About

Beginning her in-house legal career at Infineon Technologies in 2004, by 2006 Dawn Seah had progressed to an Asia Pacific legal director position with Wyndham Worldwide in which she took over a compact but highly capable legal team. It was in 2009, however, that she began to really make a mark as an individual operating at the upper echelons of the Southeast Asian in-house legal community when she became general counsel role with Siemens in Singapore, a highly successful period of employment lasting until 2017. This saw her add sector lead responsibilities for Siemens Healthcare in 2010 and general counsel responsibilities for ASEAN Pacific region in 2013 where she was responsible for a diverse team of 28 legal counsels of 11 nationalities located in seven countries supporting a business turnover of €5bn. Assuming her current role in July 2017 as senior vice president, general counsel and head of compliance at Sivantos Group, Seah hit the ground running in the top legal and compliance position at the Singapore-headquartered top five international hearing aid manufacturer where she is also a member of the global management board of the Sivantos Group. Looking back on her career, Seah picks out a number of particular highlights but regards the opportunity she was afforded to ‘set up the legal team in Siemens Singapore from scratch and to expand and build up the ASEAN Pacific legal team as a well-respected diverse and innovative legal team providing solutions to the cross sectoral businesses of Siemens’ as a particular highlight. While with Sivantos, Seah has, within a short 18 months, expanded and built up the global team’s legal, compliance and data protection abilities and resources, with an efficient regional team structure. She has also developed new and optimised existing processes to meet the challenges faced by the company amidst the diverse global legal landscape of changing laws and regulations, successfully embedding the legal team as an integral part of the business.