With a career spanning private practice and in-house legal roles across regions, Padmaja Chakravarty brings a wealth of diverse experiences to her role as Global Legal Head for Trade Finance at Citigroup. In this interview, she shares how her varied career path—advising on international finance, leading regional legal teams in Asia, and now driving global trade finance initiatives—has honed her strategic leadership skills.
Padmaja emphasizes the importance of cross-functional collaboration, understanding interconnected business dynamics, and how a broad perspective prepares in-house counsel to serve as trusted advisors and strategic partners. She also encourages young lawyers to embrace varied opportunities to build the skills needed for future leadership.
Merlin Beyts: You’ve had a distinct career path to your current position – can you describe that path for the readers and the benefits it has had for you as a legal leader?
Padmaja Chakravarty: As a lawyer, I have spent time both in private practice and in-house at a global financial institution. At private practice in London, I had the opportunity to work on investment banking and international financing transactions. In-house at Citi, I have had a number of different roles over the years, advising our investment banking and public markets businesses in India, then moving to a regional role heading capital markets legal advisory across the Asia Pacific, and then transitioning to a South Asia general counsel role advising the CEO, board of directors and senior management in South Asia on legal, regulatory, reputational and strategic franchise matters. After 12 years in Asia, I have assumed a global role based in London, advising the trade finance and working capital solutions business. At each stage, I have managed teams of varying sizes.
The broad experience has been critical in developing skills beyond the technical core – strong knowledge of the law and regulations, negotiating skills, and subject matter specialisation – such as greater knowledge of the business, how it operates at a financial and operational level, how does it connect to other businesses within the firm, how does the firm fit in the broader industry context and where are the big changes to the business coming from.
In-house counsels are trusted advisors and strategic business partners, but we also run a business within the firm as we manage teams, attract talent, take care of our budgets, build strong external relationships, and deliver excellence to internal clients. Working in different organisations or in different parts of the same organisation is a tremendous opportunity for building these skills.
Merlin Beyts: How has this helped you collaborate with other areas of the business and why is that important?
Padmaja Chakravarty: Understanding different parts of the organisation is critical to the success of in-house lawyers. All groups and businesses within a firm are inter-connected and depend on each other for the delivery of successful outcomes. Our advice, as in-house counsel, is most effective when it connects the dots with the larger organisational context, and we anticipate and prepare for how alternate courses of action might impact not only our direct business but also other parts of the organisation. Expanding our knowledge beyond our specific position, department, or immediate area of expertise contributes directly to our “executive voice” as trusted advisers and strategic business partners.
Merlin Beyts: Would you encourage younger in-house lawyers to have a varied career path, and do you think this would help create more strategically-minded general counsels in the future?
Padmaja Chakravarty: Absolutely. Taking on opportunities to advise different businesses within a firm or across organisations is a great way to learn new things, apply existing skills in different contexts, and develop stronger connections that enable us to have a bigger impact. When each day feels like it does not have enough hours and we are rushing from meeting to meeting and agenda to agenda, it can seem hard to cultivate new and diverse relationships or to try and understand ‘What matters most to stakeholders right now? What opportunities do they see? What are they excited about?’ However, a key value sought in general counsels is the ability to be able to tackle a myriad variety of issues while taking an enterprise view on each matter that focuses on wider organisational needs. The opportunity to work in different parts of the organisation is a great way to learn this skill.
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