What innovations have you made to the way your legal team works in the past year?

We have integrated a compliance system (IT/automatized) for all main regulatory and legal requirements for our legal entities and their facilities, sites and plants, which includes monitoring of agreements, licenses, permits, mandatory training sessions etc. We are also looking into some AI tools for day to day Company Sec and other S&P contracts.

Based on your experience, what is the key to collaborating successfully with business partners?

Be truly business partners of the business, pro-actively assessing and mitigating risks and being “ahead of the game” in terms of anticipating legal, regulatory and compliance risks. Lawyers have to be agile, business-oriented and practical, making complex – simple to our internal and external clients. Having innovation at the heart of what we do, providing legal solutions that add value to long term sustainable growth of the business.

Which political, economic or regulatory changes have impacted your work the most in the past year?

SEA is a vibrant, dynamic, and fast-moving region with multiple cultures, legal systems and opportunities of growth and development. This region attracts more and more investment over the years. In a few countries authorities have implemented automatized IT systems (with some AI built) to ensure compliance, which is great (e.g. for governmental sourcing and procurement, licenses issuance, tax / social security payments etc., which systems avoid human interactions and have internal controls in place avoiding frauds etc). For many SEA countries we still witness their important growth at a very healthy pace despite global economic challenges.

The most impactful challenge in the past year was the changes to regulatory authorities officials during the elections, which posed some delays on approvals and processes.

How do you motivate and manage the other members of your legal team well?

We work collaboratively, as one-united and aligned team, jointly with our key supporting functions of Finance, Internal Controls and Internal Audit, as well as Compliance and IP teams. I also ensure every member of our team has its personal and professional plans/performance in place and delivers on the objectives (both legal and regulatory, fully aligned with the business/operations objectives). We have reviews of the plans at least twice year to calibrate their expectations and achievements, vis a vis the business requirements and their personal needs.

What is a cause, business-related or otherwise, that you are passionate about, and why?

I am passionate about people, continuous education, and our mission to “See More, Be More”, “We see the future in sight”, we put our customers/end-users in the heart of what we do, addressing their visual health needs, by working collaboratively to deliver products and services so that they are fully served. I am proud to say our team is filled with amazing people, wanting to make a change in the world by addressing this important key health need: good vision, fully aligned with the World Health Organisation and UN goals for sustainable visual health available and accessible to all.

Are the effects of AI on the legal world overplayed, or underplayed?

To me, still underplayed. Not yet the AI is overplayed in the legal arena, we are yet to see it play a more significant role, in my view if applied appropriately and wisely, AI will certainly free the lawyers time to do more life-challenging impactful legal assistance to all (focusing on more complex demanding tasks and requests, allowing us to be more agile to meet the demands of our internal and external clients). For law firms AI may impact also in a positive way if used for usual / less impactful legal work, such as those involved in Company Sec and certain day to day more corporate low risk like type of legal work, as well as certain due diligence standard checks for M&A and other transactions.