How Four Women Rose at Walmart
Here are the diverse success stories of four Walmart women lawyers.
April 02, 2018 at 07:00 AM
10 minute read
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The women lawyers of Walmart Inc. are as diverse as America's population, and maybe more so. They are Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic-American, Native American, Caucasian and more. They are young, old and in-between. They went to law schools as varied as Harvard, Florida and Arkansas, among others. And some of their backgrounds range from a local county prosecutor to a federal environmental executive; from home-grown talent to Silicon Valley-trained. Here are the diverse success stories of four Walmart women lawyers.
Kerry Kotouc
Sam's Club Senior Vice President, Asset Protection and Compliance, and General Counsel
Before Kerry Kotouc joined Walmart's legal team, she was putting away drug offenders and occasional murderers as a county prosecutor in Bentonville, Arkansas—which, let's face it, is not exactly a hotbed of crime.
Kotouc says she had some friends who were Walmart lawyers, and they were always singing the company's praises. She decided to reach out and see what all the warbling was about.
In 2004, Kotouc left criminal law to join Walmart's legal department, managing its tort litigation. But a year later, amid Walmart's newly announced commitment to diversity, she was sent on a two-year recruiting journey that focused especially on lawyers who were female or people of color.
“We partnered with diversity organizations like the Minority Corporate Counsel Association and the national [minority] bars,” she says. “We took lists of open positions to those meetings and events and recruited right on site.”
In a 12- to 18-month period, Kotouc said she added about 50 lawyers to the legal department. “They were diverse in ethnicity, geography and backgrounds,” she says. “It was a great way to grow to reflect our customer base.”
She was soon named senior vice president and general counsel of legal administration, where she was responsible for leading broad, strategic initiatives. This role helped maintain the legal team's success in areas such as diversity and inclusion, and talent development.
In February 2015, Walmart named Kotouc general counsel of Sam's Club, its members-only retail warehouse division. She reports to Walmart GC Karen Roberts, with dotted-line authority to Sam's new CEO, John Furner, who was appointed Feb. 1. Kotouc oversees a legal team of eight lawyers plus six business-side employees.
Within what is already a tightly knit group of lawyers, Kotouc says there is a subgroup made up of single parents who support each other. “I am a single mom, and I love this informal support group.” Kotouc says. “A lot of parenting for singles is knowing how to juggle and picking up little tricks, like buying dinner for my kids at the Sam's Club cafeteria and they never know.”
Her advice to women who want to be in-house counsel is to learn the business first. “I learned how to read a P & L,” she says, recalling how she prepared for her job interview. “I read everything I could about Walmart and about what the retail landscape looked like at the time.”
Jamie Chung
Senior Vice President and General Counsel, eCommerce
As a lawyer for tech companies in Silicon Valley in the 1990s, Jamie Chung says she had four strikes against her: “I was Asian-American, a woman, short and young. That combination is exactly the opposite of what most clients here envision hiring as an outside counsel.”
But Chung persevered and became a partner at Cooley. In 2004, she went on to serve as senior vice president and general counsel of the AAA of Northern California, Nevada and Utah, and the CSAA Insurance Group.
Chung joined Walmart in May 2011 when then-general counsel Jeffrey Gearhart hired her to be GC of Walmart's newly developed eCommerce division. She remains based in San Bruno, California, and oversees 11 lawyers.
Chung now reports to Walmart GC Karen Roberts, with dotted-line authority to Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart eCommerce. One thing she loves about being in-house, she says, is Walmart's focus on leadership and organization development.
“They don't just focus on substantive legal expertise,” she says. “They really work on how to lead a team. In a law firm, we never focused on that.”
And she tries to share what she has learned. She says Silicon Valley has a tight-knit group of about 100 Asian-American lawyers, especially female lawyers, who support each other. “There aren't that many senior lawyers out there, so I volunteer a lot, including speaking and being on panels,” Chung says.
She recalls that, after a recent speaking event, a female Asian lawyer came up to her and asked about how to seek a promotion. “So I talked her through that,” Chung says. “Having those conversations can really help people in ways I'm probably not sensitive to enough.”
At Walmart, she says, her legal team “does a good job looking out for the issues and trying to look ahead, pushing the company toward the future.”
Her big disappointment in the legal profession, she says, is the lack of progress for women, particularly women of color, and especially in Silicon Valley. “When I think of the law firms, they haven't changed because they haven't had to. Change has to happen from the clients demanding it.”
She says Walmart has done that and has made great strides. “But we need more client companies doing it. I think there is more to do.”
Phyllis Harris
Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Legal Operations
For in-house lawyers at Walmart, Phyllis Harris is, she says, the “grandmother of mentoring.” She has no fewer than six “mentoring circles” that have discussed everything from leadership skills to the history of African-American migration.
“We need to do more to impart simple help on how to navigate the world,” Harris says. “And my door is always open.”
Harris joined Walmart in 2006 as vice president of environmental compliance. The field was her area of expertise after 20 years with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she was deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance in Washington, D.C., and before that, an EPA regional counsel in Atlanta.
Even at the EPA, Harris says she often found herself the only woman or person of color at meetings. But she always had mentors who were supportive—usually white males.
Harris concedes that when she arrived at Walmart in 2006, there “were not many people here who looked like me.” But the company convinced her that it was committed to a new diversity initiative. “I came here understanding that the legal department and the company were on this journey,” she says.
It helped Harris' decision that her former boss at the EPA hired her at Walmart and made the transition “seamless” for her. She says he could be “authentic and real” with her, such as explaining, a short time after her arrival, that Walmart was different from the government. “He said, 'We don't need 50 meetings; we just need to get on with it,'” she laughs. In 2011, Harris became Walmart's chief compliance officer, and four years later GC Karen Roberts convinced her to leave compliance and join the legal department.
Harris describes her job now as having two key components: building the data and analytic capability to drive quality, both inside the legal team and among outside counsel; and overseeing the legal teams in employment, intellectual property and corporate governance.
Her role lets Harris pursue Walmart's policy of seeking diversity among its outside counsel.
“We are very transparent about how we expect them to staff our matters,” Harris says. She uses data analytics to track the firms and their diversity efforts.
“Law firms that choose not to staff our matters with more women, people of color and disabled [people]—they are not going to get new work from us,” she says. “We hold them accountable.”
Karen Roberts
Executive Vice President and General Counsel
Karen Roberts is global general counsel of, as she puts it, “the Fortune 1 company.” And among other duties, that mantle has made her a leader for women in the legal profession.
But if you had told her she would reach this pinnacle when she joined Walmart in 1995 right out of the University of Arkansas School of Law, she would have laughed. In fact, her Walmart career started with some disappointment.
“I wanted to be in the legal department,” she says. “But they didn't hire beginners. So they put me in the real estate department.”
It was there that Carl Muller, the now-retired vice president for real estate compliance and safety, put her in charge of her first Walmart project. “It wasn't a big project,” she recalls. “But it gave me exposure to executives and issues that I wouldn't have had otherwise. “
The project was tied to the acquisition of a bankrupt retailer's U.S. stores. “It was a small break for me,” Roberts remembers, but it was a big, even pivotal, moment for her career. “It made me realize that I was capable of doing more than I thought, that there was a broader perspective, that it was possible for me to lead a team,” she says. It also made her realize later, as a leader, that she needs “to make sure that people have opportunities to try new things and stretch their wings.”
Roberts went on to become vice president and general counsel for U.S. real estate and construction and then senior vice president and chief compliance officer of Walmart before being named executive vice president and head of Walmart Realty.
Although she says she was quite happy in that role, Roberts became corporate general counsel in January 2013 and today oversees 157 lawyers. She says she considers herself “very fortunate” and is “very proud to lead this legal department. I think we have some of the best talent in the industry and one of the most diverse legal departments.”
Until the end of January, Roberts reported to Jeffrey Gearhart, the head of global corporate governance who oversaw the legal, compliance and ethics functions until he retired. Walmart gained another high-powered female lawyer in February, when it replaced Gearhart with Rachel Brand, who left her job as associate attorney general of the U.S. Justice Department, the DOJ's third-highest post.
Roberts has three tips for young women just starting their legal careers: “Work hard and invest yourself, and the company will invest in you; have a bias for action and keep pace with change; and when the door opens, say yes.”
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