The ACC Hong Kong (formerly HKCCA) is managed by the Board of Directors, which comprise voluntary representatives from the corporate counsel community, who are elected for three year terms at the ACC Hong Kong's annual general meeting. The Board meets regularly to plan and organise ongoing events, seminars and conferences for its members and to further the ACC Hong Kong’s objectives.
Kat Kukreja, President
Kat is engaged as a Legal Consultant through Lawyers on Demand, providing legal support to organizations with the financial services and fintech sectors. She also is a Consultant (Policy & Regulatory Affairs) to the Emerging Payments Association Asia (EPAA), contributing to the policy agenda and various advocacy initiatives of EPAA. Outside of work, Kat serves as Co-Chair of the Blockchain Committee of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong, driving education and advocacy within the FinTech community of Hong Kong.
Kat has worked in-house at both buy-side and sell-side institutions, including Wellington Management and JP Morgan, as well as with a number of start-up and early-growth companies. Her experience covers a broad spectrum of capital markets work (debt and equity), litigation, and regulatory and policy matters from her time at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Kat holds an LLB from the University of East Anglia, a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Skills from the City University of London and is a qualified English and Hong Kong barrister. She also has an Executive MBA from INSEAD.
Aedzer Oreel, Vice President
Ædzer Oreel is Lead Counsel, Labor & Employment (APAC) at LyondellBasell (“LYB”), one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies globally. When joining in 2011, he was the first Employment Counsel for the company in Europe and Asia, working out of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In 2019 he got the opportunity to serve as HR Director for the APAC and AFMEI regions, based in Hong Kong. After holding this position for almost two years, he has now returned to the Legal function, overseeing L&E matters for the Company in APAC.
Before joining LYB, Ædzer was attorney-at-law at Baker & McKenzie Amsterdam and at the local Amsterdam firm of Van Doorne. Ædzer is part of the Pro Bono and Public Service initiative at LYB and he is Ambassador for the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs in Asia.
Ædzer received his LL.M from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and has a post-graduate degree in Employment Law from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Besides some French and German, he speaks Dutch, English and Frisian (second recognized language in the Netherlands).
Bernard Tan, General Secretary
Bernard Tan is Chief Counsel, Integrated Regulatory Office (IRO) at SAP, a market leader in enterprise cloud services and application software with customers across more than 180 countries. He co-leads a global cross-department program designed to make regulatory compliance of SAP Cloud products scalable and sustainable, from monitoring of external regulations and industry standards, onboarding requirements into tools, undertaking compliance projects, before handing off going forward compliance responsibilities to business units. Prior to IRO, Mr. Tan was Chief Counsel, Cybersecurity at SAP and co-led SAP’s Cybersecurity Legal function.
Before taking on global roles, Mr. Tan was Associate General Counsel for SAP Greater China Region and, prior to SAP, was the Asia Pacific Region General Counsel and Commercial Director for a fintech company.
Mr. Tan has been a speaker and guest lecturer at various events on privacy and cybersecurity, including at the Office of Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, TC260 and IAPP organized events and at an MSc program. He has served as an IAPP KnowledgeNet Hong Kong Chapter Co-Chair and holds the CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPP/A and CIPM certifications. Mr. Tan graduated from Stanford Law School with an LLM degree in Law Science & Technology and from the National University of Singapore with an MSc (eBusiness) degree and an LLB degree. Mr. Tan has been a technology lawyer for over two decades and is admitted to practice in England and Wales, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Eddie Bao, Treasurer
Eddie Bao is Senior Legal Counsel & Director at SS&C Technologies, a software and consulting services company focused primarily on the financial services industry. As Head of Legal APAC, Eddie has responsibility for all legal matters across Asia Pacific. This includes being an integral member of the senior management team in the region, negotiating customer contracts across SS&C’s many software clients and fund administration clients, Human Resources matters, compliance matters, data privacy, and anything and everything that can come across his desk.
Prior to working at SS&C Technologies, Eddie worked at Ciena as Corporate Counsel, APAC (based in Hong Kong), a telecommunications network hardware and software provider. He also has private practice experience working in the Technology Media Telecommunications team at Gilbert + Tobin in Melbourne and the Mergers and Acquisitions team at King & Wood Mallesons in Melbourne.
Eddie maintains a strong interest in the technology space sharing knowledge and experience between in house counsel across the industry. He is admitted to practice in Victoria, Australia and holds a Bachelor of Law (Hon) and Bachelor of Commerce from Monash University in Melbourne.
Candy Au
Candy Au is an Assistant Vice President in the Listing Department of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX). Prior to joining HKEX, Ms. Au was a legal counsel at the Securities and Futures Commission advising on regulatory matters and handling civil and criminal proceedings. Before becoming an in-house counsel, Ms. Au was in private practice in Hong Kong with Linklaters and King & Wood Mallesons focusing on regulatory litigation and investigation and was appointed as a Judicial Assistant at the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal and the High Court.
Ms. Au has over 15 years of experience in international and local pro bono and community work. She is currently a committee member of the pro bono committees of ACC HK and the Law Society of Hong Kong. During the period at private practice, she managed pro bono projects including training UN interns and local human rights lawyers on case management skills at the United Nations Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia. Ms. Au has also led a global team for a legal research project on the rights of ethnic minority children with special education needs, prepared refugee status applications and conducted mock interviews, as well as leading a research group for an amicus brief in support of a petition to the Supreme Court of the United States for a person being subjected to the death penalty and providing monthly advice for the Duty Lawyer Service Free Legal Advice Scheme. Ms. Au also sits on other charitable boards and committees, supporting diversity and inclusion, women’s empowerment and environmental protection.
Ms. Au received her LL.B (Hons) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is admitted as a solicitor in Hong Kong, and speaks English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.
Giselle Bates
Giselle Bates is Group General Counsel – APAC for Allegis Group. Allegis Group is headquartered in Baltimore and is one of the world’s largest consulting services, contract and permanent recruitment businesses.
At Allegis, Ms. Bates leads a legal and company secretarial team spread across, Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore, Australia and India.
Before joining Allegis Group in 2019, Ms. Bates had broad experience leading multi-jurisdictional and multi-cultural legal and compliance teams, with a particular focus on Asia having spent 14 years living in Hong Kong and Japan.
Most of Ms. Bates career has been spent in-house and her practice has focused on commercial contracts, mergers and acquisitions, employment, litigation, and compliance including investigations and regulatory matters. But her passion is developing people and helping her team members succeed in their roles, including by using technology to help them be more efficient and better serve the businesses they support.
In the past, Ms. Bates has been a mentor through AustCham Hong Kong’s mentorship program and in Japan through Women in Law. She volunteers in Hong Kong at the legal clinic run by HELP for Domestic Workers.
Before moving in house, Ms. Bates practiced predominantly in commercial and industrial real estate at Minter Ellison in Melbourne and Ashurst in Sydney and Melbourne. She is admitted to practice in the Supreme Courts of Victoria and New South Wales. Giselle has a BA (Japanese) and LLB (hons) from Monash University.
Carla Carlucci
Carla Carlucci is a technology counsel with 15 years’ experience as a public and private company General Counsel focusing on consumer electronics, software and digital payment transactions.
Currently, she is a Senior Legal Counsel at GEOX where she oversees legal and compliance matters for the APAC region. Before that, Carla was a Legal Counsel at Ant Group covering EMEA. Carla is also the former General Counsel at Philips (LE Division) and Group General Counsel at P.C.H. International. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Atacana Group Inc. and the ACC Hong Kong.
Carla received her LL.B from the University of Toulouse in France and her LL.M (Hons) from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, US. She speaks English, French, Spanish and Italian.
Erika Evasdottir
Erika Evasdottir's role at Centrium Advisory Services Limited (CASL) is to act as in-house counsel and compliance officer, and often operations as well, all to ensure clients have the licensing, governance regimes and other procedures in place to allow the business to concentrate on what they do best. The goal is to promote the growth of the company and its ability to explore new products and markets quickly and efficiently without sacrificing internal controls. By bringing her experience in corporate and fund transactions to bear, Ms. Evasdottir also reviews investment opportunities and structures funds and downstream investments with an eye to avoiding regulatory, compliance and legal pitfalls.
Ms. Evasdottir began her legal career in capital markets before becoming a private equity/M&A lawyer and eventually became General Counsel and Compliance Officer (Asia) of two US headquartered hedge funds. Ms. Evasdottir additionally teaches at CUHK, has a PhD from Harvard in anthropology and archaeology (China), a JD from Columbia, and is admitted in New York and Hong Kong. Her book is titled “Obedient Autonomy: Chinese Intellectuals and the Achievement of Orderly Life”.
Amin Kassam
Amin Kassam is currently the Head of Bloomberg's Legal Department in APAC, Chair of the Hong Kong Office Committee, and an active member of Bloomberg's APAC Diversity & Inclusion Council. Amin also serves as the Executive Sponsor for Bloomberg’s LGBT & Ally (BProud) Community in APAC and has been repeatedly recognized by the Financial Times and YahooFinance in OUTstanding's annual list of the top 100 LGBT+ Executive Role Models worldwide. Prior to moving to Hong Kong in 2019, Mr. Kassam was Chief of Staff to Bloomberg's General Counsel and served on the Executive Committee of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Board of the Directors of the Muslim Bar Association of New York, and the Transition Team for N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James.
Mr. Kassam began his career as an associate at the law firm of WilmerHale in Washington, D.C. and as a law clerk to the Honorable Chief Judge Hector M. Laffitte of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, and the Honorable Judge Emilio M. Garzam of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Mr. Kassam holds a Bachelor's degree from McGill University, a Master's degree from the London Schools of Economics, and a law degree from Columbia University.
Susan Lai
Susan Lai is currently the Legal Counsel at Alibaba Group, responsible for overseeing the legal compliance matters in APAC and European regions.
During her private practice career, Ms. Lai worked at Miao & Co. (In Association with Han Kun Law Offices) and Fairbairn Catley Low & Kong, advised on numerous equity and debt capital market transactions, including global offerings and listings and bond offerings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, rights issues and share placements, mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations and takeovers. Prior to her legal practice, Ms. Lai worked in a top-tier leading multinational company secretarial firm providing services to over 40% of the global fortune 500 companies where she has built up her solid experience in advising corporate clients on company secretarial matters.
Outside of ACC, Ms. Lai is currently the National Secretary General of Junior Chamber International Hong Kong, a mentor of The Law Society of Hong Kong, and a member of Hong Kong Federation of Women Lawyers Limited. She was the 2021 President for Junior Chamber International Bauhinia, which is a female organization targeting members from 18 to 40 years old to participate as an active citizen to contribute to the society. During her year of presidency, leading 100+ members, Ms. Lai successfully lined up 73 strategic partners (including various government departments, business sectors, and NGOs like Rotary and Lions Club), 17 overseas chapters and raised significant revenue for chapter operations. It is Ms. Lai’s desire to lead ACC to achieve the same.
Ms. Lai obtained her Bachelor of Laws (LLB) Degree and Postgraduate Certificate in Laws from the University of Hong Kong.
Sandra Wu
As managing director at Centrium Advisory, a consultancy firm specializing in legal, governance and regulatory compliance services, Wu applies her extensive experience across private equity and M&A. Following an extensive private practice career, she previously served as head of legal and compliance at Mercer Investments (HK) Limited. Wu is a mentor at the Women’s Foundation of Hong Kong and is admitted as a solicitor of the High Court of Hong Kong and barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia.
Andrew Olson
Andrew Olson is Legal Counsel of PRADA Asia Pacific Limited and is based in Hong Kong. He is responsible for the legal affairs of the PRADA group, one of the world's leading luxury brands, in the Asia Pacific region excluding Japan. This encompasses a wide range of work including both commercial and intellectual property matters.
Prior to joining PRADA, Mr. Olson was in private practice in Hong Kong for ten years, initially at Slaughter and May, and then at Wilkinson & Grist. During that period he handled a wide variety of commercial transactions including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, corporate finance and commercial contracts.
Mr. Olson graduated from Cambridge University in UK and holds an M.A. (Hons) Law degree. He is admitted as a solicitor in Hong Kong and England and Wales.
