Jaella Parker

I started as a Mergers & Acquisitions lawyer in Perth and then joined Hall & Wilcox in Melbourne in 2011, working with Bruce McFarlane, Deborah Chew and Ed Paton. After two-and-a-half years, I left Hall & Wilcox to move into an in-house legal role with Deloitte in Sydney. I ended up leading the client contracting legal team for Australia. I entered Deloitte at Manager level and nine years later, I am now a Partner with Deloitte Australia and the Chief Operating Officer for the Asia Pacific Office of the General Counsel. I lead operations for a team of 130+ legal professionals across seven Deloitte firms in the region, with the main goal being to ensure Asia Pacific Office of General Counsel has a world-class operating model to support and enable the Deloitte business in the Asia Pacific region.

‘Typical’ – I wish! That is one of things that is great about my role and being part of Deloitte. I work in a really dynamic and agile environment – but most days I am working with the teams on operational transformation and the things that matter the most to our business.

Horseracing, socialising and spending time with my family. We are racehorse breeding and racing enthusiasts in our spare time.

Don’t worry about the things you cannot control.

Working with such a diverse and talented in-house legal team who each bring different strengths to our team, as well as making changes that set us up for the future.

Along with the nightly decision whether to have Nandos or Japanese for work dinner, the week of the Spring Racing Carnival 2012 … there were a lot of social events that week and it’s where I met my husband!