Team size: around 12

Can you tell us a little about your significant accomplishments over the last few years, as a team or by yourself?

As general counsel and member of the leadership team, I am responsible not only for shaping legal strategy with the rapid advancements in the IT/ITES industry, but also actively participate and contribute to the organisational planning and the corporate decision-making.

The increase in scale and complexity of the business, especially the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, added various dimensions to my responsibilities. As the organisation abruptly but adeptly planned to protect its workforce while also maintaining business continuity, the legal team played a crucial role in helping the company deliver in such a situation. This was possible thanks to a renewed partnership with the management team. To support business continuity along with delivering on the team’s core responsibilities was the key focus. Our team’s strategy was to be integrated and collaborative with business and support functions. It was possible as we were enabled to deliver from a remote location and had effective management of data and records.

There has been a huge trust in transformation and innovation towards building a future-ready organisation. The legal team worked closely with business to drive various organisational and functional initiatives towards transformation and innovation. We work closely with business in developing legal strategies that respond to the changing needs of work force, new ways of working and various digitisation initiatives.

My key focus has been working towards digitisation and automation of processes within the legal and corporate secretarial department, onboarding a software solution for managing regulatory compliances, process improvements in board-related work and board management solutions, contract management systems.

One of my significant initiatives has been to diversify into knowledge services vertical under which specialist lawyers provide legal services for technology contracts for Sun Life entities.

I am leading the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda for the organisation. I have been actively involved in creating, managing and optimising DEI programs and initiatives. I recently anchored the launch of ‘SunStree’, Sun Life Asia Service Centre India’s network for women employees to enable them to develop and maximize their potential. ‘SunStree’ shall not only provide a platform to enable development and well-being of women employees but also be the foundation to further build employee resource groups.