About

Meltem Ozker Gunduz takes on a multi-faceted and international role as vice president of legal, compliance and quality for Novo Nordisk, where she oversees all Dubai-based lawyers and 43 more located in different parts of the organisation. She recalls being sole lawyer for the company in 2010 as a formative experience: ‘When I joined Novo Nordisk as sole lawyer in 2010, I first felt I was so lonely and not part of any teams. But this forced me to find a way to integrate myself into the other teams, and meant that not only did I learn a lot about our business and my stakeholders, but also allowed me to understand our opportunities and risks better. That has helped both me and the company to develop and grow our legal and compliance department’. Gunduz believes the key lessons for in-house counsel to absorb are to ‘understand your company’s value chain’ and to ‘build a good network of colleagues’ to share knowledge with. She believes the former of these is especially key. ‘From the idea of the product and service of our company to the end customer, we need to know the way they develop’, she says. ‘Only when this understanding is achieved can we be successful in navigating our stakeholders in offering optimal legal solutions’. She also mentions just some of the significant deals and agreements she has been involved in signing: ‘In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we have been supporting our colleagues in signing an agreement with Saudi Biotechnology Manufacturing Company to package our products for the first time in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In the UAE, we have supported signing a memorandum of understanding with Dubai-based volunteer support society Friends for Diabetes (FFD) to improve access to care for people living with diabetes in the region’.