Twenty years of this, mostly from the inside.
I've led global employment law and employee relations functions at complex public and private organizations, so I know what it's like to be the person Legal, HR and business leaders bring the hard questions to, usually when the stakes are high and the answer isn't obvious.
My career has taken me across the full lifecycle of employment matters: trying cases and litigating employment disputes, advising companies from private practice, and ultimately leading employment law and employee relations from inside global organizations. That perspective shapes how I advise today, with a practical, commercially grounded focus on helping the business understand and manage risk without creating unnecessary barriers to execution.
In several of my in-house roles, I was the organization's first dedicated employment lawyer. That meant building the employment law function from the ground up, developing the processes, infrastructure and outside-counsel relationships needed to support the business as it grew. That experience taught me how to quickly identify what a company actually needs, what it doesn't, and where experienced employment-law support can have the greatest impact.
I've held senior in-house roles with John Wiley & Sons, Tory Burch and Mondelēz Global, and my law-firm experience gives me an equally useful perspective on how outside counsel work should be scoped, staffed, priced and managed.
Experience
Selected Experience
Examples reflect Kristy’s experience from prior in-house and private-practice roles.
Complex Global Restructurings
Routinely led multi-country workforce restructurings, often spanning three to ten jurisdictions at a time. Managed collective dismissal and consultation requirements, coordinated staged and staggered notification timelines across countries, and developed execution strategies that maintained legal compliance while preserving consistent employee communications across the organization.
Cross-Border Transactions & Carve-Outs
Led employment workstreams for global acquisitions, integrations, divestitures and corporate carve-outs. Matters included a complex multi-country divestiture requiring employees to be carved out of existing employing entities and re-employed as part of the transaction. The transaction also involved significant pre-closing workforce changes in France, requiring individual negotiations, careful sequencing and compliance with French employment requirements.
Executive Hires, Exits & Restrictive Covenants
Negotiated senior executive hires and exits, including CEO-level matters, and advised on the employment, compensation and separation issues involved in high-stakes executive transitions. Managed restrictive covenant issues arising from executive departures and related post-employment risk.
Investigations, Disputes & Litigation
Designed and implemented a global investigations playbook and matter-tracking system to bring consistency and visibility to sensitive employee matters across jurisdictions. Directly handled numerous administrative agency and wage-and-hour investigations, managed employment disputes and outside counsel, and handled post-transaction employment litigation.
Building Employment Law Functions & Infrastructure
Served as the first dedicated in-house employment lawyer in multiple organizations, building employment-law functions and infrastructure to support growing and evolving businesses. Designed and implemented global employment handbooks, policies, investigations frameworks and employment-law processes, and developed approaches to using and managing outside counsel across jurisdictions.
Judgment, not just information.
Most employment matters aren't hard because the law is impossible to find. They're hard because someone has to decide what actually matters, how much risk is real, which options are workable and how to move forward.
I give clients a clear recommendation, explain the tradeoffs, and help carry the decision through. Calm judgment and practical execution are part of the job.