Legal and compliance counsel for Greece, Cyprus and Malta at multinational software corporation SAP, Katerina Galanopoulou considers herself as more than simply a legal professional: ‘Working closely with SAP management and sales [staff] totally changed my perception of what is expected from an in-house counsel. Things can become tense, hectic or even crazy, but the in-house counsel has to be a partner to its employer, [playing] an active part in the company strategy, marketing and sales.

Everything could have legal implications and the in-house counsel must be all over it’. She continues: ‘Working for SAP made me realise that I am not a legal professional; I am more than that. Loving my employer’s culture, I support them through hard business decisions and I am a part of the team. I am not just the lawyer’. Since joining SAP in 2014, Galanopoulou has a consistent record of actively assisting sales teams towards delivering complex deals and setting up the company’s local license management approach.

In 2017 she also supported SAP subsidiaries in Africa for a brief period of time. Prior to her current role, Galanopoulou was the intellectual property and license compliance manager at Microsoft Hellas for six years. Before that she was a legal counsel at the Greek branch of another US multinational computer technology firm, Oracle Hellas, in her first in-house role. Of this time in her career she states: ‘I started my in-house career with Oracle. Very soon I realised that this was the right career path for me – diving into the in-house responsibilities’. And she continues: ‘Soon, I was eager to learn more about the way a company operates on the field and I felt that I could contribute more actively to the business, so in 2008 I accepted to take over the license audit function ridof Microsoft (IP team)’. Galanopoulou enjoyed six years as an associate lawyer at Miltiades Karpetas and Associates law office between 2002 and 2008, prior to that she spent a brief spell at law firm Potamitis – Iliadou.

Capable of speaking English, Spanish and French in addition to her native Greek, Galanopoulou has an LLM in international commercial law from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1999 and obtained her law degree from Aristotle University in the previous year. Contributing to the wider profession, Galanopoulou has been a co-representative of the Association of Corporate Counsel in Greece for 10 years.