About

Joanna Koh joined GlaxoSmithKline in 2009 as legal counsel for Singapore covering the pharmaceutical business. Since then, she has assumed roles of increasing responsibility and has taken on projects as part of her stretched assignment. In May 2016 she was promoted to her current position which covers all aspects of GSK’s business in pharmaceuticals including vaccines, consumer healthcare and manufacturing in Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. Prior to this role she spent 10 years in private practice focusing on disputes and intellectual property, with the last eight years in one of the largest law firms in Singapore. While in private practice she was involved in a number of cases that spanned the whole spectrum of the civil litigation process – from early discovery all the way to the court of appeals, assessment of damages and taxation of costs. Koh sees that these experiences in the early part of her career honed her skills in case management, client management and perseverance. ‘Importantly, they helped to shape my thinking as a young lawyer to find solutions to help the clients achieve their commercial objective in a cost efficient way’. In her current role she interacts with senior executives of the company on a variety of corporate and governance and risk management issues. Providing guidance at this level has taught Koh to communicate concisely and avoid unnecessary legalese. ‘My interaction with them has allowed me to observe how decisions are made at a senior leadership level. I have a better appreciation of how legal can function as a better partner to the business; yet maintain our role as guardian of legal risks’. One of her latest professional highlights was her role as the legal lead for the Asia Pacific region in a recent M&A deal for GSK, where she had to engage with multiple stakeholders across different jurisdictions to ensure alignment and meeting of project timelines and objectives. The deal focused on three distinct business units of the company, which saw her working with stakeholders within and outside the legal function. She admits this added to the breadth of issues that she had to handle. ‘I also had to work on the legal aspects of integrating the businesses after deal completion which tested my ability to be adaptable to a different organisational culture and structure’. Koh discusses the impact of the increasing push to use digital media for the company’s promotional and marketing activities; and has had to stay abreast of the constant changes to the guidelines, law and regulations in this area. She says: ‘The laws and legal regimes in certain countries may not have kept pace with the fast changing developments in the digital space. Sound legal advice and judgment is often required to balance legal risks; and guide the business through grey areas of what can; or cannot be done’.