Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Consolidated Edison
Search every verified Deneen Donnley interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a January 2024 podcast, Deneen Donnley, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Consolidated Edison, discussed her approach to leading a legal team. She described her role as enabling the business to achieve its goals within the company's risk appetite, stating, "I'm an enabler, I understand risk. I'm not here to eliminate all risk but to operate within the appetite of the company." Donnley also characterized herself as "a business person who had a legal portfolio," emphasizing that she focused on understanding her peers' objectives and using internal and external resources to help them succeed. Donnley shared that she decided to become a lawyer after serving on jury duty, rather than pursuing an MBA. She discussed her leadership practices, including holding virtual lunches and office hours to connect with employees across her department, which she described as a way to understand the employee experience. She noted that being a leader in a legal department "means more than being a good lawyer."
“I enable the business to achieve its goals within the Enterprise risk appetite. That is it broadly. So I'm an enabler, I understand risk. I'm not here to eliminate all risk but to operate within the appetite of the company.”
“I really became more of a business person who had a legal portfolio and whose judgment and advice was informed by my legal training and I spent a lot of time trying to understand what my peers were trying to accomplish and figuring out how I could use my resources internal and external to help them accomplish that.”
Deneen Donnley went to jury duty and in that moment decided that becoming a lawyer would be a path she’d enjoy—rather than getting an MBA. She shares with Michael Sachs her journey to becoming a general counsel and her advice on what it takes to lead a thriving legal team. https://play.headliner.app/episode/20...
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