Mia Watanabe - Linkedin
“I started my in-house career in the legal department of Lehman Brothers, in their Tokyo office. I was 3 years out of law school having worked for law firms in New York and Tokyo.
I quickly learned that as in-house counsel, while you need to be competent in your technical legal knowledge and abilities, you ultimately get evaluated on the very subjective measure of how people perceive you at work.
However, the skills required to manage this perception is not something that is focused on in law school or in any traditional learning resource for in-house counsel.
It is possible to have a very rewarding career as in-house counsel. I wanted to find a scalable way to level the playing field for anyone interested in this career, as well as in-house counsel who are looking to progress their careers, by passing on some of the learnings I’ve acquired over 2 decades. CounselEdge gave me the opportunity to do just that.”
Mia works in the Legal and Regulatory department of a payment fintech. She has held leadership positions in private, public, start up and mature stage financial services and technology companies.
A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Mia has worked in New York, Tokyo, Singapore and Australia, and has given university lectures to law students on the legal profession.