Women in the Law UK GC Conference In association with The Legal Director
BIOGRAPHIES
Dr Sally Penni MBE, CCMI, FRSA Barrister, Founder of Women in the Law UK
Dr Sally Penni MBE is a high profile award-winning practicing barrister at Law at Kenworthy’s Chambers. Outside of that she is also a public speaker, diversity leader, in her own words and most importantly a Proud Mother of three.
Sally is also the founder of the Women in the Law UK organisation. A Professional development organisation empowering its 35,000 members plus members through education and training events. Women in the Law UK is focused on supporting the next generation of leaders in law and encouraging career progression through personal development.
Sally also sits as Non-Executive Director on a variety of boards bringing her experience and expertise in a variety of areas including criminal law, governance, employment law & cybersecurity.
These boards include:
• Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
• Arawak Walton Housing Association
• Camberwell Park School – Governor (Vice Chair) & Chair of Standards Committee Boards in Law:
• The Advocates Gateway – How witnesses can be better treated in court.
• Access to Justice Foundation.
Sally is a keen fundraiser supporting numerous local and national charities including Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, breast cancer prevent and cancer research and mind. This year she is involved in a challenge a month a month. Choosing a different charity a month to fund raise for.
She is the author of over 16 books including academic legal books and 4 children books the wonderful Amazon best seller Rosie and the Unicorn series.
She is the broadcast and host of her acclaimed weekly podcast Talking law which has now over 500,000k listeners from aspiring lawyers to those in business and commerce. It has global reach and presently 23 in the careers charts. Sally is a respected legal expert in her own right.
She holds a number of highly acclaimed fellowships including being a Companion of Chartered Management institute, a Chartered Manager (Cmgr), Fellow RSA, Trustee of Access to justice foundation, member of the advocates gateway committee. She is an Industry Fellow on the board of the University of Salford.
In 2020 she was awarded an MBE by her Majesty in Her Birthday Honours list for services to diversity, social mobility and to law. In 2022 she was awarded an Hon Doctorate by MMU. In 2022 she began sitting as a part time judge in the VTE Tribunal.
Women in the Law UK GC Conference In association with The Legal Director
BIOGRAPHIES
Kirstie Penk
CEO and EOS Integrator, The Legal Director
Kirstie is a co-owner, CEO and EOS Integrator for The Legal Director.
In her role she leads the day-to-day management of the business, integrating key functions such as sales, marketing, people, and finance, to drive results. Her role brings the team together, working closely with Founder, and EOS Visionary, Ed Simpson.
Kirstie is a passionate advocate for women in the law. When she started out in private practice, there were no female role models for her in senior positions. Joining TLD not only afforded her the flexibility she needed when her children were younger, but also allowed her to give other women the opportunity to have an interesting and varied career, utilising their skills and being entrepreneurial whilst also balancing the demands of family life.
Before joining the company in 2009, Kirstie was General Counsel at Madge Networks for over 10 years where she helped build the business into a NASDAQ-listed global success story that, at its peak, had over 7,000 employees worldwide and a turnover of $750m. Following restructuring, Kirstie became a co-owner of a portion of the business that continued to maximise the company’s then-dominant Token Ring networking solutions.
Sarah Davies
Vice Chair, UNICEF and Client Legal Director, The Legal Director
Sarah Davis is an experienced General Counsel and Non-Executive Director, Charity Trustee, speaker, moderator and facilitator for live conferences and events.
Key roles include:
General Counsel Consultancy at legal industry global think tank and professional services advisory firm RSGI Ltd. Providing consultancy and advisory services to General Counsel and Chief Legal Officers on legal function transformation design, talent, skills and development.
Group Legal Affairs Director (global) at ITV Plc, and General Counsel at The Guardian Media Group, during which time she supported the corporate restructuring of GMG, leading M&A activity to deliver GMG’s strategic priority of international digital growth, establishing Guardian America and Guardian Australia. In addition to involvement in high-profile news stories and events including the Leveson Inquiry and the Pulitzer Prize winning Edward Snowden revelations.
In addition to her legal leadership career Sarah has over 20 years’ non-executive leadership experience on the boards of UNICEF UK (Vice Chair), the Women’s Prize for Fiction (trustee), International Catalogue Raisonnè Association (Director), Poet in the City (Chair), the Media Trust (Deputy Chair), and the Society of Authors - organisations supporting her deep commitment to social equality and access to careers in the arts and media sector.
Sarah is also a mentor to early career executives, and a founder mentor of Women of Colour Global Network (WOCGN), Diversity Amplified and The Solaris programme. London, UK | +44 7393 926478 | http://sarah.bajan68@gmail.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-a-davis-/
Women in the Law UK GC Conference
In association with The Legal Director
BIOGRAPHIES
Emma Levin
General Counsel, Onebright
Emma joined Onebright, a mental health services company, as its first and sole legal hire in January of this year. She started her career at Linklaters, quickly realising after a client secondment that she enjoyed the fast-paced nature of in-house work. She went on to work at Barclays Investment Bank and Conde Nast before joining Mina, an award-winning start-up in the electric vehicle space, as its first General Counsel. She was awarded the title of Rising Star at the Women and Diversity Awards, In-house Lawyer of the Year at the Yorkshire Legal Awards, and most recently, was named in the top 5 most popular GC’s on LinkedIn by The Lawyer. She is a member of the inaugural “O list” and is a fierce advocate for social mobility in the legal profession.
Toby Hornett
Head of Community, Crafty Counsel
Toby Hornett was an in-house lawyer for the majority of his career before a move into Learning & Development.
He is currently Head of Community at Crafty Counsel, a community for in-house lawyers whose mission is “Joy, Insight and Connection” for anyone working in-house. It is free to join and there are a variety of ways to get involved. Please go to www.craftycounsel.co.uk for more information.
Sarah Clark
Chief People and Transformation Officer, The Legal Director
Sarah is a ‘people first’ senior business leader; an experienced General Counsel (GC) and a barrister with 20 years’ experience at the independent bar, in-house and in law firm practice across a wide range of sectors from publishing to financial services.
From an early career at Red Lion Chambers, honing her advocacy and influencing skills, the past ten years have seen Sarah’s focus shift in-house; from working in private practice designing value propositions and innovative legal solutions for GCs, to sitting in the General Counsel seat herself.
Sarah was GC & CoSec for a listed finance business where she sat on the ExCo, successfully obtaining regulatory banking permissions from the PRA. More recently, Sarah spent three years as Group Legal Director of a large UK motor insurer where she carried out a transformation programme, taking the team on a journey from small traditional legal team to best-in-class corporate legal function with a strong internal brand and ‘enabling’ reputation. She is passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion; driving an authentic culture rooted in mutual trust, where work and fun aren’t mutually exclusive, and believes that continuous learning is central to success and fulfilment.
Women in the Law UK GC Conference
In association with The Legal Director
BIOGRAPHIES
Meera Ferguson
Operations Director, Accutrainee
EMeera is a UK city qualified lawyer with over 20 years’ experience and in her current role as Operations Director supports all aspects of operational & legal delivery at Accutrainee. Her prior industry experience running the legal function at The Adecco Group provided exposure to the benefits of change management and how this supports operational performance. Through the utilisation of various lean/perform techniques and management tools she is skilled in developing and executing strategic initiatives aligned with organisational goals to ensure legal service delivery. She is passionate about talent and has a ‘People First’ approach to training legal professionals to equip them with the right skills to work in private practice and a wide range of industry sectors. She also sits as an advisory board member for universities and supports organisations to prioritise employee engagement and uses her position to champion initiatives which promote change, diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Trudy Grey
Client Legal Director, The Legal Director
Trudy is an internationally experienced Group General Counsel and Company Secretary and member of the global leadership committee.
Passionate about delivering strategy, change management and transforming organisations, she is experienced in leading high-performance teams with the right culture and behaviours, and being a trusted business partner and adviser to the Board.
Her skills include corporate governance, M&A/JVs, litigation and dispute resolution, corporate law, risk management.
Rachel Webb Wiles
Client Legal Director, The Legal Director
Rachel started her career in private practice as a commercial litigator at TLT LLP, before moving in house to FTSE 30 company Imperial Tobacco Limited. As Head of Legal for UK and Ireland, Rachel managed legal risk across the business and delivered strategic commercial counsel to the leadership team.
In 2021, she moved to the global FMCG company Imperial Brands plc, where she assisted in managing all commercially significant litigation brought against the group and advised on competition and anti-trust issues, including investigations by national competition law authorities.
Rachel is adept at analysing regulatory risk and providing pragmatic, commercial legal advice.