Anne-Marie Eileraas, '92, Finalist for Corporate Counsel’s Best Legal Department GC of Year Award
Meet the Finalists for GC of the Year
These three amazing general counsel are in the running for Corporate Counsel’s Best Legal Department GC of Year. This year, the winner of that award will be announced live at The American Lawyer Industry Awards in New York, NY on Dec. 4.
Below are short bios of each nominee taken from their submissions. The winner will have their full profile published in a future issue of Corporate Counsel. Congratulations to these three well-deserving nominees.
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Anne-Marie Eileraas General Counsel for North America at Avanade
Anne-Marie Eileraas graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in architecture, and started her career working for an architecture firm in New York. Wanting more agency in her work, Eileraas listened to her friends attending law school talk about creative opportunities in the law and decided to make a change. She enrolled at the University of Chicago Law School, where she was able to take her love for design in a new direction.
As a litigator, Eileraas worked on cases where the law was constantly changing, such as the scope of attorney-client privilege and interpretation of statutes, and did pro bono work in emerging areas of law.
From there, she made the jump to in-house, holding general counsel and leadership positions for companies such as Honeywell and Intuit, and was the CEO of Women’s Professional Soccer before arriving at Avanade in 2010.
At the helm of Avanade’s most profitable region for the past nine years, Eileraas has grown the department from two attorneys handling reviews in North America to thirteen legal professionals. During that time, she built a team that could scale without having to add resources, implementing new and innovative processes as the company achieved double-digit annual revenue growth.
With more than 15 years’ experience as general counsel or CEO of technology companies ranging from Fortune 100 organizations to startups, she has built a reputation as a strong, creative leader.
Another passion for Eileraas is volunteering within the community. First, as a volunteer sheriff’s deputy, and more recently as a Search and Rescue volunteer with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s department.
“I’ve always tried to do volunteer work that’s very different from my day job,”she says. For example, last year, Eileraas assisted in the Camp Fire recovery effort in California.
Read more at Corporate Counsel