A recognised expert within her organisation and the wider industry, Jenny Selby's technical legal expertise combined with her understanding of AccorHotels' strategic goals makes her vital to the organisation.

The pace of hotel development and the complexity of recent projects have required astute, precise and dynamic legal counsel, often working under extreme pressure and tight deadlines. Jenny has more than met the challenge. Jenny's ability to simultaneously manage multiple transactions whilst ensuring business as usual is not impacted demonstrates her strong leadership, time management and legal abilities. Such abilities have not gone unnoticed with Jenny recently being recognised for her contribution to the Mantra Acquisition project receiving a 'Team Bernache', one of AccorHotels' highest award honour globally.

With the recent acquisition, Jenny now leads a team of 12 staff; lawyers and paralegals. Her leadership is evident in her success in bringing together two legal teams in such a seamless manner, ensuring continued expert legal advice and support is provided to the business whilst giving individuals the ability to develop their expertise.

Jenny has been a tireless ambassador for the transfer of legal knowledge between AccorHotels operating regions globally and the driving force of the company's legal training program. Jenny also sits on several committees where her commercial and legal input is highly valued and indeed sought out by her colleagues.

Shannon commits to corporate social responsibility both at work and in her everyday life. As a member of Cotton On Group's global team Shannon assists 19 countries with their daily commercial legal requirements as well as contributing significant time on the Cotton On Foundation, which works towards empowering youth in Uganda, South Africa, Thailand & Australia through the delivery of quality educational projects. In addition to this, Shannon has put significant time and effort, over and above her commercial role, into upskilling on global charitable laws to ensure our compliance.

Shannon also ensures that she provides commercially rounded assistance to the Cotton On team and does not give up on road blocks which face the charitable industry. She strives for flexibility in structure, even by partnering with external philanthropic organisations to achieve results. One example is when the legal structure was hindered by its DGR status, Shannon worked with Rotary so that funds could still reach projects in Uganda, while maintaining compliance for the Foundation and tax efficiency for the Group.

Not only do Shannon's philanthropic values drive her at work in assisting the Cotton On Foundation, but for over six years she has been a volunteer member of the local Barwon committee of the Special Olympics, as well as a volunteer director of the board of a local disability service provider, Leisure Networks Inc.

Shannon's strategic thinking and rounded commercial advice, over and above her legal role, together with her "never give up until we find a solution" attitude makes her one of a kind.

Alice has made a significant and unique contribution to the legal profession during her successful 13 years+ career in both the private and public sector. Alice leads the department's Assurance and Legal Division and is responsible for managing all legal matters affecting a department that delivers some of the most significant programs to the Australian community.

Under Alice's leadership, the department's in-house legal team has built a reputation as trusted advisers. The in-house legal practice is relatively new, and Alice has developed innovative ways to deliver legal services. This has included high-level "elevator briefings" to concisely explain legal issues to the Department's executive and agile resourcing to respond to major issues.

Alice has been responsible for several significant legal projects, including as primary legal adviser on the establishment of the Regional Investment Corporation (RIC), which will be the national administrator for the Commonwealth's farm business concessional loans and the National Water Infrastructure Loan Facility. Alice is also a member of the RIC Project Board. Alice sits on the department's Executive Management Committee, the department's primary governance body. As General Counsel, Alice advises the Secretary, the Department's Executive, the Minister and his office on complex legal issues.

Alice provides outstanding leadership and empowers her team to take responsibility for delivering excellent in-house legal services including the development and delivery of whole department legal training. Notably, Alice is a sought-after mentor outside the department and has participated in mentoring programs across the Commonwealth including the annual APSC Graduate Mentor event, Country to Canberra and the AGLN Legal Circles Mentoring Program.

The EnergyAustralia Legal team comprises 12 lawyers, sitting within a broader Legal & Governance function that includes Company Secretary, Regulatory Compliance and support staff.

The in-house legal team are business partners, welcomed as full members of leadership teams, included in ideas from origination to completion and sought out and listened to for advice well beyond any possible definition of legal. As an illustration of the trust in and value placed on the team, several lawyers have performed "commercial" lead roles on key projects or covered colleagues' leave periods.

Working to ensure thorough commercial and risk-aware advice, the team led a two-day ELG workshop to develop a framework for improved decision making across EnergyAustralia as well as developing tools to identify high-risk matters requiring early legal engagement.

In addition to managing routine legal matters, the team has contributed to countless strategic business projects and initiatives, including transformation initiatives delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in value, generation and retail investments representing billions of dollars in value and managing the impact of detailed and frequent regulatory inquiries into the industry.

EnergyAustralia's legal team calls themselves bold and are not afraid to try new approaches. They have also reduced total legal spend with a consolidated panel of external law firms using an innovative engagement approach as well as developing and implementing tools to improve efficiency and automation through Legal Improvement and Simplification initiatives.

As a multicultural broadcaster in a rapidly changing media environment, SBS requires a legal team with technical and commercial creativity, agility and innovation. SBS Legal consists of 9 lawyers, with the General Counsel a member of the executive team. This team offers an afterhours advice service with practical pre-publication advice around the clock, seven days a week. A Legal 'Pod' structure has been established where small 'pods' of lawyers led by pod 'Ambassadors' proactively engage with specific divisions to anticipate legal needs and ensure the pod is keeping abreast of relevant legal and industry developments.

Embarking on a new partnership with Optus for the FIFA World Cup 2018, SBS Legal was an integral part of the negotiation team working with key executives to ensure the deal met SBS' strategic objectives and satisfied audience expectations. The team has also worked on the development and implementation of SBS' Digital Acceleration Strategy, offering privacy framework and advising on an industry leading tech-based management system.

SBS Legal is committed to continual development and skill-building within the team, which actively encourages internal and external opportunities to share and acquire knowledge and skills and give back to the industry and legal community.

The team are recognised as an intrinsic part of the SBS fabric, with advice which is consistently accurate, timely, business focused and easy to understand. They have also created bespoke face-to-face training courses and engaging legal modules in the style of a 1980s video game and 'Great Gatsby' inspired jewel heist.

Shannon's legal input and her practical, efficient approach to commercial matters are well recognised within the Cotton On business. Her ability to add value through the process and the way Shannon navigates complexity with a solution and delivery mindset versus a problem or barrier approach is well known.

Shannon displayed a strong skillset when negotiating a new distribution centre facility for the Cotton On Group, playing an integral role in the contract process. Through the negotiations Shannon showed her commercial and operational understanding and negotiated the contract management process across executive stakeholders on both sides to ensure that the outcomes that Cotton On were seeking were achieved.

Strategically, Shannon has been involved in entry to new markets which required her to upskill herself in new country entry, privacy law as well as any unique legal matters that may exist. Shannon has also accessed new markets around wholesale and marketplace channels where her input into the commercial contracting process has been key in ensuring the complexity of the contracts and service / operational requirements to enable the partnerships to grow successfully.

In addition to the legal eagle skills that Shannon brings to the team, she is an active leader within the group, being responsible for management of the leasing team which requires her to be operational and business focussed.

Personal leadership is a strength of Shannon, with her empowering her team and being approached by junior team members for mentoring. Shannon is also active on NFP boards external to Cotton On.

Brimming with energy, passion and self-direction, Andrew is a remarkable mentee. His growth over the mentoring program has been inspiring to his mentor who eagerly waited for their monthly meetings.

Andrew was frank and open about his career journey to date, and his strengths and limitations. He had given considerable prior thought to how he wanted to progress within the program and quickly worked to hone in on his key development focus areas. Of his own initiative, Andrew documented these development items, their status and next steps in a living mentee development plan. This became the checkpoint document throughout the year.

For Andrew, every roadblock was an opportunity to reflect on. Every meeting yielded positive progress and new insights. Andrew had clear insight into his development areas and with his self-awareness and insight, he developed rapidly.

Between meetings, Andrew completed tasks suggested to him by his mentor; personal study into specific areas, a skillset gap analysis, the implementation of 1x1 meetings with his direct manager and reflection on the internal dynamics of his business to get better outcomes.

Through this program Andrew's inner leader visibly emerged, confidently led his team to prioritise legal operations innovation initiatives and championed and implemented a business wide practice management initiative.

Robert's natural leadership encouraged his mentee to explore every possible path in the journey to finding the one most suitable for him. Even when contact was made outside their scheduled meetings, Robert was always extremely responsive. He had the balance of constructive criticism and restraint in allowing his mentee to form views and always listened attentively before offering his own views. When he provided guidance, it was done in a non-intrusive manner.

Rob's gentle encouragement and sound advice challenged his mentee to step outside their comfort zone and to pursue new experiences and gain new skills in management. As a direct result of Rob's encouragement and words of advice, his mentee is now an acting General Manager and directly manages a large team. Rob never missed a time to acknowledge his mentee in the efforts made and growth achieved.

His mentee left their meetings feeling humbled and so very grateful to have had the opportunity to share their views and obtain advice and support from someone who is so knowledgeable and easy to speak with.

Rob's mentee says, 'Rob seems to strike the perfect balance between giving me his views and giving me space to learn for myself, and he never said, 'I told you so!'