Team size: Four lawyers and one paralegal

Head of  team: David Dobbyn, vice president, general counsel EMEA

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

Supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine have resulted in challenging work for the EMEA legal and compliance team.

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities, and if so how?

Aptiv is a leading global technology and mobility company primarily serving the automotive sector. We design and manufacture vehicle components and provide electrical, electronic and active safety technology solutions to the global automotive and commercial vehicle markets. Aptiv’s growing portfolio of solutions makes vehicles safer, greener and more connected, enabling the future of mobility and a more sustainable world.

Climate change and sustainability have always been core to Aptiv’s business, values and culture. As a company, we continue to advance our unique capabilities around the brain and nervous system of the vehicle with investments in software-driven, innovative solutions to improve vehicle safety and to reduce CO2 emissions. These solutions already help our OEM customers achieve their sustainability goals. As the industry moves to electric, software-defined vehicles, Aptiv sees itself as being ideally positioned to provide OEM customers with the vehicle architecture and charging solutions to make that transition possible. In addition, our connectivity solutions enable the trend towards full life cycle management and contribute to the long-term sustainability of vehicles, enhancing safety and user experience technologies with over-the-air software updates throughout a vehicle’s lifetime.

While sustainability informs Aptiv’s entire enterprise, our focus as a company has been on four pillars.

People. Sustainability is dependent on talented people, which means bringing together workers with diverse backgrounds, experiences and capabilities, all committed to a safer, greener, more connected world. We are proud to have been named a Financial Times Diversity Leader for the second time, with women accounting for about 50 percent of our global workforce, and we have increased the number of women in executive leadership roles by 20 percent.

Products. Our products will continue to advance the sustainability goals of our customers, with our systems and solutions enabling the electric, software-defined vehicles of tomorrow.

Planet. Aptiv is committed to protecting the environment, and has pledged to power all of our global operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2030 and to ensure that our products will be net carbon-neutral by 2040. These goals build on our alignment with the Science Based Targets initiative to help reduce the effects of climate change and to create a zero-carbon economy.

Platform. We believe that sustainability is driven through shared values and ethical conduct – doing the right thing, the right way, for all stakeholders. Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, this year identified Aptiv, for the 11th consecutive year, as one of the world’s most ethical companies.

Aptiv’s focus on climate change and sustainability has resulted in the company innovating at the intersection of some of the most disruptive trends in the mobility industry. In addition, there is increased EU regulation related to the issues of climate change and sustainability As a result, the EMEA legal and compliance team is increasingly involved in supporting the business on a wide spectrum of legal issues related to the design, development and commercialization of technologies designed to help our customers to reduce emissions, increase fuel economy and minimize the environmental impact of vehicles.