About

Team size: 14

Major legal advisers: Bindmans, Bird & Bird, Lewis Silkin, RPC, Travers Smith

Grainne Brankin, GC of the 100-year-old UK national standards body, is leading its reformed approach to social responsibility and is credited as a ‘diversity champion who role-models the broad management contribution that a GC can make’, according to RPC partner Jeremy Drew.

Brankin led on efforts to refine the The British Standards Institution (BSI)’s corporate responsibility strategy for social contribution goals beyond philanthropy or charitable donations to include standards for environmental management and clean energy. Working with the head of sustainability, she has been the driving force behind the BSI mapping its activities against UN Sustainable Development Goals.

‘We talked [internally] about how modern companies in competition to attract talent need to have a purpose,’ she comments. ‘A royal charter company has an obvious purpose, but from feedback it was clear we needed a new approach to make our corporate social responsibilities less philanthropic and completely synonymous with what we’re doing as a business.’

Brankin’s work led to the BSI signing up in 2018 to UN Global Compact, the sustainability and social responsibility initiative for businesses. Her interest in sustainability has expanded to her involvement on the board of Been, a company that turns landfill waste into fashion accessories. That sustainable fashion brand’s founder asked Brankin to become an adviser in 2019 and provide governance advice to the business. She also sits on the board of fintech start-up, Siege FX.

‘I see legal, sustainability and social governance strategy as one, as the objective of each is stakeholder trust,’ she says. ‘I’m not a sustainability expert, but I can provide governance advice. The environmental, social and corporate governance offering for lawyers is really exciting, because lawyers already have skills that are relevant in this space.’

As for her approach to diversity, the Clifford Chance-trained lawyer says her own recruitment helped inspire her commitment: most of her colleagues have an engineering background, for instance.

‘They picked me to do the job and they want me to continue being different. I have people in my team who were deliberately sourced from diverse backgrounds. We run committees to make consensus standards and we need to hear voices from all relevant sources. Naturally we should be very interested in diversity.’