Practical LawConferences

Grant Dawson has been Group General Counsel & Company Secretary of Centrica plc since the demerger of British Gas plc on 17 February 1997.

Grant has overall responsibility for Legal, Regulatory, Ethics & Compliance and Secretariat activities across the Group and the day to day operating of the main board.  Grant is a member of the Centrica plc Executive Committee.

Grant is also Chairman of Centrica Storage Limited, the subsidiary which owns/operates the on-shore Easington Terminal and off-shore Rough platform, the largest UK gas storage facility.

In addition, Grant is the Vice Chairman of the GC100 (the association of FTSE100 General Counsel). He also sits on the The European General Counsel Association Committee along with The Corporate Governance Council Committee.

Rosemary Martin was appointed Group General Counsel and Company Secretary in March 2010. She previously served as CEO of the Practical Law Group, having spent 11 years with Reuters Group Plc with the last five years as Group General Counsel and Company Secretary. Before joining Reuters, Rosemary was a partner with Rowe & Maw (now Mayer Brown). She is an independent non-executive director of EY and a member of the Financial Conduct Authority’s Listing Group Advisory Panel and. She is also an advisory board member of the Oxford Internet Institute. She was a non-executive director of HSBC Bank Plc (the European arm of HSBC Group) until April 2016.

James Bellini describes himself as ‘an historian of the future’ with a close interest in key trends and strategic challenges facing current and future business into the 2020s and beyond.

Bellini was the first British staff member of the US futurology ‘think tank’ the Hudson Institute. He has also worked with the Henley Centre for Forecasting, the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Global Future Forum and worked for a number of years in advertising and corporate communications.  In 2007 Bellini was elected Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation, founded by Nobel Laureate Glenn Theodore Seaborg. In 2015 he was awarded the Professional Certificate in Coaching (with Merit) by Henley Business School.

Bellini also has more than twenty-five years experience as an award-winning TV broadcaster. He presented The Money Programme for BBC TV for three years before moving to Newsnight and Panorama and then to various independent networks. He was Editor and studio presenter at Financial Times Television and Sky News for seven years, heading up their financial and business coverage. He is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

Maniti is a Director of Legal Solutions based out of London.  Maniti leverages her hands-on, unparalleled expertise in offshore project management with her experience as a qualified lawyer to provide consultative project guidance to attorneys in legal departments and at law firms on a wide range of matters.  Maniti serves as a strategic advisor to legal, operations and procurement teams considering alternative legal services as a means to achieve mission critical business objectives such as cost savings, efficiency improvements and legal resource optimization in delivery of legal services.  She helps clients to identify appropriate work to be outsourced, improve upon current work processes, utilize technology to support operations and measure performance of new solutions.

In her years at Pangea3, Maniti has helped to develop and implement Thomson Reuters’ strategy around delivery of contract services, particularly through augmentation of technology and expansion of service offerings.  The team has been working to add capabilities in contract analysis, template harmonization, automation/assembly, workflow management, process reporting, automated abstraction/due diligence and deviation analysis.  The cornerstone of these new service offerings is contract risk management, a topic on which Maniti often speaks and writes.  She is a thought leader on use of contract data and analytics to support contracting functions.

Prior to her current role, Maniti had an overall responsibility for the Contract Management department where she managed a team of attorneys to ensure consistent quality in reviewed contracts, contracts negotiations, contract abstractions and oversaw all aspects of client interaction, endeavouring to meet her client’s expectations and to maintain high quality and efficiency in the project using Six Sigma methodologies, playbooks and other knowledge objects. As part of this role, Maniti spent almost year at Cardinal Health and worked with the Legal and Sourcing teams to set up the CMO function and help the company adopt and adapt Emptoris’ Contract Lifecycle Management system.

Maniti received her law degree at Government Law College and is a member of the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa in India, with all India practice rights. She also is a certified Six Sigma Yellow Belt.

Clare is Head of Legal for Travelex’s foreign exchange retail, wholesale & partner services businesses in Europe, the Middle East, Africa & Asia Pacific and Travelex’s global New Markets function; a board director of its UK operating subsidiaries; and co-chair of Travelex’s global Diversity & Inclusion council. Clare also has responsibility for legal support of central Group Services (IT, HR, Procurement, Property, IPR). Clare leads a team of 14 lawyers based in London, Mumbai, Shanghai and Sydney and co-ordinates a wider legal team supporting global business development activities from New York and San Paulo. Clare has been at Travelex for 10 years in a number of different global leadership roles, prior to which she was in private practice specialising in Corporate Finance and M&A at two leading City firms. Clare was shortlisted for in-house council of the year at the British Legal Awards 2015, included in the FT Part-Time Power Top 50 in 2013 and led her team to win the FT’s Most Innovative European In-House Legal Team in 2012. Clare has two children, Marcus (7) and Abigail (4), and is a coach & mentor to women returning from maternity leave for Cityparents (a network for City professionals balancing family life with a progressive career). Clare has also served   on the governing body of the Law Society of England & Wales and is a sponsor of Pure Potential (a social enterprise that provides professional careers advice to state school students to increase social mobility).

Maaike de Bie is the General Counsel of Royal Mail.  She obtained her legal degrees in the Netherlands and Canada and is qualified to practise as a solicitor in both New York and the UK.  Maaike started her career in private practice in New York moving to London 6 years later where she has held a number of senior in-house legal roles at the EBRD, GE and EY.  In addition to her professional career, Maaike trained as a coach in 2005.  Maaike uses these skills both professionally and personally as well as pro-bono through the Aspire Foundation Mentoring Scheme.

Richard Blann is Head of Group Litigation for Lloyds Banking Group where he advises senior management on litigation strategy and tactics. He also manages a broad portfolio of high value/high profile claims in the UK, US and beyond, supports significant internal investigations, and advises on financial crime and business ethics issues.

Prior to joining Lloyds in 2010, Richard worked in private practice conducting cross-border investigations and high value multi-jurisdictional litigation in the courts of a variety of jurisdictions for financial institutions, corporates and professional services firms.

Natalie is a Director in the Forensic Technology team; a part of BDO’s Forensic Services practice in London. Natalie has spent approximately 13 years in the forensic

technology and eDisclosure fields., with roles including:

• Director in Information Management Services at AlixPartners UK LLP; and
• Senior Consultant in Disputes and Investigations at Navigant Consulting Europe Ltd.

Natalie has worked on a significant number of large eDisclosure projects throughout all areas of the process; from data scoping and collection right through to production

and trial support. She is an expert in handling complex disclosures and is also experienced in data analytics. Natalie has worked directly with corporate clients in addition to their legal advisors and government bodies including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority. She has worked on many multijurisdictional

cases and where mobile laboratories have been implemented due to strict data protection rules.

Claire Carless is General Counsel and Company Secretary at St Andrew’s Healthcare, a charity based in Northampton that cares for patients with complex mental health needs. Her role at St Andrew’s includes responsibility for audit, risk, insurance, research and estates and facilities, as well as governance and compliance.

Having started her career in private practice, Claire went on to hold senior roles in RWE and Vodafone, before joining Siemens plc as their UK General Counsel, a role she held for 5 years. Claire has substantial experience in managing complex corporate and commercial projects, and ensuring effective corporate governance for major global corporates and charities.

Claire spent four years as a non-executive director for South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, and is currently a member of the Audit and Scrutiny Committee for the University of Oxford.

Stephen Cooke is Deputy General Counsel at HSBC based in London and appointed in January 2017 as head of the global legal team supporting the technology and operations division of HSBC.  He joined HSBC in 2007 in the Head Office legal team focussing on M&A and corporate matters including recovery & resolution, and moved into the team supporting HSBC’s technology in operations division in 2014.   From 2000 to 2007, Stephen was Associate General Counsel at Factiva, a joint venture between Reuters and Dow Jones, where he was responsible for supporting the group in Europe and AsiaPac.  Prior to joining Factiva, he was a corporate lawyer in Taylor Wessing.

Ed Crosse is a Partner in the Financial Markets Litigation team at Simmons & Simmons LLP.

Ed has over 20 years’ experience of handing complex financial and civil fraud related disputes.  Ed joined Simmons in 2012.  Prior to that, he worked in Clifford Chance’s London disputes practice for 10 years and one other leading City firm.

Ed was President of the London Solicitors Litigation Association until March 2018, an association which represents the interest of over 2500 litigation solicitors in London. In April 2018, he was elected to the Law Society Council for the City of London constituency.

Ed has played a leading role for the profession on significant Court reform initiatives by participating as the solicitor representative on judge-led working groups, including:

• Shorter and Flexible Trials Scheme: A committee of three judges and Ed were responsible for devising an innovative new fast track procedure for commercial disputes proceeding in the Business and Property Courts.
• Rolls Building Working Group on the implications of Brexit for UK Civil Justice (2016): Ed was the solicitor representative on a Working Group established by the Lord Chief Justice immediately following the EU Referendum. The Working Group was tasked with producing an advisory report for the Senior Judiciary and Ministry of Justice on the implications of Brexit for UK Civil Justice.
• Rolls Building Working Group on Disclosure for commercial cases: Ed, together with Mr Justice Knowles and Chief Master Matthew Marsh drafted proposals substantially to revise the current approach taken by the Business & Property Courts to disclosure for commercial cases proceeding in England & Wales. The proposals, when ultimately approved will mark an entirely new approach to disclosure by mandating greater co-operation and engagement between parties, increased use of technology in the data review process and more robust case management by the Courts.

Ed is recommended by Chambers & Partners for Banking Litigation where he is described as a “litigation partner with a huge amount of experience of financial disputes”.  Ed is also noted in the Legal 500 as “a real force to be reckoned with”.

Kaley is a partner in the fraud and investigations team and she has been conducting investigations for the last 16 years. She is also Head of our Forensic Technology team and has a strong interest in and knowledge of technology used as part of investigations – particularly the use of  edisclosure within litigation proceedings.

Throughout her career, Kaley has led large investigations both in the public and private sector and acted as Secretary to the Companies Act investigation in to the collapse of MG Rover and related companies.

Kaley has a regulatory background having spent 18 months on secondment to Companies Investigations Branch at the DTI, being appointed several times as an Inspector to investigate insider dealing. She has liaised with and worked alongside government and regulatory bodies including the SFO, FSA, Ministry of Justice and various police forces. She has led investigations in many sectors including pharmaceuticals and healthcare, construction, automotive, media, shipping and logistics.

Kaley has a strong interest in people and led BDO’s Talent Management Programme which offers bespoke career development for employees.

Dan joined BT in April 2010 as Group General Counsel and now serves as Company Secretary.

This was Dan’s third General Counsel role in the UK .  Previously he held that post at Misys plc (a software company) and Cable & Wireless plc. Dan is a Vice-Chair of the GC 100.

Dan is BT’s executive sponsor for LGBT+ Executives. He has appeared on the FT OutStanding list of the top 100 LGBT+ Executives each of the last three years..

Dan studied law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (JD Hons.1985); economics at UNC (BA Hons.1981); and international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics (Diplo. Distinction 1982).

Dan is an attorney (New York) and a solicitor (England & Wales).

Emily Foges has been scaling up technology-led businesses for over 20 years, working in M&A as a consultant and in-house with some of the UK’s fastest growing businesses. She specialised in building business cases and then leading integration, when companies come together to become greater than the sum of their parts. The complexity of combining customers, products, platforms, teams and operations was the ideal training ground for turning a technology start-up into a global organisation.

Emily became CEO in 2016 when Luminance was a small team of technologists and lawyers. She took the product to market and led the growth of the business, which doubled in size every quarter throughout 2017.

Liz Gloster was a Lady Justice of the Court of Appeal, until her retirement in May 2018, when she returned to the Chambers of Lord Grabiner QC, at One Essex Court, Temple, to practise as an international commercial arbitrator. She was the first woman to be appointed as a Commercial Court judge in 2004, where she presided over numerous important commercial and financial markets cases, including JP Morgan Chase Bank v Springwell Navigation Corporation, Masri v Consolidated Contractors and the notable Berezovsky v Abramovitch trial. She was Judge in Charge of the Commercial Court from 2010-2012 and oversaw the important move of the Court into the modern, state-of-the-art Rolls Building

She was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2013 and was Vice-President of the Civil Division of the Court from 2016 until her retirement from the court. in May 2018. As a Lady Justice, she sat on numerous important commercial and Chancery cases, ranging from capital markets, arbitration, shipping, insurance, tax, trust and insolvency to LIBOR fixing.  These included LBG Capital No. 1 Plc v BNY Mellon Corporate Services Limited, Burlington Loan Management Ltd v Lomas (a Lehman’s case), British Airways Plc v Emerald Supplies Limited and Gard Marine v China National Chartering Co. Ltd. As a judge she was in the forefront of promoting the use of digital technology in the conduct of trials, filing of claims and presentation of evidence.

She was appointed in 2016 by the Master of the Rolls as the Chair of the Disclosure Working Party whose task has been to recommend proposals for making disclosure more efficient and cost-proportionate. Her drafting committee (consisting of Ed Crosse from Simmons and Simmons, Mr Justice Robin Knowles and Chief Master Marsh) has produced a suggested pilot practice direction for a radical reform of disclosure procedures. It has just been accepted in principle by the Civil Procedure Rules Committee.

As a QC, Liz had a high-profile City practice as a QC at the Commercial and Chancery Bars, specialising in corporate, insurance and reinsurance, energy and insolvency/reconstruction cases.  For example, she acted for the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in the disqualifications of the Barings directors, the Blue Arrow directors, and Terry Venables, as director of Tottenham Hotspur. She acted as leading counsel for the Inland Revenue in a number of complex anti-tax avoidance cases and acted for creditors and/or office holders in cases arising out of major international insolvencies such as: Barlow Clowes, Maxwell, Canary Wharf (Olympia & York), Heron, Garuda Airways, Enron, Telewest, Parmalat, Marconi, TXU, Barings etc. She was part of the prosecution team in the Guinness prosecutions. She acted as counsel in major international arbitrations involving oil and gas industry disputes in Russia, the US and elsewhere, as well as in insurance and reinsurance disputes. She appeared in corporate and insurance insolvency cases in the Supreme Court of Bermuda. she sat (part time) as a Justice of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey.  She was a non-executive director of the Civil Aviation Authority for two years.

She is Treasurer of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple for the year 2018.

José Ramón González joined QBE North America as Chief Legal Officer in April 2014.  In this role, José has overall responsibility over legal, compliance, corporate governance and regulatory affairs for the US and participates as a member of QBE’s Global Legal Leadership Team.

Previously, José was General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Torus, a Bermuda-based commercial insurance organization providing property, casualty and specialty insurance and reinsurance products to a client base located primarily in the UK and continental Europe.

José began practicing law as a corporate associate at the law firm of Weil, Gotshal and Manges, working in the firm’s London and New York offices.  In 1999, he joined the Mergers and Acquisitions Group of the law department of American International Group representing AIG on a worldwide basis in acquisitions, joint ventures and investments relating to its insurance and asset management businesses, before eventually moving to a senior legal position within AIG’s insurance businesses.

David is a Partner and Head of Shoosmiths’ Commercial Group.

Specialising in Technology and Outsourcing matters, David is ranked as a Leading Individual by Legal 500 and is described by Chambers & Partners as “very pragmatic, very commercial and technically brilliant”.  David won the prestigious Client Partner of the Year Award at the British Legal Awards following a survey conducted by Legal Week of over 1400 senior in house lawyers who were asked to rate the client partner who’d impressed them the most – David topped the poll in the UK.

In recent years, David has focussed on developing new innovations for the firm’s in-house lawyer client community.  In 2017, Shoosmiths launched its Resource Solutions – a comprehensive suite of products designed to assist in-house lawyers manage, more cost effectively, business as usual commercial contracts.  The products have been a huge hit with clients and recognised in three national Innovation Awards, including the FT.

In 2018, David is spearheading the launch of the firm’s latest innovation, matters+.  A Shoosmiths’ collaboration, matters+ will help in-house lawyers better manage the work passing through their teams and demonstrate the value they add.

• Started career in matrimonial and criminal in Northampton, moved to Manches & Co in 1989 to join the Corporate team and spent 4 years on corporate transactional and commercial work
• Joined The Co-operative Bank in 1993 as a Commercial Solicitor, becoming Senior Commercial Solicitor, then Head of Banking Commercial and finally Head of Banking Contract & Commercial for the then merged financial services business, Co-operative Financial Services
• First lawyer to join Metro Bank, as Sole Counsel, in February 2012, promoted to General Counsel in 2014 and now responsible for a team of 8
• Runner up In-House Lawyer of the Year at The Lawyer Awards 2016, winner of the Banking In-house individual of the year at The Legal 500 UK Awards 2017, recognised in The Lawyer Hot 100 2017

Dan worked at Dechert LLP before moving in-house to Network Rail in 2007. In 2014 he was selected as one of Legal Business Magazine’s In-House Lawyer Rising Stars and in October 2016, Dan became General Counsel for the Routes Division at Network Rail. The Routes are the operational heart of the railway and are divided in to eight business units along geographical lines. Dan and his team work as partners with the Routes to proactively support the operations, maintenance and enhancement of the British rail infrastructure.

Earlier this year Dan led a cross-functional project team in the re-design and upgrade of the legal team’s KM system which was successfully launched in April. He has first-hand experience of the complexities involved in developing from scratch a KM system which is fit for purpose as well as the cultural challenges associated with embedding the change to working practice in a well-established legal team.

Sir Robin sits in the Commercial Court, the Administrative Court, and the Court of Appeal Criminal Division. He is also a nominated judge of the Financial List. Before appointment to the High Court, he sat as a Recorder in the Crown Court for 15 years, and as a Deputy High Court Judge in both the Commercial Court and the Chancery Division. He is a qualified mediator and has sat as an arbitrator. He was Chairman of the Commercial Bar Association from 2005-7.

Sir Robin was involved in rewriting the Commercial Court Guide as part of the Woolf Reforms and edits the current (10^th) edition. He was a member of the Aikens working party on “supercases”. With Sir William Blair, he worked successfully to secure the new Queen’s Counsel system. With others, he led work to bring about the Rolls Building – the world’s largest dedicated business dispute resolution centre. He is a member of the Civil Justice Council and of the Financial Markets Law Committee. He is the Chairman of the International Committee of the Judicial College of England & Wales, and the judge with day to day responsibility for the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts. Throughout his professional life he has sought to encourage legal pro bono work and he chairs or sits on the board of a number of bodies in this connection.

Sir Robin was one of two judges on the Disclosure Working Group responsible for drafting the proposed new rules for modernising the approach currently taken on disclosure within the Business and Property Courts.

Stuart Little is a Partner at national law firm Shoosmiths, this year’s winner of the “UK Law Firm of the Year” title at the Legal Business Awards.

He heads the firm’s Business Advisory Division which includes Commercial; Employment; Pensions; and Risk & Litigation Services. It advises medium to large corporates (including FCA regulated companies), in addition to public bodies, financial institutions and charities.

Stuart’s own legal background is as a commercial litigator with extensive experience of leading heavyweight commercial disputes with particular emphasis on Technology, Manufacturing and Corporate related disputes (including Warranty Claims, Director actions and Shareholders disputes).

He has worked closely over the years with General Counsel and legal teams and, with the GC of a leading US technology company, pioneered a “Risk Reward” pricing model which was an early winner of the FT Innovative Lawyers Award.

A skilled negotiator, he has wide experience of utilising ADR processes to achieve early commercial resolution, frequently preserving what are important commercial relationships between the parties.

Stuart is a member of the British Computer Society and Society for Computers and Law.

Alistair founded SYKE after leaving Asda where he was Head of Contracts and Data Protection Officer.

At Asda Alistair successfully deployed Contracts Express and other technologies to deliver an end-to-end digital contracts and compliance solution called “Delphi”. Delphi significantly enhanced operational efficiency and delivered considerable savings.

Alistair is a very experienced contracts and privacy solicitor with a focus on simple solutions and sustainable progress.

Matthew Marsh was admitted as a solicitor in 1977.

He became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in 1990 and was appointed a Recorder in 2001. He was a made a Chancery Master in 2012 and appointed Chief Master in 2014.

Matthew Marsh was one of two judges on the Disclosure Working Group responsible for drafting the proposed new rules for modernising the approach currently taken on disclosure within the Business and Property Courts.

Barry trained and qualified at Hogan Lovells specialising in sport and media. He then joined ITV and has held various management roles the latest being Director of Legal Affairs and Third Party Sales with General Counsel responsibility for two divisional legal teams, advertising content compliance and ITV’s sales agency relationships with broadcasters and platforms domestically and abroad.

Barry was the winner of the Legal Business ‘Rising Star In-House Counsel of the Year 2014’. He was cited in particular for being at the forefront of ITV’s initiative to treat its external law firm panel as an extension of the in-house team, working on projects collaboratively.

Internally, Barry has developed an award winning training programme with panel firms for ITV lawyers. He has also spearheaded ITV’s extensive corporate social responsibility initiatives which were recognised at the Legal Business Awards where the Legal Social Mobility Partnership won CSR Programme of the Year 2016. The LSMP was further recognised winning the Financial Times Architect of Meritocracy award 2016, the Solicitors Journal Diversity Scheme of the Year award 2017 and the UK Legal Diversity and Inclusion Scheme of the Year award 2017. In 2018, the LSMP became the Social Mobility Business Partnership, a registered charity, extending the scope of the programme to incorporate the accountancy profession: www.smbp.org.uk. Barry is the founder and volunteer CEO.

Barry is a Non-executive Director of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and has sat on the BCAP and Clearcast Boards.

Matt is Assistant General Counsel at Royal Mail with responsibility for the dispute resolution, employment & incentives, health & safety and PI, and legal operations teams. Prior to joining Royal Mail, Matt was the group head of The Royal Bank of Scotland’s employment team and trained as a solicitor at Linklaters.

Adam Nguyen is a co-founder of eBrevia, a leading enterprise contract analysis software company that applies machine learning to more quickly and accurately extract key information from unstructured data. Adam also founded Ivy Link, an education advisory firm serving families in New York, London and the Middle East. Before Ivy Link, Adam was the Chief-of-Staff and Legal Officer of Vantage Properties, a 350-person real estate investment and management firm. Adam had practiced law at the law firms of Paul, Weiss and Shearman & Sterling, where he focused on private equity, hedge fund formation, and mergers and acquisitions — as well as at AQR Capital Management, a multi-asset investment management firm.  Adam holds a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Columbia and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

A specialist in major infrastructure projects by background, Tony has for the last few years focused on developing legal products and systems to address the increasing demands placed on in-house legal teams. From template production processes through to managing high volumes of outsourced commercial work for FTSE businesses, Tony has helped the Shoosmiths team design solutions to increase efficiency, reduce costs and standardise risk profiles. He has been instrumental in Shoosmiths’ collaboration with software developers to produce Matters+ , designed to give in-house legal teams unprecedented visibility of workflows into the team and out to external law firms.

Elizabeth has been managing and developing charities in the mental health sector for over 20 years.  She joined LawCare in September 2014 from the Institute of Group Analysis, a membership and training organisation for group psychotherapists. Before that she headed up Alzheimer’s Disease International, a worldwide federation of Alzheimer Associations. Elizabeth started her working life as a solicitor specialising in clinical negligence, practicing at Leigh Day.

LawCare, a registered charity, supports and promotes good mental health and wellbeing throughout the legal community in the UK and Ireland. LawCare provides emotional support, information about the mental health issues that can affect lawyers and works to raise awareness about why mental health matters.

www.lawcare.org.uk

Natalie is the Head of Legal for Fleetcor, a global provider of specialised payment products and services to commercial fleets, major oil companies and petroleum marketers. She is a member of the UK and European management teams and plays a strategic role in advising the business on a variety of legal matters and strategic developments across the UK, Europe, Asia and Australasia. Prior to her role at Fleetcor, Natalie carried out similar roles for the US’s largest car rental company, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and for US-listed cloud software provider, NetSuite (now part of Oracle), and was Group Head of Legal and Company Secretary of Venda, a UK-based eCommerce SaaS provider. In these roles she has been responsible for all company legal matters including adopting an advisory role in relation to the group’s shareholders, board of directors and executive management. Her three year tenure at Venda subsequently culminated in her leading the successful sale of the business to NetSuite and had her preparing the business for an IPO, advising on various fundraising rounds and debt restructurings, and working on key commercial projects for the business. Natalie became Head of Legal at Venda at the age of 27. Before then, she worked in Travelex’s legal team based in London, having trained at international city law firm, Taylor Wessing.

Daniel is a Global Director in the Procurement function at Liberty Global, the world’s largest international TV and Broadband company with operations in 11 European countries including Virgin Media. His remit covers Consultancy & Professional Services across their US, UK, Dutch and other European operations.

Following a law degree and LPC, Daniel embarked on Contracts Manager and Legal Advisor roles at BAA and Lloyds TSB respectively, before moving to Dubai in a procurement role with Nakheel (the developer behind the Palm Jumeirah). Managing supplier relationships during the financial downturn while trying to maintain service delivery for essential residential services was a huge challenge.

Since returning to the UK, Daniel has worked for Direct Line Group during their divestment from RBS, RBS during their strive for profitability and now Liberty Global during acquisitions and divestments.

Dottie Schindlinger is Diligent Corporation’s GRC Technology Evangelist and promotes the intersection of governance, risk management, compliance and technology as a recognized expert in the field. Diligent is the leading provider of secure corporate governance and collaboration solutions designed to promote improved performance for boards and senior executives. In her role, Dottie provides thought leadership on related topics through digital and print publications, conference presentations, and workshops for board members and executives globally.

Dottie was a founding team member of BoardEffect, a board management software platform launched in 2007 focused on serving the needs of healthcare, higher education, and nonprofit boards.  Prior to helping found BoardEffect, Dottie spent 15 years working in governance-related roles, including as a board liaison, board member, senior executive, consultant and trainer of private, public, and nonprofit boards.  Dottie’s efforts helped BoardEffect expand from a four-person tech start-up to become an industry leader in the board portal space — serving over 1,700 organizations and more than 120,000 board members and senior executives.

Dottie’s career has included roles as various as program development with the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, Director of Training & Education for the Nonprofit Center at La Salle University, and Associate Faculty of La Salle’s Communication Department, teaching Public Speaking to incoming first-year students.  Dottie currently serves on the board of the Alice Paul Institute.  She received BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and holds certificates in Management and Board Leadership from The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University.

Angela leads Legal Support at Microsoft UK for the Legal & Professional Services industries, working closely across Microsoft’s solution sales and technical teams with a range of enterprise customers on their procurement and deployment of Microsoft’s cloud technology. Angela specialises in advising on commercial cloud contracts, licensing, regulatory compliance and privacy/data protection with the overall objective of assisting law firms and professional services firms who are seeking to digitally transform their businesses by transitioning to the Microsoft cloud.

Angela has been at Microsoft for two years, having originally joined to lead Legal Support for Microsoft’s Commercial Partner organisation. Prior to joining Microsoft, Angela qualified as a solicitor and spent 7 years in private practice including at magic circle law firm, Allen & Overy. Angela holds a Practitioners’ Certificate in Data Protection (PC.dp) and in her spare time is undertaking a BSc degree in Computer Science & Information Systems through the University of London.

As an advocate for innovation within the legal sector, Angela regularly speaks externally on how Microsoft’s global legal and corporate affairs team (CELA) has embraced Microsoft technology, including artificial intelligence, data analytics and cloud-based collaboration tools, to work and co-operate more efficiently, flexibly and effectively across borders and time zones.

Andy has 15+ years of experience in legal technology and leads a team at Thomson Reuters that are responsible for a number of drafting and automation related products such as Contract Express, Drafting Assistant, West km, Solcara and Case Notebook. Andy joined Thomson Reuters in 2015 with the acquisition of Contract Express, where he was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. Andy is passionate about enhancing lawyer productivity through smart, yet easy-to-use solutions. He is a graduate in Artificial Intelligence and Psychology from the University of Edinburgh, where he also worked as a researcher and lecturer in the School of Cognitive Science.

Alison was appointed Group General Counsel & Company Secretary for
National Grid plc in January 2013. As such, she will be responsible for
shaping the Group legal function within National Grid and providing
Company secretariat support to the Boards and Committees of National
Grid.

Formerly, Alison was Commercial Director, Transmission at National
Grid for 4½ years working with the gas and electricity industries in the
UK and Europe to influence the legal and regulatory regimes in which
National Grid operates, to deliver improved efficiency and reliability,
whilst facilitating security of supply for Britain.

Prior to this Alison was General Counsel and Company Secretary for
National Grid Electricity Transmission plc and National Grid Gas plc
until February 2008.

Alison qualified with corporate solicitors, Martineau Johnson and spent
8 years in private practice before joining National Grid Company plc in
1996.

She has extensive external industry exposure including a number of
positions on European and UK Committees. From 2006 to 2011 she was
Chair of the Electricity Pension Scheme from and Chaired Enabling,
National Grid’s Disability Network.

Evelyn Styles joined Hays in June 2005.  She is currently responsible for managing the UK and Ireland legal team to ensure it delivers a highly efficient and commercial legal service to the business. Prior to joining Hays Evelyn had extensive experience in advising companies on corporate, commercial and employment law matters within niche private practice law firms as well as an in-house lawyer.