In this episode, veteran GCs Julie Kinch and Deborah Solmor share their insights on the General Counsel role—what makes it unique compared to other in-house positions, how to approach this crucial step in your career, and how to prepare for it.

Deborah, as a new GC seeking guidance, founded Ready Set GC, a professional development program aimed at helping women GCs succeed in the role and connect with peers in a safe, collaborative environment. Identifying a gap in the market for emerging in-house leaders (deputies, associate GCs, etc.), Ready Set GC is also developing the Ready Set DGC to GC Program to elevate the next generation of leaders.

If you’re considering the next step in your in-house career, this episode of The Legal Department is for you.

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Do You Want To Be A GC? Taking The Next Step In The Legal Department: Julie Kinch And Deborah Solmor Ready Set GC

Introduction To The Episode

I am Julie Kinch, a former General Counsel, now Executive Coach and Co-chair of the Board of Ready Set GC. A fun fact for me is I’ve had some crazy team-building exercises, including skydiving and racing in the St. Martin Regatta.

I’m Deborah Solmor. I’m the General Counsel of the Gateway Foundation and the Founder of Ready Set GC. A fun fact about me is that if you read the last episode, you will know that I secretly love flower arranging. It calms me, suits my soul, and brings out the creative side of my brain.

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On this episode, I’m excited to welcome two guests. This is only my second time interviewing two folks at once. Bear with me as we muddle through that format. I’ve got Julie Kinch, the former General Counsel of Heineken, and Deborah Solmor, who you’ve met before. She’s the General Counsel of the Gateway Foundation and the Founder of the Ready Set GC Program. Hey ladies, how are you?

I’m happy to be here. How are you?

Doing good. We’ve been talking offline for a while about what I’d call a gap in the market in professional development for those lawyers who are deputies, associate general counsel, and who are seeking to make the jump into the general counsel position. They may not know how to get there and don’t know what the role is. Our conversation is what I’m calling our deputy series of the legal department. I want to focus on what is the general counsel role and how you know if you want it. Julie, if you could give us a little bit of your background? I know you’re no longer at Heineken. Can you tell us about that GC role?

Julie’s Path To General Counsel

I was the General Counsel at Heineken. Before that, I was the General Counsel at a company called Rémy Cointreau. I have a whole range of experience. I came straight from a law firm to be a general counsel. As far as team size, I’ve done everything from creating the legal function and being the only lawyer to leading a team of 10 to 15 people.

Deborah, we talked before in your earlier episode. I want to hear about not a full career journey but about your progression from deputy general counsel to general counsel.

Thank you for having me back. I’m flattered that I got another invitation. I must have done something right. I appreciate that. I divide my legal career into two phases. It’s the outside counsel and the in-house counsel. After spending many years of my practice as a civil litigator at Skadden, I moved in-house.

My first role, which I don’t talk very much about, and I should because it was the defining entree into the in-house world. I worked through Axiom at Jones Lang LaSalle. I managed their commercial litigation, and a shout out to my first in-house boss, the Head of Litigation, Ryndy Ditmars, who taught me a lot about how to be a good in-house lawyer.

After several months, I was offered her role somewhere else, which is what I left for. I’m sad to leave her, but I’m happy to have this opportunity to be a head of litigation myself. I spent several years as the deputy general counsel in a publicly traded in the higher education space. We talked a lot in the last episode about my transition to GC. I spent five years as the general counsel of a higher education nonprofit system of colleges and universities. I am coming up almost a year in November 2024 in my second GC role with Gateway Foundation.

Understanding The GC Role

You have been there and done that in terms of making the jump from deputy to GC. The goal for this conversation is to open the door to folks on what is the role. We’re conditioned, especially as lawyers in law school, to be achieving and getting that next thing. The GC rule can feel like a brass ring for an in-house career. I don’t think you know what that job is until you get it. I was wondering. I’d like to maybe dig in with a granularity about what is a day in the life of a GC. Julie, can you talk about your time in either one of your companies?

Let’s talk about Heineken because I had a bigger team, and that makes a big difference. A big part of what I did was coaching and developing my team because we didn’t have a big hierarchy. One of the ways that I would retain my good lawyers is by giving them exposure that they might not otherwise get. A few of them have gone on to be general counsel. I feel like it was, in some respects, a bit of a training ground.

A day in the life toward the end, I would say a lot of what I did was coaching and developing the legal team. I was fortunate to have a fantastic legal team. I spent more than 50% of my time in my management team function and less than that on the legal because I was fortunate to have an incredible team.

If I looked at the day in my life, it would be a lot of coaching my team and one-on-ones with them. I always felt like a big, important part of my role as a general counsel was removing obstacles. They would come to me with whatever the typical frustrations of an in-house lawyer. For me, it was like, “What could I do in my senior position to make things easier for my legal team and for other employees in the organization?” It is a big, important part of the role of a senior leader.

Deputies in many companies have direct reports. I didn’t when I was a deputy, but to hear you say, “50% of my job was a management and a development job.” It is important. I hate to generalize about our profession, but there’s not a ton of training on how to be a good manager and how to develop people. I’ve done a lot of personal work on trying to take myself out of the equation and not solve the problem. Our job is to help people develop to be problem solvers. If there’s anything you can add, do you know how to be a manager? Did you take any leadership training at Heineken? What did you do to get ready for that 50% of your job?

I did not know how to do it when I started. Thanks to some wonderful leaders above me, CEOs, as well as some of my team or people who reported to me and gave me some good important feedback. I did not know how to do it, and you won’t until you start. I do think doing some of those leadership courses, we often elevate people because they’re a good salesperson and a lawyer. We put them into management with zero support.

The Importance Of Delegation

It’s important to the points that you rate. Getting some of that leadership training if your organization gives you that. If it doesn’t, find that, whether it’s through a coach or courses. There are a couple of things I did as a leader. Two of the most important things are delegation and doing it well. Oftentimes, people don’t do it well, and they micromanage. I had to learn the hard way.

I want to pause on delegation. I’m going to throw it to Deborah because I don’t know if that was your experience. I want to get into your DGC role, but did you have the experience that managing was a big part of the GC job when you had it?

Yes, when I think about what the contours of my first GC role were, I look back and say, “These were the things that I expected about the job, and I was good at. These were the things I expected, and I needed to learn. These were the things I didn’t expect. Some I was good at. Some I wasn’t.” I had managed people as a DGC similar to you. I had people reporting to me. Although the organization I was at, I don’t think placed enough focus on how you manage people. When I became a general counsel, I tried to lean into figuring out how to manage people.

I don’t think it’s something law firms focus on. I see a bunch of posts on LinkedIn of people making that point. I try to weigh in to say, “This is something we need to be training these lawyers for. Many of them do come in-house. It was not something I knew how to do.” I did take on an executive coach a few months into my first GC role who provided incredible teaching and feedback and helped me figure out how to be a good manager. How do I be a good leader? We could spend 100 episodes on what’s the difference between a leader and a manager. You need to be both. Some people are better at one than the other, but to be successful, you have to have some skills in both of them.

On the delegation point, this is something that our training is that we are the technical experts. I’m a subject matter expert. I’m producing the legal product for myself where I’ve struggled with delegation. I’m thinking, “It’s faster if I do it myself. So and so is busy. I can get that done.” You don’t get to it because there’s a mountain and tsunami of inbounds constantly coming. Delegation and getting out of “doing the work and moving into managing the work” is one of the hard things to prepare yourself mentally for. I don’t know, Julie, if you have thoughts about that.

It’s one of the most important things you can do as you try to grow your career. There are a couple of ways of doing it. I remember someone once told me there was a study done on children in a schoolyard. There’s the schoolhouse and the playground. What they found was that if there were no fence way outside the schoolhouse, the children would stay close to the schoolhouse because they didn’t know where the boundaries were. Once they put a fence, the children would play all in the yard, close to the schoolhouse, far away, but near the fence.

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I don’t know if this is helpful. When you set those parameters, and you let people figure out how to get it done, that was the big learning. I know what the end goal is. We need to do the research on this. We need to review something. We need it done by this date. Giving people the parameters and letting them figure out how to do it was freeing for me and less micromanaging.

What I found is that oftentimes, people will have a different way of doing it than I would. Most of the time, it was better. It could be more effective and more efficient. They were closer to it. Giving people that autonomy was empowering for them. I didn’t have to micromanage. People that are closer to it do a better job.

I was going to make two points, and you made one of them. One point was the risk-reward ratio. There’s this risk of delegating. You don’t want to do it, Stacy, for all the great reasons you said. There’s this reward when you start doing it. You find that people can handle these stretch projects. It opens up your bandwidth to do other things. You learn to rely on people for more types of things.

The second point I was going to make is you’re pleasantly surprised that I learned things from people when I delegated because their brains don’t work the way my brain works. They don’t organize the way I work. Sometimes, it wasn’t perfect, but oftentimes, you would get a different work product than what you would’ve given. I learned a lot of good skills and habits, from watching the people that I delegated to. I say to people who are struggling with that, “You’re not doing yourself any favors.” At the end of the day, the reward may be more than the risk.

From Deputy To GC: The Transition

I want to hang on to that, making the point that the job is different. This goes for anyone in most jobs in-house. If you’re someone who likes to geek out, write motions, research, and spend a lot of time on things, in-house is not for you. As you move up the ladder, you have less time to do that. That’s not your job anymore. You have to delegate. I don’t know if either of you had this challenge, and Julie, you were saying, “I know what the answer is. I have an idea of the direction it needs to go. Do I trust this person?” It’s a transition into that leadership role that is not a parent from the outside.

You have to ask yourself the questions about what is the most high-value use of your time. When you start taking on all of those, you get the work done, and you do it better than the person you would’ve delegated to. Maybe you don’t. The question becomes, when you’re doing that, you’re not doing something else. Is that a high-value use of your time?

Deborah, you were a DGC before. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen one because companies structure those differently. You can have a different span of control. If you reflect back, it was your experience in the DGC role that was different when you moved to GC. How did those two compare?

The best thing I can say for the organization I came from is we had three deputy GCs. We had someone responsible for litigation and investigations. That was me. We had a regulatory DGC and a corporate DGC. One thing I would say right off the bat is my world, my universe, and my swim lane was smaller. I swam in those lanes. I didn’t do a lot of regulatory work unless it was related to litigation or investigation, which it often was. I wasn’t the corporate governance person and the transactional person. That suited me well for my first big in-house role because I was a litigator by training in the first half of my career. My swim lane was narrower, and I was focused on these things.

I also had people that reported to me. The whole HR legal staff, L&E lawyers, and a litigator reported to me. I was trying to translate between my outside counsel and I worked incredibly closely with my business people. They were two completely different languages. When I first took the role, I was talking like a lawyer, and my outside counsel was great. I knew how to do that. It was trying to translate to business people. What do they care about? What do they not care about?

It was trying to bring back that translation to my outside counsel to say, “Yes, you may want to depose eleven people, but what’s the end game? How are we going to resolve this problem for my business?” I don’t think a lot of young and mid-level lawyers, senior lawyers, and senior associates get that perspective, especially in litigation. They are focused on what’s the next motion. They responded to our discovery. I don’t like that. I’m going to move to compel. My business people don’t care about that. That’s not what they care about. After a few years in the role, neither did I. I have to be honest.

Isn’t that funny because it is a different job? When you’re in the trenches doing litigation, you are geeking out into the drama of the meet and confer. At the end of the day, that doesn’t solve the problem for the client. The in-house job is solving the problem.

This may be the most radical thing that I learned being a large firm litigator. I’m not sure what the reaction to this will be. That’s around the attorney-client privilege. When you were an outside lawyer, that was always at the forefront of your head. Everything you did was privileged. You wanted these privileged conversations. You move into the in-house world. In full transparency, in my last several years as a DGC, I was also the chief compliance officer.

In business, there are things that need to be looked at, investigated, solved, and remediated that you don’t do under the attorney-client privilege. I’m not taking down the rabbit hole as to why that is. In the beginning, I struggled with that. I was like, “No, everything has to have privilege.” It makes me a better general counsel because I understand that business has to move at the speed of business. That was a real eye-opener for me because I came from a world where I’m a lawyer. I get the benefit of this privilege. I’m going to use it all the time. Now, my philosophy is different.

Julie, can we go back to what was your day-to-day? We hit on the management that was 50% of the job is like. My mind’s a little blown. I wish I had that allocation. What was the other 50%? I’m thinking about your interaction with the board and leadership. That privileged conversation that Deborah’s thoughts dovetail into that.

It would be the more operational part of the business if that’s what you’re talking about. At Heineken, we were one of the larger operating companies. There was also dealing with the global legal team there. Because of our size and our importance and where we were along our own sophistication, bigger company, a lot of what we did are utilized. There are KPIs that we developed. We had a mission map and a lot of the planning that I did for the legal team. I did that with my legal team because they were good. It was often replicated and used on a global basis.

My interactions were with the global legal, the management team, and senior leadership. Over the course of my time, there were a lot of non-legal things that I did. We had a big strategic change that we needed to go through. It was difficult. It turned out to be an interesting time where we had grown, we had some layoffs, and management had lost their way, trust, and confidence in the organization. We did a big strategic review, but a big part of that was a necessary cultural transformation. Having been a long-tenured senior leader there, I led that, and it was a fabulous journey for me.

You led the cultural reboot.

Most people are like, “They let the general counsel do that?” Yes, and it was wonderful. It was always a part of how I operated in the company because of my tenure. The people in the culture and there are some great books that I read. Without that, where is the organization going to go? We had lost our way. I led that. It’s not part of my legal job.

It’s wonderful because the management team put as there was as much emphasis and importance on the cultural transformation as there was with respect to the positioning of the Heineken brand, M&A, and how we expand in new markets. The cultural piece was as important. It was a wonderful experience for me.

This is another point about the GC role. It is a leadership position. When you’re around that table, you’re smart, and you have a solutions-based approach. Deborah, you described that you had a compliance function. I know you have some other functions. Can you talk about getting out of that discomfort of, “I’m a lawyer, I’m used to being a lawyer and doing legal stuff?” A big part of the jump to GC is that you are not “just a lawyer.”

It requires building trust with the organization. One of the big changes of being with the law firm where, as you pointed out, Deborah, you’re communicating all about legal stuff. It’s lawyers talking to lawyers and in-house general counsels or in-house lawyers. You get into a company where, in the beginning, most of the employees in the organization are intimidated by the lawyer, particularly a general counsel. They don’t want to tell you things because they don’t want to get in trouble.

Building Trust As A GC

A lot of making that transition is getting out and having people see that you are a regular person. You aren’t looking to find every problem and mistake, but you want to listen and learn the business. They are the experts more than you at that point. A requirement for me with anybody joining the legal team is they would spend at least a day riding around with one of our salespeople. You know how we make money. How do we sell our brands? That’s the real business. What do we do as a legal team to make sure we don’t get in their way and support them? Make sure that people see you as a part of the business, not it’s the police, and they trust you. They will come to you. That takes some work. You have to be intentional about it.

It’s not a natural thing for us to think about doing. Deborah, did you think about being among the business? I’ve got all these cases. I’ve got all this work. How am I going to get to work?

I could offer you a good contrast for my two GC roles. In my first GC role, I took over from a GC who left. There were a few lawyers there. I built the team out more in the several years I was there. I struggled with my role, which is why Ready Set GC came about in the first place. I did recognize that I needed them to trust me. I needed to build relationships where people trusted and respected me such that they would come to me, and to Julie’s point, tell me the things that they were afraid of. I used to always say the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I contrast that with my current role, where I am the first in-house general counsel. I am building the function from the ground up. It’s not only getting them to trust me as a person, Deborah Solmor. It’s getting them to trust the function and getting them to understand what it means to have in-house legal. You could tell them, “This is great 24/7. You have a lawyer you can go to. You don’t have to pay outside counsel fees. I’m available. I represent you because I understand what’s going on in our business. I can put your issues and concerns in context.”

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You can message that until they start seeing it in practice. I have several people in the organization that no matter what somebody sends to them, I’ll get the email that says, “Looping in Deborah.” On the one hand, it makes a lot of work for me, and you’re laughing. On the other hand, it tells me, “I’ve earned trust because people are coming to me. That is good. I feel like my CEO hired me because he wanted to build a function.” I can go and say, “The division presidents are bringing me into all of these things. That’s a good win for me and him. That’s the juxtaposition of the first GC role I had and this GC role.

I agree with Julie being seen. We offer substance abuse disorder treatment and behavioral health treatment. I am trying to get to our sites. We have a large program in seven different states where we offer correctional facility programs. I’m trying to get out to our correctional facilities and be seen there and understand what it is like to go to work behind bars every day. What is it like to work with an inmate population? How can I help them, get out of their way, and do the work?

I’ll start with you, Deborah, since you’re riffing on your job but did you feel when you were a DGC that that was an important thing for you to do? With the perspective of being the senior leader in the organization, did it become clearer?

No, it was important. I’ll say two things. One, all support roles should get exposure to what their business does. I like the way Julie said. It’s important for them to know how we sell our brands. When I was at CEC, it was important for me to understand how we delivered our coursework and educational programs. Here, I’m trying to figure out how we deliver our services.

In the first few months that I was at CEC, our regulatory DGC came into my office and said to me, “I’m going to make a suggestion to you. Prioritize trying to get out to our schools and campus. See our students. Understand what they’re doing. In your role, you are going to hear and see the worst of the worst.” I read the complaint allegations. I would get the SIDS and look at what regulatory agencies were looking for us. He said, “It’s easy to get jaded quickly.” I thought it was such great advice, a bunch of common sense, but I don’t know if I would’ve prioritized getting out to our campuses the way I did had it not been for him telling me that. If he’s reading this, a big thank you to him for giving me that piece of advice.

Julie, the thought around getting out there and doing ride-along with your sales force, how did you determine that that was a must-do?

For a while, I was creating the legal function. It was by myself. There’s a bit of a benefit in some respects of being part of an alcoholic beverage company because there are plenty of opportunities to gather. We would often do that in employee meetings. There were plenty of times for me to have an informal getting-to-know people. What I realized early on when I started hiring people was that they would do what you said, Deborah. Sit there and do the work because they have so much work to do.

I realized as I was bringing people in that they needed to sit in the car and walk in the shoes of our salespeople. It became a thing for me. There were a few other functions that started to do the same thing, whether it was finance or operations. It became a part of my onboarding. It’s hard to remember exactly at what point, but it’s easy to sit in your office, see all the terrible things, and say, “We need to fix all of this. It’s different when you’re out there experiencing the full pressures of your job.

As the GC, you don’t get to be on your legal high horse anymore. You don’t get to say, “Those business people. If I was in charge or a queen for a day, we’d do blah, blah, blah.” You are at the leadership table. If something is not working, it’s your job to raise your hand. That is a difference. I had an episode with Kevin Rubin, the CFO of BetterUp. It was a great conversation because he was square. I want my GC to have opinions. I do not want to hear this is a business decision.

I’ve always felt that, but I have operated with the same hesitation that many lawyers have, and you’re trained that way. Give the legal advice. They can do what they want. Tell them what the risks are. This is a practice point or something for folks to think about as they’re exploring this role. It’s different. They want to know what you think.

You need to be decisive. Sometimes, it’s a hard move for people to make. You need to not come in with your one way. I remember learning early on when I would say, “You can do this or this.” They’d say, “Yeah, tell me what to do. In the grand scheme, business needs to move forward. It’s a lot of judgment and decisiveness.

One caution on that is that you have to understand how things get done in your organization. What is the leadership structure? Who are the people that make things move? I agree with you there. It is that getting comfortable giving advice. There are sometimes in some organizations where, and I see this from some of the women we talk to at Ready Set, you see, they are not being asked to make those decisions. They are being asked to tell me what the risks are. I, the CEO, I, the chief operating officer, or I, three people that don’t include you, will be making the decision. It’s important that you understand how business gets done in your organization.

Within an organization, how you communicate depends on who you’re talking to and being able to flex your communication and know where do I go deep, where you do not, and how much detail. The CEO wants to know several choices and the different risks. If it’s a relatively simple issue and it’s a local sales manager, he doesn’t want three choices. I think you need to have this great self-awareness and understanding of the culture and flex your communication. That is sometimes challenging for people.

That’s full circle to the question of, what is the role and do you want it? At the end of the day, if you’ve made it to a point where you are looking at GC roles, it is given that you are a good lawyer. We have to start there. Julie, when you said self-awareness, it goes to the soft skills. It goes to things that either you may or may not be good at or you may or may not enjoy. That goes to evaluating is a GC role for me. What are the things I’m going to be expected to do? Am I ready for them? Even if I am prepared, do I want to do that? Is that something I’m going to enjoy doing?

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We get focused on getting the hardware and grabbing that brass ring. Sometimes, it isn’t what you want. Deborah, I wanted to ask, and building on your last comment, what surprised you when you moved from DGC to GC? Was there, “I don’t know if I want this, or I had no idea this was part of it?”

I got to the point where I thought I wanted it. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it. For all the DGCs out there that were going to try and help at our DGC program, I won’t tell my story there. I’ll tell it here because it’s not the story most DGCs want to hear. I found an opportunity that was in the higher ed space. It sang to everything that I was doing. It was the first GC job I applied for, and I got it. For me, it was an easy transition. I know how lucky I am in the sense that I was the person they were looking for.

Do You Want To Be A GC?

What I was surprised the most about was how many facets of the job there were. How many things I was supposed to be? I’ll go back to my DGC analogy. I understood my swim lane when I got there. I understood the scope of the job. I understood what the expectations were going to be. When the CEO hires you and says, “You’ll be my GC,” there’s an understanding that your CEO knows what that job is or thinks you know what that job is. Come and be my GC, and you’re like, “Here I am. I’m your GC.” It was running the legal team. It was being a part of an executive leadership team. It was that whole strategic thinking. I was the corporate secretary. It was board governance. It was a lot.

How do you focus on excelling at all of them? We make the comment that a big firm lawyer is expected to be able to do everything. You write, orate, think, and research well. At the end of the day, in a lot of roles, it’s okay that you’re not perfect at everything. You leverage your strengths. That’s where you focus. I felt that the challenge for me was I had to do all these things. Most of them I’d never done before, and I was supposed to do them well.

That’s what guides my wheels spinning. I’m a social, chatty person. I have a good network of people, but I didn’t have the right network for the job that I had taken. That’s where the whole Ready Set GC thing comes in. I was surprised at how many different roles I had to play and how well I was expected to do all of them.

Julie, what about you? You came from a law firm. What was that like? What was surprising about that?

What was most surprising, which turned out to be what I loved, is how important it is to not only understand the business but also love the business side of whatever company you’re at. If you don’t, and we talk about this back to the point of not automatically going for the brass ring of a GC position but making sure it’s the right thing for you. Liking, enjoying, and being intrigued by the business is important because, as you said, Stacy, as you grow, you’re less geeking out on the fun legal stuff.

What was most surprising for me, and you’re spot-on, Deborah, of the many facets, is that you are a supporter of the business. You’re not the lawyer of many lawyers’ billing hours, which is the business of a law firm. You are now part of a business of selling beer, alcohol, or addiction spaces. It’s the business that’s most important. You have to love understanding the business and wanting to help grow that business. That was one of the things that was most surprising.

It is a business role. The bottom line I’d like to leave people before we start talking about great resources to help them prepare is that, as you’re thinking about moving into what we call the big chair, the GC role, think about how much you like business. How much do you want to be part of a leadership team that is noodling business problems? How much do you want to be a manager managing other people, leading other people, and developing other people? How much do you want to be juggling a number of different parts of the legal function? Not one “part” of what you might be doing as a deputy.

Deborah, we had a whole episode about Ready Set GC and how you got to develop this amazing program to help prepare people who are new to a GC role. You’re also working on a program for this deputy population, and there’s a huge gap out there for professional development for this role. Let’s talk about what resources are available and the deputy GC of the Ready Set GC program.

I’m happy to talk about it, but I should point out that I have two people who are intimately involved in the program here, the Co-chair of our Ready Set GC advisory board, Julie. One of the things that Julie and I decided to do for this deputy program is to put together a planning committee of people that we admire and think could help us contribute to planning the programming.

Stacy, we’ve invited you, and you’ve graciously accepted. We appreciate you being a part of that. We are knee-deep in planning for the program, which will be next February 2025 in Chicago. I found that as the Ready Set GC brand started to grow and we were doing more programs and going to more cities, I was getting people randomly reaching out to me on LinkedIn asking about the program.

A shout-out to all of the experienced GC women who have reached out to me and Julie and have said, “How do I give back? How do I pay it forward? I want to be a part of what you’re doing.” I also had women reaching out and men who were in the deputy chair and saying, “Your program looks amazing. Can I come if I’m not a GC? Would you consider doing programming for deputies?”

Initially, we stayed away from it. There are two reasons. One is scope creep or mission creep. We were founded to do GC programs. Two, a desire to, if we enter that space, want to do it at a high level and want to provide an impactful program, hence getting a planning committee together and trying to leverage a lot of different perspectives to figure out what should be the resources.

I want to share two things. I told this person I was going to co-opt their analogy, but somebody suggested it to me as DGC to GC is the broken rung of the ladder. I thought that was a great analogy because when you think about climbing up the rungs, you get to what should be the next step to the pinnacle. She explained it as being broken. I would say what broken means. Broken means there aren’t enough resources to help people aspiring to that. At many organizations, I don’t think they’re getting the stretch projects, the succession planning, or the counseling and guidance that they need from either their GC or other leaders in the organization.

There’s a lack of understanding. I want the role, but I’m not sure what I need to be shoring up on and how I get it. When I started looking for my GC role, my husband made the analogy to being a GC. You have to get the job to be a GC. He said, “It’s like being a millionaire. How do you become a millionaire? You get $1 million.” It is that which came that chicken egg.

It’s that Catch-22. To be one, you have to have already been one.

I don’t think that’s true. We’ll find plenty of examples where that’s not true.

That’s a perception. That’s what people for sure aspire to think. The second point I was going to make is, and this goes to our topic. When I put out the link to express interest in wanting to be considered for the program, one of the questions we asked on the program interest form was, why do you want to participate in this program? One of the ones that I got was someone wrote, “I like the way the program is framed. Is this the next role you want versus this is the next logical step in the career trajectory?” She said, “I enjoy being DGC. I’m exploring what the best next step is for me.” I thought, “This person should become a GC because they understand that they have to decide whether this is the right role for them.”

I have to tell the reader’s feedback I get. There are a lot of questions about the deputy to GC space. What is it? How do you get it? How do I prepare? You mentioned the program that we’re developing coming out, an in-person program in Chicago, but the Ready Set GC website has some blog posts on this that will link in the show notes, and Law360 also highlighted this.

Michele Gorman wrote an article about the DGC role and challenges for DGCs. She interviewed me and featured in the program. When the article came out, and I read it, she interviewed two other women. One of them was Jessica Wynn, who I’ve known for years and who has already joined the DGC advisory board. We were both like, “You’re in the article.” We didn’t know. The article covered a lot of the topics. She profiled three women. DGCs are having like, “Help me. How do I get to the next step?”

The other issue is, what if you have to leave where you are? Are you positioned to be able to step into the GC role where you are? If not for a myriad of reasons, how do I think about going somewhere else and competing against other sitting GCs from my first GC role? There’s a lot to unpack. I am hopeful that the program will deliver on all of that.

We’re going to try and keep it small, maybe larger than our GC program. We strive for about 25 women. We’re going to try to make this bigger but still small enough to be intimate and have those vulnerable conversations about, “Here’s where I’m struggling. Here’s what I need to know.” We create a vibe where people can ask those questions and get down to the issues that they’re concerned about.

As we’re wrapping up, Julie, it occurred to me that we didn’t talk about you having a coaching practice. I didn’t ask you if any of your coaching involves clients who are our target for the deputy GC program.

One of my clients was the first person to sign up for the program. She’s interested. My coaching practice is a lot of the targets of both of the Ready Set GC programs. A lot of first-time general counsels, as well as DGC or that level, are looking to make that next move. When you look at a lot of the job postings, I do think there is still a Catch-22. A lot of companies are looking for people that have the experience. It is oftentimes hard to make that move within your own organization and make sure you’re prepared to leave if you have to leave, as you said, Deborah.

The other part that I am excited about with our program is if this is the right job for me. Taking a hard look at that is to hone in on effective networking. Once I decide this is the right thing that I want to go for, we’re hopefully going to help the women create an action plan of what things they need to do to round out their experience but also put yourself in the right place. That’s important.

When you hear about the stories, which, as Deborah said, we’ve had some fabulous experienced GCs on our panels, when you hear their stories, you do need to be thoughtful and mindful of where you’re putting your energies because you’ve got your full-time job. You’ve got whatever else others need in your life. Going to another big event may not be the most effective way of networking and getting yourself in front of a CEO or whoever is doing the hiring. Helping people work through that is an important part of this program.

I’m excited about the action plan. This is the first of a couple of episodes that I’m going to do for deputies because it’s an underserved part of the market. As we’re winding down, we’re going to do the standard final question on the legal department. Julie, I’ll start with you. What is your pump-up song?

We have things for you. I don’t know who had it first, but we do the same thing at Ready Set GC. I’ve had a few, but I’m going to give a shout-out to a two-year-old. I was with my niece and her two-year-old daughter. There’s nothing like the joy of a two-year-old. She could get all ten of us up out of our seats to dance no matter what age you were to Lil Boo Thang by Paul Russell. I don’t know if you know it. He’s a TikTok guy. You can’t move when the song comes on. It’s my latest pump-up song for something new and different.

Deborah, what about you?

I know the song well, Julie. It’s a good pick. I shared on our last episode that my pump-up song is Alicia Key’s Girl on Fire. It reminds me that I can do what I set my mind to. Since I already divulged that one, I would say that I don’t know that it’s a pump-up song, but it’s been a reflection song. I’ve been spending a lot of time on Billy Joel’s Vienna because I love the lyrics about slowing down. It’s okay to disappear for a little while, and everything will be right back there when you come back. I’ve been leaning into that as I try to manage all the things I’m doing right now. I’ll give a shout-out to Vienna right now.

Where can people find out more about Ready Set GC and the DGC program?

Follow us on LinkedIn. We’re growing our followers and trying to concentrate on releasing more content. ReadySetGC.com for blog post. For the DGC program, there is a link on our events page. If you’re interested in the DGC program, please go there and fill out our interest form. We should be sending out invitations. If you respond and you don’t get anything back, it’s coming.

Thanks for being on the show, ladies.

Thank you for having us.

 

Important Links

• Ready Set GC
• Gateway Foundation
• Past Episode with Deborah Solmor
• Julie Kinch – LinkedIn
• Deborah Solmor – LinkedIn
• Kevin Rubin – Past Episode
• LinkedIn – Ready Set GC
• https://www.ReadySetGC.com/post/transitioning-to-general-counsel-understanding-the-role-and-assessing-your-readiness

 

About Julie Kinch

Julie is the former senior vice president and chief legal officer for Heineken USA Inc. She was their first female SVP and management team member, and part of the strategic and operational management of the company, which has grown to over $1.5B in revenue. Julie also oversaw the legal, regulatory and compliance functions for the company. She has represented companies in various industry trade organizations and has helped shape category narratives within the legal and alcohol beverage space.

Julie founded the Heineken Women’s Leadership Forum to drive the inclusion and advancement of women in the workplace. Her passion has had a lasting impact: as of 2019, 50 percent of Heineken USA’s employees are women and 48 percent of its senior leaders are women.

Prior to joining Heineken USA, Julie was vice president, general counsel for Remy Amerique, Inc. and before that, she was with the law firm White & Case. She is a former member of the board of directors for LIFT, a charity that provides access to justice for children and families in New York City, and she was on the initial advisory council for the Women’s Leadership Institute at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. Currently, Julia is a member of the Gender Diversity & Inclusion Committee of Women of the Vine & Spirits.

She is the founder of JK Leadership Advisors and a member of the advisory board of Ready Set GC.

 

About Deborah Solmor

Deborah Solmor, the visionary founder of Ready Set GC, has redefined the narrative of empowering women in the foundational years of their General Counsel role. Motivated by her firsthand experiences navigating challenges and identifying gaps in support, Deborah stands as a trailblazer dedicated to reshaping opportunities for women in pivotal positions. Currently serving as the General Counsel for Gateway Foundation, a leading non-profit in addiction medicine treatment, Deborah continues to demonstrate unparalleled legal and leadership skills.