Lead Counsel, Digital Innovation, Information and Privacy

Job Description

JOB INFORMATION

Job Title: Lead Counsel, Digital Innovation, Information and Privacy

Job Location: KoP (others tbd)

# of Positions/Incumbents: 1

Job Family Group: Legal Partners

Job Family: Legal

Business/Functional Unit: Enterprise Legal

FLSA Status (US only):

Exempt

Date:

Band:

tbd

Job Purpose

Lead Counsel will be the strategic legal partner and advisor to the Chief Digital and Information Technology Officer and the broader business, ensuring that technology driven innovation aligns with the Company's commercial objectives, privacy and regulatory obligations and risk management priorities. Acts as strategic advisor on digital matters, while ensuring alignment with IT's enterprise architecture and technology standards. The role is pivotal in enabling digital transformation, digital health opportunities, data driven decision making and operational efficiency while proactively mitigating legal and regulatory compliance risks. By embedding legal strategy into IT and business initiatives, the Lead Counsel, Digital Innovation and Information helps the organization maximize value from technology investments and maintain a competitive edge in the evolving pharmaceutical landscape.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Enables Digital Innovation: Drives legal strategy for and collaborates with business leaders, including technology enabled science leads, to develop legally sound strategies for adopting emerging technologies, such as AI driven drug discovery or digital health platforms. Ensure close collaboration with IT business leadership on relevant decision making, particularly those involving architecture, platforms, and data infrastructure.

• Drives Governance and Policy Development:

• Establishes and maintains in close collaboration with IT leadership governance structures that ensure accountability, risk management, and regulatory compliance for technology applications.
• In close alignment with IT leadership, supports, defines and enforces policies and frameworks related to data governance, data privacy and protection, cybersecurity, open source consumption and contribution, AI ethics and digital innovation, ensuring alignment with global regulations.
• Establish data ownership guidelines with suppliers of devices and instruments, for use in plasma centers or laboratories, where the composition is software and performance data are increasingly pushed to the vendor's cloud environment.
  

• Drives Privacy Program: Oversee CSL's privacy program, ensuring compliance with global data protection laws. Ensures legal support to all business units and functions on data protection and privacy matters across the business, supporting privacy by design principles, managing data related risks, data subject rights, ensuring appropriate privacy impact assessment processes, advising on data governance, cross border data transfers, and incident response.

• Strengthens Business Resilience: Partners with IT and cybersecurity teams to develop robust frameworks for the use of AI, cybersecurity, data privacy and digital trust - critical factors in maintaining business continuity and stakeholder confidence. Provides legal oversight on cybersecurity strategies, ensuring protection of sensitive data, such as patient or donor data, intellectual property and proprietary research. Develops and enhances legal and governance protocols for cyber incidents, data breaches and regulatory audits, ensuring adequate and effective responses while minimizing legal exposure. Provides legal support on cybersecurity and incident response investigations.

• Drives Strategic Contracts:

• Enables strategic growth through drafting, reviewing, and negotiating strategic I&T-related contracts.
• Supports value creation deals with innovative partners (startups, universities, etc.) and large scale ecosystem relationships.
• Works closely with IT leadership, business teams and legal teams to structure partnerships, licensing agreements and technology collaborations and ecosystems that enhance market differentiation, while protecting intellectual property and regulatory position.
• Supports joint development agreements with technology providers, large and small, in differentiated domains, such as donor management and digital health.
• Ensures information transparency across the partner ecosystem, including operational visibility into contract manufacturing and research organisations and extending to ease of appropriate access with partners in marketing and patient services.

• Enhances Data Utilization: Aligns IT, Legal and business strategies to ensure patient data, donor data, clinical insights, and proprietary algorithms are leveraged responsibly and in compliance with applicable laws. Structures data rights agreements for training machine learning models. Guides data monetization strategies.
  
• Expands Digital Footprint: Partners with information and technology leaders on the build out and management of CSL's external digital footprint, including IP addresses, web site domains, and social media properties.
  
• Oversees Dispute Resolution: Handles IT-related disputes and provides legal support in litigation matters protecting the interests of the organization.
  
• Provides Cross-functional Leadership and Training: Collaborates with IT, R&D, Commercial and legal teams to develop digital compliance frameworks. Collaborates closely with IT leadership and Intellectual Property to protect CSL's rights, including the protection of CSL's ideas in the face of increasing exploratory conversations with innovators in venture capital and academia. Supports and / or leads trainings on AI ethics, cybersecurity, privacy, IT risk management and data governance in close alignment with IT leadership.
  
• Provides Legal Team Leadership: Builds, leads and manages a team of legal professionals specializing in data privacy, technology, cybersecurity and digital health laws. This includes setting strategic priorities, ensuring alignment with corporate priorities and the advancement of the legal strategy and fostering a culture of collaboration between Legal, IT and other business functions. The role ensures that the team remains agile and well informed on emerging laws and industry trends, enabling pro-active risk management and strategic legal support for the Company's digital transformation initiatives. Drives enhancement to ways of working, legal value proposition and harmonization of legal offerings through adoption and advocacy for new technologies.
  

• Juris Doctor (JD) degree from an accredited law school, or international equivalent.
• Active bar admission in PA or ability to become licensed in PA

• 12+ years of experience in IT and digital law, privacy in an international environment.
• Experience in the Technology or Digital sector is a plus.
• Seasoned and effective lawyer with high degree of executive presence
• Strong understanding of cloud computing, cybersecurity, and IT platforms supporting R&D, Operations and Commercial.
• Experience in crisis management, including data breach responses, regulatory investigations and compliance audits.

• Strategic Thinking: Ability to proactively address legal risks and opportunities in digital transformation
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Excellent interpersonal skills to partner with IT, Legal and business teams
• Agility: adaptable and willing to continuously learn about emerging technologies including AI
• Problem-Solving: Ability to navigate complex legal issues in the evolving digital landscapes and ability to translate these into clear, actionable advice for executive and business teams
• Change Mindset: Leading the people engagement / adoption of change within teams and across the function. Leveraging personal capacity to respond positively to changing environment, inspiring others. Ensuring change management discipline to deliver successful change.
• Enterprise Mindset: Leveraging business knowledge and priorities to deliver the best legal value across global and functional boundaries. Future proofing business decisions with advantage of emerging pharma regulation

• Up to approximately 10% - 15% travel may be required.