You worked in S&C’s Los Angeles, New York and London offices. How did your experiences across different offices and markets shape you as a lawyer?
S&C does a great job of allowing people to move among offices and gain exposure to different practice areas, and I feel very fortunate to have benefited from that throughout my career. The S&C London office had a relatively small English law practice when I started, and we worked very closely with our U.S. colleagues. From the beginning, I was exposed to a collaborative, cross-border, business-led practice working with sophisticated international clients. That experience taught me how different cultures, negotiating styles and business perspectives can shape a transaction. It also dovetailed naturally with S&C’s generalist model. I gravitated toward M&A and finance, both of which are very business-focused, so moving between offices and practices felt relatively seamless. The laws might differ, but many of the underlying questions, such as how to manage risk and achieve the client’s business objectives, remain the same.
After S&C, you moved in-house to Shamrock Capital, ultimately serving as General Counsel. What prompted that transition, and what did you learn from moving to the client side?
My first real exposure to an in-house legal practice came through a five-month secondment to Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division while I was a trainee solicitor in S&C’s London office. I enjoyed seeing how in-house lawyers operated as part of the business, but I was still very junior and had a lot more to learn at S&C before thinking about an in-house move.
When the Shamrock opportunity came up about six years later, I had already developed a much stronger skill set. What made the role especially compelling was the opportunity to become the first legal hire and build the legal function from the ground up at an established organization.
One of the biggest lessons I learned was how to shift from being an outside counsel to being part of the business. In private equity, the legal and commercial sides are deeply intertwined. For the legal structure to support the broader rationale of the business, I needed to understand the rationale behind an investment, how the business was expected to grow and what an eventual exit might look like.
Being the first lawyer, and ultimately General Counsel, also trained me to trust my judgment and make decisions efficiently so the legal team did not become a bottleneck. At the same time, I had to develop a strong sense of when an issue warranted outside expertise and when I had enough information to make the call and move forward.
As in-house counsel, I am constantly balancing legal analysis against time, costs and business needs. Legal reasoning is always happening in the background; an in-house lawyer’s role in the leadership team is to translate this into practical advice to guide decisions and keep the business moving forward.
Moving from an investment firm to an organization focused on immunology and immunotherapy represents an interesting shift. Now serving as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel at California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, what has been most rewarding or most surprising about entering this new field?
It is indeed a very different industry; I am also coming to it as a lawyer and operator rather than a scientist. But there are more similarities to my previous work than you might expect. CIII is a public-private partnership with the University of California focused on a “bench-to-bedside” model, taking treatments from discovery through development and ultimately to patients. A great deal of what sits between those stages involves hurdles other businesses also face: funding sources and terms; regulatory oversight and approvals; IP ownership; manufacturing partner selection and oversight. There are highly technical nuances, but fundamentally it is about coordinating stakeholders, securing resources and moving complex projects forward.
One of the most exciting areas in the field is AI. In healthcare and life sciences, there is enormous potential to accelerate drug discovery, clinical trials, protein design and laboratory research. As science moves faster, the infrastructure around it needs to be rebuilt so that this new wave of discoveries can move through clinical trials and ultimately reach patients.
I enjoy having the opportunity to help build an organization at an early stage. The COO role feels like a natural extension of my M&A and in-house experience. In M&A, you become accustomed to quarterbacking complex processes and bringing specialists together around a broader objective. As COO, you similarly need to identify the right stakeholders, make sure they have the resources they need, surface issues and keep everyone moving toward the larger goal. Wearing both the GC and COO hats can create tension - the lawyer in me may focus on risk while the operator side is focused on solutions. But the roles also complement each other: We are building an institution that operates within a significant regulatory framework, so integrating legal and operational thinking from the outset is very valuable.
How have your experiences at both S&C and Shamrock prepared you to take on the breadth of responsibilities that comes with being both COO and General Counsel?
One thing S&C did particularly well was to teach me how to figure things out rather than simply providing me with the answers. I was constantly faced with unfamiliar situations – different types of transactions, new industries, developing legal areas – and expected to work through them. That experience instilled a real growth mindset and made me comfortable confronting things I had not seen before.
That skill is particularly valuable in-house. At the General Counsel level, so much of what comes across my desk is something I have never encountered or thought deeply about before. My experience at S&C gave me confidence to understand the issue and develop a view quickly. Shamrock added another dimension by teaching me how to make those judgments in a business environment, often with limited time, competing priorities and imperfect information. Together, those experiences prepared me well for the breadth of the COO and GC role.
Is there a particular matter, mentor or experience from your time at S&C that had an especially lasting impact on your career?
Spending time in different offices at S&C gave me the opportunity to work with a wider range of partners than I otherwise might have. I observed their various professional styles, different approaches to difficult situations and ways of interacting with clients and colleagues. Over time, I took elements from different people that felt authentic to me and used them to develop my own voice and leadership manner.
The informal mentorship I received was equally important. Some of the most valuable conversations happened in the office (often late at night!) in the downtime between swapping drafts or exchanging final deal documents. The generosity S&C partners showed in sharing their time, experiences and perspectives with junior lawyers had a lasting impact on me, and is something that I try to carry forward with my own teams.
How have the relationships you built at S&C continued to influence your professional life?
S&C has had a significant impact on my life personally as well as professionally. My husband was also at S&C; we met in London after he moved there from New York, and we now have four children together, so the Firm obviously influenced my life in a very meaningful way!
I also remain close with a number of former colleagues, particularly in Los Angeles. Professionally, those relationships have been enormously valuable. At times when I face unspoken pressures and competing considerations around how to reach the right outcome, I know I can call someone at S&C who will understand both the legal issues and the broader context. They understand not only my responsibilities to the business but also those as a lawyer. My S&C colleagues continue to be incredibly generous with their time, and it is a group I trust deeply. Having worked with many firms over the course of my career, the integrity S&C lawyers demonstrate in approaching their professional responsibilities is something I particularly value.
What advice would you give law firm associates who are thinking about building a career that can evolve beyond traditional legal practice?
Becoming a trusted advisor and true partner to the business requires more than knowing the right legal answer. You need to develop professional skills and relationships that build trust over time so clients and colleagues genuinely want to work with you. This particular point is even more important in the age of AI. Someone can type a legal question into an AI tool and get an answer in seconds without ever coming down the hall to speak with you. What makes a lawyer valuable is the ability to actively listen, ask thoughtful questions and understand the context that someone may never think to put into a prompt. The real value comes from understanding what someone is ultimately trying to achieve: What does a good outcome look like? What are they worried about? What context or judgment can you bring from similar situations?
Being responsive, showing humility and a sense of humor, and being someone people enjoy working with are all qualities of successful in-house counsel. People remember not only whether you got the answer right, but how the advice was delivered and whether you understood what they were trying to accomplish.
Associates can start developing those skills immediately. Even when working for a senior associate, you can approach an assignment as someone invested in the ultimate outcome rather than simply completing a piece of work and handing it back. That mindset can go a long way.
