I am a General Counsel who moved from a highly specialised corporate practice at De Brauw to building and leading a broad in-house legal function in an international health tech company. Over the past seven years, my role has evolved from being the first legal hire in a scale-up to acting as a strategic partner to the executive team during phases of rapid growth and ownership transition.
I joined LOGEX a little over seven years ago, at a pivotal moment for the company. Just two weeks before my start date, LOGEX had completed a major M&A transaction, acquiring two groups of companies across several jurisdictions. The organisation went from purely Dutch to international almost overnight. At the same time, Swedish private equity investor Summa Equity took a minority stake.
At that stage, LOGEX was still very much a scale-up. I was hired as the first legal counsel, which meant building the legal function from scratch while the company itself was evolving rapidly. I was also one of the first professional hires in a functional role without a background in healthcare or data.
In 2023, the company entered another defining phase. The founders stepped back and Thoma Bravo, the world’s largest software-focused private equity firm, acquired a majority stake. Their involvement elevated LOGEX to a new level of maturity, bringing more structure, discipline and focus on operational excellence and profitable growth.
At the same time, that sharper financial discipline needs to be carefully balanced with our deeply purpose-driven culture. Navigating that balance has become a central part of my role as General Counsel.
Before joining LOGEX, I spent nearly twelve years at De Brauw in the corporate practice, focusing on equity capital markets. I advised listed companies on financial markets regulation and worked on IPOs and secondary offerings. I also spent time in New York as a visiting lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell. Moving in-house and into health tech was a significant shift, but one that has been incredibly rewarding.
The Company
At LOGEX, we turn data into better healthcare.
Healthcare today is more accessible and more effective than ever before. However, with these improvements come greater costs and complexity. Healthcare spending weighs heavily on economies, and the vast number of possible care paths leads to uncertainty and unacceptable variation in clinical outcomes and patient experiences. At the same time, digitisation and automation in healthcare have resulted in an abundance of operational, financial, outcomes and patient-reported data.
At LOGEX, we believe that structurally analysing these data not only holds the potential for improving the quality of care and healthcare outcomes, but it can simultaneously lower the cost of care. It can provide actionable insights that directly translate into decisions care providers can stand by, with measurable impact.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, and with an international team of over 400 members, LOGEX helps over 700 public and private healthcare providers across Europe make data-driven decisions that improve clinical outcomes, and patient experiences and make the best possible care more affordable for everyone.
The Legal Team
For the first two years, it was just me. Then we became two, and since this year our Privacy Officer also reports into Legal. That is a key role within LOGEX given the nature of our products and the sensitivity of the health data we work with.
We are a small, centrally based team supporting all jurisdictions in which LOGEX operates. Because of our size, we have to be disciplined about what we can and cannot do and focus our time on where we add the most value.
We cannot be involved in every contract negotiation or operational question across all countries. The most effective way to support the business is therefore to provide the right tools, templates and clear guardrails so that teams can handle standard matters themselves in a governed and controlled way. This enables Legal to focus on complex, non-standard matters and situations that require careful risk assessment and judgment.
The Challenges
We are a small team with budget constraints, covering the full spectrum of legal topics. Over the years I have often joked that at LOGEX I have worked on almost every area of law except (fortunately) criminal law.
Although the healthcare challenges we address are largely similar across jurisdictions, every country we operate in has its own system, its own interpretation of GDPR and its own rules around health data. There is very little room for error. At the same time, a small Dutch-based legal team cannot possibly have deep expertise in every local framework.
This becomes even more complex because we grow through M&A. We often acquire relatively small or less mature businesses that immediately rely on Legal for support with local contracts, local laws and local practices, often in the local language. That means rapidly building sufficient understanding of local legal requirements, thereby safeguarding compliance in each jurisdiction.
Another challenge is keeping pace with innovation, particularly in relation to AI. As a technology-driven company, innovation is part of our DNA. Our teams started working with AI early on, from organising hackathons to using tools such as GitHub Copilot for coding. They quite rightly turn to Legal to understand what is allowed and what is not. That required us to rapidly deepen our own expertise and establish a clear governance framework. We have since introduced an AI user policy that sets practical boundaries for employees, defines acceptable use and safeguards responsible data usage across initiatives. In parallel, we established an AI governance committee that reviews and approves AI tools and monitors compliance with those standards.
Secondment
I never did a secondment before going in-house, and in hindsight I wish I had. I always believed I was client-oriented, but it was only once I became the client myself that I truly understood what matters to the business and how legal advice is received.
Looking back, I recognise moments in private practice where I focused too much on producing a technically perfect memo or markup that would impress internally, rather than something that genuinely helped the client move forward. Now that I am on the receiving end of legal advice, I see that dynamic regularly. A secondment is an excellent way to develop the practical, business-focused mindset that companies truly value.
Passionate about travelling
I am married and have two children, a ten-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter. As a family we are passionate about travelling and discovering new places, cultures and food.
My (Austrian) husband and I met while solo backpacking in Vietnam in 2011. We happened to sit next to each other on a bus, had a great conversation, said goodbye afterwards and then, by pure coincidence, ran into each other again the next day at a temple in Hanoi. The rest is history.
Last summer we returned to Vietnam with our children for the first time and revisited that same temple. This summer, China is next on our travel list.
