Please review the Roles and Responsibilities of the LMA International Board of Directors and LMA’s 2022 Primary Goals provided in your email. How do you lead a team towards meeting a goal (or goals) that may not be your own, when the long-term strategy has already been set? How would your service on the board contribute to the realization of LMA’s strategic objectives?
Working in a global, multi-billion dollar law firm for the last thirteen years has given me extensive experience implementing plans in service of others’ strategic visions . I have had the privilege of building two world-class departments during my tenure at Sidley and often had to direct the team to meet goals that I would have established differently. In these cases, I reached out to my supervisor and other leaders to try to understand the business problem and the motivation behind the solution. If applicable I also would make recommendations about how we could further refine the approach to help them achieve the firms mission. After those conversations, with a deeper understanding of the goal, I would deliver the party line and coach my teams to meet those goals. When I received feedback from my team, I would listen and seek to understand their concerns before sharing that feedback with leadership while working towards the goal.
Additionally, I believe that through my service on the board, I would be positioned to improve how LMA partners with leading institutions, such as ILTA, to diversify organization’s offerings. I would also help to ensure that LMA has a solid technological foundation for member engagement and long-term growth.
Given your experience working with LMA in various capacities, where do you feel the association can improve and how would you go about implementing those suggestions? If you are a current international board member, why specifically are you seeking another term?
In a way, I think COVID was a blessing for our organization. It has allowed the regions and the international board to rethink and reprioritize activities. One thing that the organization has done well and I would love to see continue is increasing the transparency of decision-making at the leadership level. The town halls, monthly emails to volunteer leadership, and other communications have helped re-energize the association and empower members.
In the spirit of rethinking and reprioritization, the organization has also taken an opportunity to revamp our educational content. With these improvements and the recent launch of the new website, there is a significant opportunity to better coordinate and reorganize our content. This type of incremental improvement will allow our members to more easily leverage the content to help better them grow their professional skill set.
As a member of another leading legal-specific association, I also see ample opportunity to extend the reach of our efforts and elevate our members’ profiles through the cross promotion of relevant content in collaboration with our sister organizations. I would welcome the opportunity to help facilitate such opportunity-spotting and collaboration.
Finally, I am a strategic thinker and consider diverse perspectives and consequences when making decisions, a skill used when crafting the agenda for the 2019 Conference. I am very even-tempered and do not get overwhelmed when discussing controversial topics or tough issues. I have an eye towards governance while also remaining a team player who is creative, energetic, enthusiastic and dedicated.