Team size: between 30 and 50

What are the projects that you are most proud of working on over the past 12 months?

In March 2024, Unilever announced its intent to separate its Ice Cream business. Once completed, this plan would result in the creation of the largest Ice Cream company in the world, with an annual turnover of approximately 8.3 billion euros. Vanessa was selected to be the first General Counsel of the Ice Cream company. In February 2025, it was announced that the new Ice Cream company will be headquartered in Amsterdam and listed in Amsterdam, London, and New York. In addition to the complexity of her day-to-day job, which ranges from overseeing complex litigation matters to enabling product launches in multiple countries, managing marketing claims, and dealing with the complex legalities of a cold supply chain, Vanessa designed the legal organisation of the future Ice Cream Company. She applied the following design principles: the legal organisation is going to be frontline first, lean, business-savvy, data driven and tech-enabled, and innovative. Anyone who has worked with Vanessa on this initial design phase noted the future-leaning approach to developing and leading a legal team, which is focused on having the right talent at the right location, enabling the team with technology, and empowering them to drive value creation in close partnership with the Ice Cream business.

At the same time, Vanessa has also worked with the IC Executive Leadership Team to develop the target operating model of the IC company, which was the starting point for the legal organisation design.

What do you think sets you apart from other in-house counsel?

During her in-house career Vanessa has adopted a business-like mindset. This goes beyond the business partner concept as it involves looking at the role of the in-house counsel as business leader (and not just a business partner). On this capacity the in-house counsel is not only weighing in on the legal aspect of business plans, but the in-house counsel leverages their intimate and deep understanding of the business and the law to drive the development of business plans to enable commercial results. As General Counsel, Vanessa has capitalised on the success achieved implementing this approach throughout her career and took it further by demonstrating to stakeholders the value of the legal organisation and shifting mindsets from a perception of the legal organisation as a cost centre to an engine of value generation for the enterprise. One clear example was mobilising the team to be on the frontline, to develop consumer and customer centricity, and to understand the business in depth to be able to advise them in another level. This has generated not only excitement with the team but also resulted in great results in staying ahead of ice cream trends and acting against me-too products, ensuring the team protects our intellectual property more actively.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Vanessa believes that it is a combination of a strong legal foundation infused with curiosity towards the world, technology and trends, keeping a mindset of constant improvement. The world and the business are rapidly evolving, and for the general counsel needs to be 3 steps ahead to advise the business in the most complex deals and situations. This approach is also very effective to anticipate, mitigate and manage risks. If all of that can be powered by technology and AI, the in-house counsel becomes even more efficient and impactful, allowing more time dedicated to high value activities.

How can general counsel foster a corporate culture that supports ESG principles and compliance across all levels of the organisation?

The general counsel has an important and influential role in shaping the enterprise corporate culture generally, and more particularly with respect to compliance and ESG. WE often hear about tone from the top as being a fundamental principle to fostering a culture that supports ESG and Compliance. Tone from the top is an important tool. What Vanessa advocates for goes far beyond tone from the top. Understanding the importance of engagement, Vanessa equally focuses on engagement from the bottom, in other words, she privileges proximity to the broadest possible employee base to understand what is really happening in their day to day life and develops an approach to compliance and ESG that not only ensures doing the right thing but also focuses on a deep understanding of daily challenges, a sharp and relentless focus on ESG and compliance, and an approach to which everyone in the organisation can relate as it focuses as much on enablement to achieve business objectives as it does on adherence to rules. This enterprise-wide dialogue focused approach does not only help fostering a culture that supports ESG and compliance, but it also leads to every person owning ESG and compliance with enthusiasm and pride.