SME Legal Teams with Big Impacts: Successful Strategies to Drive Productivity & Innovation

Senior Counsel at IDEMIA in charge of litigations, investigations, IP, data privacy, and trade compliance. IDEMIA is a global technology company PE backed by Advent International, focusing on biometrics, cryptography, secure credentialing, secure transactions, and identity-related services.

Brent Gustafson is an accomplished attorney and strategic leader serving as Chief Strategy Officer and in-house counsel at BlueStar Case Solutions based in Chicago, IL.
With over two decades of experience in legal practice and strategic leadership, Brent excels in driving growth and innovation for BlueStar and its affiliated software company, Siemly. He has a proven track record of cultivating strategic partnerships, mitigating legal risks, and delivering high-quality services in areas such as data discovery, artificial intelligence, cloud solutions, compliance, and litigation support. Beyond his professional responsibilities, Brent fosters a culture of trust, accountability, and collaboration within and across the organizations he serves. He remains dedicated to continuous learning and growth, always on the lookout for new opportunities to innovate and excel.

Lisa Davis George is Vice-President, Deputy General Counsel, Litigation & Legal Operations for Invenergy which she recently joined in 2023. Prior to joining Invenergy, with 20 years of in-house experience, Lisa managed litigation in senior leadership roles for Discover Financial Services and GE Capital Corporation, the latter which she joined from the law firm Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker. Lisa is passionate about driving both innovation as well as DEI in the legal industry in her in-house role in partnership with outside counsel.

Amy M. Au is Senior Corporate Counsel and Director, Global Legal with BCD Travel, a $27.5 billion corporate travel management company with 14,900 employees worldwide in 2019. Amy has over twenty years of corporate legal and business management experience. She is currently responsible for the legal needs of each client transaction from beginning to end, as well as assisting with developing and implementing strategic improvements to legal operational efficiency. She is also a certified mediator and experienced negotiator. Education: M.B.A., Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management; J.D., University of San Diego School of Law; B.A. Economics and Political Science, University of Illinois (Chicago, Honors College).
BCD Travel helps companies make the most of what they spend on travel. We give travelers innovative tools that keep them safe and productive, and help them make good choices on the road. We partner with travel and procurement leaders to simplify the complexities of business travel, drive savings and satisfaction, and move whole companies toward their goals. In short, we help our clients travel smart and achieve more. We make this happen in 109 countries with a global client retention rate of 98%, the highest in the industry.

Kathryn DeBord is DISCO’s Vice President of Product Strategy, where she works within the product team to help strategize how DISCO can change how legal is practiced and delivered using technology.

Prior to joining DISCO, Ms. DeBord served as the Global Chief Innovation Officer of a large international law firm. In that role, Ms. DeBord lead an international cross-disciplinary team dedicated to legal service delivery innovation.

Before joining the world of legal innovation, Ms. DeBord was a commercial litigation partner and a trial attorney specializing in complex contract, patent, and IP licensing matters, as well as consumer class action defense at an AMLAW 50 firm.

Ms. DeBord has extensive experience serving as an advisor to various companies and legal innovation initiatives, as a guest lecturer to law schools teaching legal innovation and the business of law, and as a speaker on legal innovation.