In today’s fast-paced world, striking a balance between business objectives and legal compliance is pretty crucial to driving organizational growth. Organizations nowadays are incredibly dependent on Legal Counsels to have an effective corporate strategy while ensuring strict adherence to law and policies. An accomplished Legal Counsel with over two decades of extensive work experience in the Legal sector, particularly in France and Australia, Janine Jansen currently heads the global legal operations of the Melbourne-based leading skincare company, Aesop. Her sharp legal acumen, inspiring leadership abilities, and industry expertise have been instrumental in helping the company grow while ensuring compliance with ever-evolving industry regulations and ESG standards.

In an exclusive interview with The Global Women Leader, Janine sheds light on her overall industry experience, her current responsibilities at Aesop, and much more.

Give us a glimpse of your expansive professional journey in corporate law. What have been some of the most crucial junctures throughout your professional journey?

I was born and raised in Adelaide, Australia, where I spent my childhood and completed my schooling. While studying law at the University of Adelaide, I was keen to have the professional experience that a bigger city could provide. So, I moved to Melbourne to complete my graduate year at one of the largest corporate national law firms in Australia. My training, as well as my formative years as a lawyer, at this firm, were largely instrumental in helping me learn discipline, attention to detail, and teamwork.

My personal life then took me to Paris, France where, following several months of studying French, I joined a French international law firm. An incredibly unplanned step in my professional journey, it was a unique and stimulating experience in terms of practicing law in both a different language and culture with a broad range of clients from across the globe. Following this role, I went in-house as a Corporate Counsel for a listed pan-European commercial real estate developer headquartered in Paris. This role required me to work regularly with executive and non-executive management, where I was able to develop my soft skills in a slightly different context.

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Following a sabbatical in London, I moved back to Melbourne with my family and returned to private practice in a US international law firm for a couple of years. I then joined Aesop as Global General Counsel in 2019 and I have been part of the company for the last five and half years.

Introduce us to Aesop. Throw some light on the key responsibilities you shoulder as the company’s General Counsel.

Established in 1987, Aesop is a global skincare company that produces incredible products and creates exceptional customer experiences within a store environment that is welcoming and a true stimulus for the senses. My key responsibility is overseeing the global legal profile and operations of the group. This includes monitoring and addressing legal risk and ensuring this work is balanced with the legal support needed for revenue-generating projects. It also includes advising the business on strategic decisions and educating and supporting the business on legal risk management and governance. We’ve focused on enhancing governance practices, which ensures all relevant stakeholders are engaged as needed before decisions are made and the responsibility and accountability for those decisions are clear. Holding this role in a fast-paced and growing company with a diverse and highly creative workforce has been a truly unique and enjoyable experience in my career.

Tell us about your current focus areas & priorities in terms of driving growth in a business.

Like many teams, our Legal team is faced with many competing priorities in our day-to-day work and we always need to ensure that our priorities are aligned with the company strategy of the group, which is what ultimately drives the growth of the business.

Our focus is making sure that all initiatives to drive growth have a legal lens placed on them to understand our areas of risk, how we evaluate and mitigate those risks, how we strategically plan these initiatives, and how we ensure we execute our plans in a way that is legally compliant and considers and addresses our ESG obligations and responsibilities. This ranges from adhering to applicable law and regulation, to how we choose our suppliers.

Throw some light on the major challenges you encounter in your current role. How do you mitigate them?

One of the biggest challenges that I encounter in my current role is to achieve more with less. Even though I have a small team, we have a very large scope of work which is compounded by the ever-evolving landscape of law and regulation and the expanding role of the in-house legal counsel across operational, advisory, and strategic matters (or a combination of all three). To mitigate these issues, we always try to prioritize tasks according to business strategy and legal risk to the best of our ability.

With the large and diverse workforce, it's also a challenge to ensure we are providing legal advice to all stakeholders in a way that is accessible and meaningful to them. Consequently, investing time in building our stakeholder relationships and seeking to have a good understanding of how each function operates and contributes to the business is an important part of our role as legal advisers. Lastly, with the large workload that our small team handles, making sure the team has a good sense of well-being and feels motivated and committed is also a challenge. However, through various activities as a team, we try to make sure that having fun is part of our job as well.

Janine Jansen, General Counsel, Aesop

An accomplished legal professional with over two decades of extensive experience and expertise working for various organizations across France and Australia, Janine started her career as a solicitor at one of the largest corporate national law firms in Australia before moving to France. She currently works as the General Counsel at Melbourne-based skincare company, Aesop, overseeing the global legal operations of the group.