About

Leonidas Tolis leads Philip Morris International (PMI) affiliate Papastratos Cigarette Manufacturing Company’s EU South East cluster legal team, which boasts 12 lawyers across Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta. A regulatory specialist, Tolis mentions legal counsels Spyros Themelis, Antigoni Dimopoulou and Foteini Makroglou Panousaki as key members located in Greece, particularly for their support of the team’s commercial, marketing and corporate governance efforts respectively. In line with PMI’s ambitious worldwide shift towards alternative tobacco products, the Papastratos Cigarette Manufacturing Company legal team has had to keep pace with a comprehensive change of focus, as Tolis explains. ‘The company’s transformation has changed our role drastically’, he says. ‘With our new vision and products, we had to reset our role within a new, complex and uncertain environment and get out of our comfort zone in order to be able to respond to challenges related to the new products and new ways of working. We had to get familiar fast with the new heated products and their electronic parts, as well as the innovative technology and science behind them to interpret how they interact with the regulatory framework. To do this, we started using multidisciplinary methods and other innovative and forward-thinking techniques, for instance game tree theory, fast forward methodology, [and] type-one and type-two error methodologies. These new tools enable us to think ahead, ask the right questions, reduce uncertainty and prompt that important mix of imagination and discipline, which helps us become disruptive innovators’. Tolis has also succeeded in promoting a collaborative and effective team culture. ‘We are a team of lawyers who combine outstanding legal skills and an intimate understanding of consumers and the company’s business with multidisciplinary tools for decision-making under uncertainty. We are also great team players who deploy these skills and tools consistently while applying our values and culture’, Tolis says.