Career Biography

Alina is an house legal counsel with more than 15 years of professional experience is a well appraised legal professional with extensive expertise in commercial business law, M&A, competition law and corporate governance.

Alina has built her business and legal record in FMCG, tobacco, professional beauty and pharma distribution industries. Alina has also completed a number of executive education courses and completed skilled negotiation programs in commercial business and competition law.

Alina is certified for completion of EU Advanced Competition law and has in depth knowledge of antitrust laws. Alina recently led successfully a merger of 4 Orbico Group companies in Romania under 1 single umbrella company – Interbrands Orbico playing a key role for the newly merged organisation of over 2000 people and 1.3 billion EUR turnover in 2023. She was also have been ranked and awarded by the Romanian legal community “Lady Lawyer magazine and Juridical Universe” publications as best legal leader in a private company for 2 years in a raw.

Currently,Alina ARSENE plays a strategic role for business development projects as commercial lawyer for Group development opportunities, while she continues her leadership role for coordinating the Romanian legal team.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

The journey from crisis to stability wouldn’t be possible in the absence of strong leadership, clear lines of communication and engagement because it is crucial to secure the environment very fast. In recent years, we have witnessed a major transformation of the business landscape due to economic, political or health crises which repercussed on the businesses as well. Some companies built effective contingencies plans, developed efficient risk management flows and engaged key stakeholders which helped significantly transforming adversity into opportunity and recover their stability. And an important role in this recovery played the legal team. In my opinion, periods of instability or crises represents the supreme test for the organisations’s departments to demonstrate that work as ONE team, focused, engaged, and nevertheless, brave! For legal department even more, such circumstances empower and enable the in-house counsels to act as pillars of trust as being regarded as the most entitled roles to assess, flag and map the major risks, design the legal framework of action, oversee the communication flows, take initiative alonside with the management board while showing flexibility. For me a key feature of an in-house legal team in managing legal aspects in the big scheme of things, besides strong knowlege is integrity. Therefore, the legal’s role as business partner for Board, in navigating an organisation through crises is pivotal. Legal strategy must ensure that crisis management strategies are robust, proactive, and aligned with the organisation’s core values and objectives. This is why I am convinced that in order to ensure the organisation’ resilience it shouldn’t be a separate legal strategy from the broader business strategy, as the main goal is the same: steering the company toward growth and innovation. In this way, organisations not only that they survive a corporate crisis, but thrive, turning challenges into catalysts for toward strengthening their future.

How do you prioritise diversity and inclusion within your legal department, and what initiatives have you implemented to foster a more inclusive and equitable work environment?

Prioritising diversity and inclusion within our company requires intentional strategies and initiatives to create an inclusive, equitable work environment.

Even though our legal dep is formed entirely of women, at company level we are proud that gender diversity percentages are close to each other, 48% women and 52 % men. So, almost a perfect balance.

When we are looking deeper in our company we have diversity of roles, of age – from entry level candidates to loyal employees with moreover than 30 years with us, diversity on nationality, religion, diversity of expertise why not.

We are constantly preoccupied to raise awareness about this topic within the company. During our education programs offered to our teams we are carefully choosing training that are in touch with this topic. One of the recent workshops was Unconscious Bias or 7 Habits Training, these programs are already rolling from Group level through all companies.

Another initiative is Mentoring program – an initiative where young generation is getting in contact with experiences people to develop and support their career journey.

All these factors serve as catalysts for fostering greater openness, encouraging the acceptance of individuals and circumstances that may not typically be part of our everyday experience, while fostering a mindset of reduced judgment.