings. The challenges they face on health, liveability and climate are interdependent and continually evolving. These issues must be understood holistically and tackled together over time.

Being part of company, whose purpose is to power the progress of cities and citizens by investing to help solve the most pressing urban problems makes me proud. We bring capital that is not only fit for profit, but truly fit for purpose.