The Agile Leadership Academy for Law Department Executives

Never has the role of a law department leader been more complex! Whether you are an experienced Chief Legal Officer, first-time General Counsel, or legal professionals contemplating your next leadership role, the challenges of leading in a fluid and evolving environment are innumerable.

As a result, agility is the new and required leadership currency for managing law departments that seem to face new and vexing challenges daily. That's why ACC has created this thought-provoking five-part Webcast series that provides expert voices combined with actionable techniques for showing you how to develop and gain mastery of the new leadership skill for the post-pandemic world: agility.

Episode 1: The Portrait of An Agile Leader Is Revealed: An Intimate Roundtable

The first session in the Academy will paint a picture of what agile leadership actually looks like, bringing into focus the behaviors and skills that participants should aspire to model. This roundtable of legal department executives will share their respective journeys taken on the road to agile leadership. Through a candid, give-and take-conversation, they will provide insights into the challenges, hard-earned lessons and the high points that they have encountered – and how all of these experiences molded them into the agile leaders they are proud to call themselves today.

Key Learning Objectives:

• What it really takes to endure as a leader in today's business environment
• Influence: What it means to have it and how it fits into the agile leadership model
• The challenges of modeling the behaviors of an agile leader
• How agility manifests itself when managing competition within your team
• How team and individual motivational efforts are the keystones to agility
• The rewards of taking on the agile leadership mindset

Facilitators:

• Jan Anne Dubin, MBA, CEO and Founder, Jan Anne Dubin Consulting (Bio)

Featured Presenters:

• Sandra Leung, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Bristol Myers Squibb Company (Bio)
• Dan Weintraub, Managing Director and Chief Administrative and Legal Officer, Audax Group (Bio)

• Leanne Geale, EVP General Counsel, Corporate Governance and Compliance, Nestle S.A. (Bio)
• Amy Yeung, VP, Deputy General Counsel, Sallie Mae (Bio)

Episode 2: Building Your Profile and Visibility: Requirements for Agile Leadership

The agile leader understands that their success goes beyond just doing their job as an in-house counsel. They know that their agility is defined by their ability to display their expertise, talents and wisdom outside the organizations where they work. This second session illustrates this point with a panel of legal department executives who will share their best practices for building profiles that can position legal professionals as thought leaders and open them up to other opportunities, such as serving on corporate boards. Plus, you will learn how to use various communication channels to let the world know that you are ready to take the stage as an agile leader.

Key Learning Objectives:

• A strategic vision: What it means, what it is not and how a clear vision can help build a strong profile
• How to parlay your strengths into a narrative that positions you as a thought leader
• How to maximize your visibility through social media, podcasts, and speaking & writing engagements

Facilitators:

• Amy Yeung, VP, Deputy General Counsel, Sallie Mae (Bio)
• Jan Anne Dubin, MBA, CEO and Founder, Jan Anne Dubin Consulting (Bio)

Featured Presenters:

• Christine Castellano, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, The Andersons, Inc (Bio)
• Joseph Chan, Chief Legal Officer, Yum China (Bio)
• Sara Hays, Principal, SLH Advisors (Bio)

Episode 3: Strategic Networking: Re-Learning a Skill Laid Dormant by the Pandemic

Networking. You'd be forgiven for temporarily drawing a blank as to the meaning of this word. The last two years have given you permission for doing so as we have not practiced or flexed our networking muscles due to the pandemic shutting down the world. In part three of the series, a panel of legal department executives will share their secrets for re-using this skill to cultivate meaningful relationships at all levels within and outside the organization.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Why building connectivity is crucial to the agile leader's success
• How to develop goals for strategic relationships
• Advice and practices for re-entering the world to cultivate formative relationships
• The “Personal Board of Directors” Support Network: Understanding its importance and how to build one

Facilitators:

• Amy Yeung, VP, Deputy General Counsel, Sallie Mae (Bio)
• Jan Anne Dubin, MBA, CEO and Founder, Jan Anne Dubin Consulting (Bio)

Featured Presenters:

• Carol DiBattiste, Former Executive Vice President, Chief Legal & Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary, Comscore, Inc. (Bio)
• James Villa, Chief Legal Officer, Aleut Federal (Bio)
• Dan Harper, former General Counsel, Carus LLC (Bio)

Episode 4: The New Metric for Your Team's Success: Achieving Belonging

Recent research shows that 72 percent of global workers feel lonely on monthly basis, while 55 percent express feelings of loneliness weekly. As a result of the pandemic, we are in the age of “employee disconnectedness” – which makes it imperative for the agile leader to create a work environment where their team members feel connected to the organization and to their colleagues. The fourth session will focus on understanding the concept of belonging, and why it is critical to retaining talent. You will learn from a panel of legal department executives about the various roles they play to support their team members success during a time when it is easier than ever to feel alone and disconnected from one another at work.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Defining the concept of Belonging in the Workplace
• Techniques for fostering belonging among employees on a regular basis
• Understanding the roles of sponsor and mentors and how both fit into employee connectedness
• What is allyship and how it can help you demonstrate support for your team members
• How the core elements of an exceptional workplace, including innovation, can foster collaboration and belonging within a team

Facilitators:

• Amy Yeung, VP, Deputy General Counsel, Sallie Mae (Bio)
• Jan Anne Dubin, MBA, CEO and Founder, Jan Anne Dubin Consulting (Bio)

Featured Presenters:

• Rob Falk, General Counsel, The Truth Initiative (Bio)
• Jeniffer M. De Jesus Roberts, Vice President, Enterprise Risk & Resilience, Booz Allen (Bio)
• Tyrone Thomas, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Doral Renewables USA (Bio)

Episode 5: Crafting an External Engagement Strategy: Your Path to Achieving Belonging

Just as your team must receive those opportunities for connectedness, don't forget that you also deserve to experience your own sense of belonging. This fifth session will illustrate where you can find these opportunities outside the organization for nourishing your need for connectedness. A seasoned panel of legal department executives will share how their experiences as board directors and civic-based volunteers have allowed them to feel even more connected to their careers, their peers and their communities.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Identify those interests and passion projects that will allow you to create positive change
• Creating a circle of influence and using affinity networks to locate opportunities for bringing your interests and passion projects to life
• How corporate boards can help you feel connected to the outside world
• Ways in which nonprofit leadership, community service and pro bono work can generate a sense of belonging

Facilitators:

• Amy Yeung, VP, Deputy General Counsel, Sallie Mae (Bio)
• Jan Anne Dubin, MBA, CEO and Founder, Jan Anne Dubin Consulting (Bio)

Featured Presenters:

• Kathleen Boege, General Counsel, Wintrust NA (Bio)
• Eric Reicin, President and Chief Executive Officer, BBB National Program (Bio)
• Mary Francis, Corporate Secretary and Chief Governance Officer, Chevron (Bio)
• Anushree Bagodria, Senior Managing Counsel, US Markets, Mastercard (Bio)

CPD is available; A certificate of completion will be automatically provided upon completion of the course.

CLE credit may be granted in jurisdictions where self-filing is allowed. Please consult your jurisdiction for their self-file or independent study rules.

DE&I initiatives have big ambitions, but day-to-day work and organisational complicity can present challenges to driving meaningful and sustainable change. Our speakers will show what in-house legal teams are doing to build their DE&I programmes successfully, how they are measuring success, and what you could do to make your DE&I efforts more effective.

Generously brought to you by ACC Europe

CPD is available; A certificate of completion will be automatically provided upon completion of the course.

CLE credit may be granted in jurisdictions where self-filing is allowed. Please consult your jurisdiction for their self-file or independent study rules.

These days cyber-attacks and their prospective impact on personal (and business) data are viewed as a critical risk by most organisations. In-house legal teams need to be well equipped with data security governance skills, particularly with regards to cloud and other app's usage, to be able to mitigate the underlying risks and react accordingly under GDPR rules.

Generously brought to you by ACC Europe

Many record retention schedules started from within hardcopy, paper-based records programs. Yet today more than 95% of the documents organizations create or receive are sourced in digital format. Programs based on paper-centric record retention schedules are much more difficult to execute and ensure compliance, when electronic information is the dominant format. Is your retention schedule in need of an update?

In this Webcast, Mark Diamond and Tom Mighell from Contoural, along with Stacey Shaw from Careington, will discuss how organizations can create modern and more compliant records retention schedules that better handle both paper and especially electronic information. They will also cover how to privacy-enable your schedule.

This program originally aired on November 9, 2023. Please note that the on-demand format of this program is not eligible for CLE/CPD credit.

Election of leaders for 2023-2024. The nominees will introduce themselves and provide information about their backgrounds and experience with ACC and the Intellectual Property Network.

Leaders will discuss their roles for the Network, so if you've thought about volunteering, or wondered about the roles in the surveys the ACC is sending out, you can learn a bit more and find contacts if you are interested in collaborating on an IPN project.

Discussion of the U.S. Copyright Office notice of inquiry on copyright and artificial intelligence (AI) and the ACC's opportunity to respond and advocate. Amy Chai of the ACC Advocacy Office will join us to discuss this opportunity for the ACC and individual members to make our voices heard.