Anneliese Reinhold is a direct descendant of Pocahontas, a woman famous for helping to foster peace between English colonists and Native Americans in the early 1600s, rescuing John Smith and travelling to the other side of the world.
Like her ancestor, Anneliese has also achieved a fistful of firsts. She is now a globally respected board adviser and transformation leader, with experience spanning digital infrastructure, AI enabled enterprises, regulatory technology and global member based institutions. Throughout her career, she has consistently stepped into emerging sectors, new markets and governance intensive environments, often as the first Australian, the first woman, or the first external voice to be invited to the table.
From practising law to global governance leadership
Anneliese was at school when she first decided she wanted to become a lawyer – though she wasn’t quite sure what lawyers did. "As I got older, I thought about pursuing a career as a doctor or a dentist because I was good at STEM subjects. But, at the last minute, I decided to follow my passion for language and become a lawyer", she said.
She started her legal career as an articled clerk at Blake Dawson Waldron (an Ashurst predecessor firm) in Melbourne on the day the firm’s merger took place in 1988. Anneliese then spent almost six years with the firm and credits her formative experiences there with providing a foundation for her commitment to quality and high standards, her interest in emerging technology and telecommunications, and her preference for having a bit of fun along the way. As a member of the Melbourne office Christmas party organising committee, she admits to being responsible for making tables full of people scramble to be the first to run up to the MC waving a man’s sock with a hole in it!
With a keen interest in greenfield sectors, Anneliese moved in-house to Optus just as the telecommunications market was opening up in Australia. She then moved to London, working in regulatory and corporate counsel roles with Cable & Wireless before becoming a partner at a City of London-based digital law firm. These roles deepened her exposure to emerging technology and complex regulatory environments. Throughout her early career, she also developed a reputation for building strong professional networks, something she sees as essential to both personal resilience and organisational success.
In 2003, Anneliese was headhunted to join Qatar Telecom (Qtel) Group (now Ooredoo) as the sector opened up in the Middle East. As their first Group General Counsel, she oversaw all legal and regulatory issues and drove organisational transformation, including advising on international expansion preceding market liberalisation and establishing governance frameworks. This period also marked the beginning of her hands on experience with greenfield startup launches, including contributing to the early development of Ooredoo Oman and building corporate governance frameworks from scratch.
While the work was highly satisfying, Anneliese found her professional life in Qatar quite isolating. At one point, she recalls literally jumping the fence in her haste to say hello to the lawyers from the first international law firm to establish a presence in Qatar, which had just opened an office in the building next to hers. The experience strengthened her commitment to building supportive professional communities for in house lawyers, something she would later act on after moving to the UAE.
In October 2005, Anneliese moved to Dubai and became General Counsel for du telecom. As part of the founding team, she helped scale up the company from a small project office into a US $3 billion business with one of the world’s most advanced digital networks, several region leading data centres, a satellite earth station and critical national infrastructure in a high growth economy. These roles cemented her reputation as a governance leader able to navigate government owned environments, national infrastructure responsibilities and large scale digital transformation.
During her 16 year tenure, Anneliese received multiple regional and international awards for her leadership, including Cham
bers GC Influencer (2019), induction into the IFLR Women Dealmakers Hall of Fame (2021), and five consecutive listings on the Legal 500 GC Powerlist Middle East. CommsMEA magazine named her one of the Middle East’s 20 Leading Women in ICT. At Qtel she was one of only three women in the 50 strong executive management team, and at du she was one of just five women among 75 senior leaders, reflecting her long standing commitment to gender and functional diversity in senior roles.
A global governance portfolio
In 2011, Anneliese took on her first board role with Corporate Counsel Middle East, where she helped build the region’s first professional community for in house lawyers and later supported its merger into the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) MENA. Her earlier experience of professional isolation in Qatar was a key motivator, reinforcing her desire to ensure other in house lawyers in the region had access to the community she had lacked.
Four years later, drawing on her work in helping integrate the regional organisation into ACC (the world’s largest organisation for in house counsel, headquartered in Washington DC), she was invited to put herself forward for the ACC global board. She was elected and, in 2019, became ACC’s first Australian Chair and only the seventh woman to hold that position.
In the same year, Anneliese became the first Australian to be appointed to the governing Council of the Institute of Directors (UK), the world’s oldest organisation for directors and senior business leaders. At the time, she was one of the very few Council members to be appointed from outside the UK. These appointments placed her at the centre of global governance conversations and gave her a unique perspective on board composition, director capability and the governance challenges facing organisations worldwide.
Since then, Anneliese has taken on numerous board and advisory appointments for global organisations – many with a focus on technology, digital transformation and greenfield markets. These include Datrix AI MENA and Dubai Angel Investors, as well as advisory board roles with various legaltech and GRC tech platforms. In 2022, she was appointed as Browne Jacobson LLP’s first Non-Executive Chair of its Corporates Board.
Through Panda Advisory Group, which Anneliese co founded with her husband, Phil Reynolds, she now advises boards and senior leaders on governance reform, regulatory strategy and digital transformation, work that complements her non executive portfolio.
A champion of governance, transformation and diversity
Now living in regional Australia, Anneliese contributes to governance conversations in the context of organisations looking to digitally transform, expand internationally, and support economic diversification. Her experience of leading digital transformation projects since 2007 and overseeing them at board level has convinced her that many failures have little to do with technology choices and everything to do with human behaviour. In her view, transformations falter when senior leaders aren’t directly involved in the hard foundational work, including data, processes, training and behavioural change.
"One of the key things boards need to understand is that culture and behaviour are critical to achieving successful digital transformation. Another pressing issue is the need to focus on organisational resilience to geopolitical shocks, which involves thinking long-term; and strategically."
Anneliese is passionate about diversity in all its guises, including functional and geographic diversity, and was once described as a ‘bastion for diversity’ by The Legal 500. By way of example, Anneliese explains, "I constantly see companies whose board members are based only in their home country trying to expand into international markets – a spectacular own goal." Her views on diversity are grounded in lived experience. At its peak, her award winning 25 strong legal and regulatory team at du brought together professionals from 13 nationalities, speaking more than 14 languages and spanning disciplines from law and regulation, to engineering, IT and economics. Working bilingually in Arabic and English with courts, regulators and government agencies, the team became a living example of how diversity in relation to culture, language and professional background strengthens decision making and organisational performance.
The power of proactivity
In Anneliese’s own words: "I’ve never been one for complacency, even when it means asking myself uncomfortable questions. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you do!"
This mindset underpins the advice she offers other lawyers thinking about taking on board roles. As she says, "Rightly or wrongly, there’s a preconception that lawyers are too detail-focused or risk-averse for board roles. So, while it’s helpful to have a legal background, it’s even more important to expand your governance and commercial qualifications and experience. Volunteering for roles with member organisations or not-for-profit boards is a great way to start and to expand your network."
This awareness also shaped her own development. She completed the GAICD, the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ flagship governance qualification, broadly regarded as the Australian counterpart to the IoD’s Chartered Director pathway, and earned a Diploma in Management Accounting from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, thereby strengthening her commercial acumen and broadening her governance capability. She later became a Certified Advisory Board Chair.
She added: "I think it’s also very important to be open to physically relocating to take on executive and non-executive roles – and to get stuck into them. Relationships and networks will lead to opportunities, but only if you do a good job in the first place."
It is this combination of curiosity, strategic insight and global experience that now underpins her work as a non executive director and governance adviser.
