“Disruption isn’t about breaking systems, it’s about simplifying them. Across multiple countries and in-house roles, I’ve learned that legal adds the most value when it translates complexity into clarity. Whether it’s working with CEOs or introducing AI, my focus is always on removing noise so people can focus on what really matters.”

Commercial contracting is always the top priority, and I handle all of our commercial negotiations. Alongside that, there’s the legal operations side, where I take that information and turn it into data and processes — something we’re still actively working on and figuring out what works best for our team. And then there’s the more generalist work; like any lawyer at a startup, there’s plenty to do, and it’s been really fun to flex some other legal muscles as well.

I’ve always been really keen to break the stereotype and show that while it’s really important for lawyers to manage and mitigate risk, we can also drive growth, increase revenue, input on strategy and be operationally involved to make things more efficient.

I ended up at EY Japan in their forensics investigation support, and now I’m at JERA where I head up the first legal ops team, one of the few in Japan for a large corporation.

I didn’t have the ability to communicate effectively, to deal with high amounts of stress, to see myself, my worth and value. The more I spoke to my peers, I realized there was a whole raft of lawyers who were feeling the same.

I have the opportunity to kind of do over and CLM and AI tools allow me to thrive in this chapter of my life where I'm balancing my career and my family.

It’s the people who don't know anything about legal that usually hate working with legal. But that doesn't need to be the case.

I knew I wanted to help represent others, speak the language and try to help people just like my family, navigate the legal system.

I knew I was a better lawyer than those getting promoted above me. I realized that I needed to really change things if I was going to move ahead and be a better asset to my clients.

I wanted to bring my successes and thinking to a wider audience. I wanted to get other lawyers thinking, “how can you have maximum impact?"

I needed a break from the corporate environment. I've made so many connections throughout the years and even though I'm not an attorney, I do have a lot of experience, especially with contracts.

Individual businesses all have slightly different problems, but everyone has process inefficiencies. And all of this got me very interested in transformation and innovation.

I had the opportunity to work with Lyft as they launched across the US and that was the first time I started to think as a lawyer.