At Stretchline, we always look for opportunities to grow and challenge ourselves. So we’re delighted to welcome Helen Auty to her new Group Head of Legal role.

Helen will be based in the UK and will join us to help build an effective legal function in-house that will provide agile legal advice across the company. We sat down to talk about her plans and vision for the future.

What are your key objectives for this new role?

To create and develop a bespoke legal function that supports the entire Stretchline team on our Made for Better journey.

Tell us about your background and what experiences have you gained?

I have over 11 years of in-house legal experience working across a diverse range of different industries – including food manufacture, tyre manufacture and distribution, chemical distribution (speciality oils and gas) and most recently, Fintech, across various jurisdictions.

In my most recent roles, I was focused on creating and developing legal functions tailored to the bespoke needs of the businesses I worked for. My key focus was creating agile legal solutions for the various teams across the business while balancing commercial needs and aspirations, legal risk and shareholder value.

How does your previous experience contribute to your new role?

The diverse nature of my in-house legal experience means that I am familiar with the challenges international companies often face on a range of legal subjects. I will be able to draw on my experience of providing cross-jurisdictional legal support when developing a group legal function.

What do you think is the most important leadership skill?

Being an effective communicator. For me, this skill underpins so many other aspects of great leadership, like being an incredible motivator, having the ability to empower your team, deliver a vision and/or give guidance. It all relies upon your ability to communicate with people effectively.

What are you most looking forward to over the next few months?

I am excited to get started and hit the ground running! I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the industry, learning everything about Stretchline as a business and – most importantly – becoming a member of the Stretchline family.

After all, the best way to provide the most efficient legal support to the group is to immerse myself in the business, get to know the people and understand more about immediate challenges and future plans to ensure that the legal function can offer practical, hands-on and proactive legal support.

We hope you’ll join us in welcoming Helen to the Stretchline family. We look forward to working with her and drawing on her incredible experience to shape the legal function within Stretchline.