About

Berenice Lim, head of legal Asia Pacific at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, started her career as a scientist. After studying biotechnology at Murdoch University she pursued research in molecular oncology at the University of Western Australia. Lim went on to publish a number of scientific papers and embarked on a PhD before taking on a sales and marketing role in the pharmaceutical sector. A turn of events saw Lim pursue law at the National University of Singapore. Upon graduation, Lim practiced as an intellectual property lawyer at Drew & Napier for eight years before moving in-house as senior legal counsel at Allergan. In September 2015 Lim was appointed head of legal at Takeda Pharmaceuticals Asia Pacific where she sits on the regional management committee. At Takeda, Lim has been sought to build closer ties between legal and commercial functions. Says Lim: ‘The goal is to assist business to find solutions to issues and to provide advice that has practical value’. She has also been heavily involved in staff development and has collaborated with the human resources function to help design tailored training programmes for the legal team. A particular focus of these programmes has been to encourage talented junior lawyers to see training in-house as a viable alternative to private practice. More recently she has worked to simplify clarify processes within the legal department to remove legal bottlenecks from business decisions.