For the better part of the past decade, I’ve worked as an in-house lawyer. I started at Compass Group in the US, focusing on employment law, before moving to Extended Stay America, where my role broadened into more of a generalist position covering employment litigation, general liability, risk management and contracts. I then moved to Nordstrom, where I specialized in privacy, cybersecurity and AI.

Across all of these roles, there’s been a common thread – I’ve always been focused on helping the business move faster, while making sure we’re putting the right guardrails in place from a legal and risk perspective.

If I go further back, I didn’t start out knowing I wanted to be a lawyer. When I went to college, I was undecided, but I found myself drawn to political science and history. I’ve always loved reading and writing, and the idea that you could use those skills in a profession that could shape outcomes and influence society really appealed to me.

I’d heard about Summize through my network and when I saw they were hiring their first General Counsel, it immediately stood out as a unique opportunity.

What really drew me in was how multi-dimensional the role was. It’s not just the traditional legal responsibilities you’d expect. There’s a strong product element – using the platform, working closely with customers and feeding that insight back into product and engineering. And then there’s the community side, helping to build and engage a network of legal professionals.

It’s a very different GC role to what people might expect. Of course, there’s the legal side of the job – advising the business, reviewing contracts and supporting commercial decisions. But it also goes far beyond that. I’m actively involved in shaping the product. I use it every day, which means I can give real-time feedback to the product and engineering teams on how lawyers actually think, how they ask questions and what feels intuitive. That peer-to-peer perspective is incredibly valuable. There’s also a creative element to the role that people don’t always associate with lawyers. We’re often seen as very black-and-white, but in reality, there’s a lot of creativity in how you solve problems and design better ways of working.