Could you tell us a bit about your significant successes in your role?

As a member organisation, we are focused on building strong foundations needed to deliver a word-class member experience. My role as an assistant general counsel provides me with excellent opportunities to support key strategic initiatives and projects that require me to exercise judgement, provide practical and considered legal advice and to provide strategic value to my stakeholders. A key focus of my role is to develop trustworthy relationships within my legal team and with stakeholders (through a high level of engagement) and to be seen and respected as a business partner that drives results. It is also important in my success in my role to provide opportunities to my legal team members so that they also get exposure to the challenging and complex work and to coach them to build their own personal brand, establish good working relationships and to have confidence in managing matters efficiently.

In your opinion, what are the qualities and skills needed to form a strong legal team?

To form a strong legal team, it is extremely important to build and nurture strong relationships based on trust and to connect as a legal team to produce desired results. Sharing common values, having a strong work ethic, being proactive, continually developing essential skills, displaying integrity, and establishing a common purpose as a team are essential.

What challenges have you overcome to get to the position you are in today?

I have overcome a number of challenges including working significantly long hours in numerous high performing and high-pressure environments, developing my general legal and commercial expertise (as I specialised in intellectual property during my private practice career) and learning to be resilient to tackle the challenges of assisting to manage high performing legal teams.