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A RopesTalk podcast series brought to you by the Women’s Forum at Ropes & Gray, featuring conversations with extraordinary women who have had successful careers and interesting lives, and are also making a positive impact in their workplaces and in their communities.
Christine Moundas: Welcome and thank you for joining us on our latest installment of Women @ RopesTalk, a podcast series brought to you by the Women’s Forum at Ropes & Gray. I’m Christine Moundas, a health care and data partner and co-lead of the firm’s digital health initiative. On this episode, I’m joined by my colleague, Sarah Walters, a partner in our litigation & enforcement practice group. Hi, Sarah—to get started, could you please introduce yourself and provide a brief overview of your practice?
Sarah Walters: Thank you so much, Christine. As you mentioned, I’m a partner in our litigation & enforcement group, based in the Boston office. I work with clients from all over in responding to government enforcement matters and conducting internal investigations. Before returning to private practice about seven years ago, I was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, where I prosecuted financial crimes, and I served as the chief of the Economic Crimes Unit for the last four years of my tenure there. I lean on that experience quite a bit when interacting with government agencies in conducting internal and other sensitive investigations on behalf of our clients.
Christine Moundas: Great. Who’s the special guest that you’ll be interviewing on this episode?
Sarah Walters: I’m really excited to be speaking with Veronica Lei, who’s the associate vice president and assistant general counsel for Eli Lilly’s Diabetes Alliance.
Christine Moundas: Excellent. How did you meet and start working together?
Sarah Walters: Veronica and I met when we were both at the U.S. Attorney’s Office actually. She was in the Asset Forfeiture Unit, and that’s a unit that worked very closely with the Economic Crimes Unit and the work I was doing.
Christine Moundas: Interesting. What would you say is most notable about Veronica’s career?
Sarah Walters: As you’ll hear, Veronica has had a really interesting and diverse career. She started off as a litigation associate in private practice, she became a federal prosecutor, then she moved to an in-house role at Eli Lilly conducting investigations, and now, she’s serving as a lawyer embedded with the business line. Litigators don’t always have so many different opportunities and such diverse opportunities, especially in-house, and she’s done a lot. In speaking with her most recently, I also know that she has also spent a lot of time really reflecting on her career, and I thought she’d be a great person to share some of those reflections with our listeners.
Christine Moundas: That’s great. Alright, with that, I’ll turn it over to you and Veronica.
Sarah Walters: Hi, Veronica—I’m so excited to have you here today and I look forward to hearing more about your career. I was there with you for some of your career, but you’ve gone on to do great things at Eli Lilly, and I’m really excited to talk to you about it, so welcome.
Veronica Lei: Thanks so much, Sarah. Thanks so much for having me on this podcast and I’m really looking forward to our discussion.
Sarah Walters: Starting off, can you tell us a little bit about your current role at Eli Lilly?
Veronica Lei: I’ve got to start with the standard disclaimer, which is I’m obviously not here on behalf of Lilly, but I am looking forward to talking about my legal career generally. I am currently the business counsel for the Lilly Diabetes Alliance, where we partner with another large pharmaceutical company called Boehringer Ingelheim. I also counsel our Lilly insulin teams.
Sarah Walters: I want to dig in a lot more to your career trajectory, but I want to start by backing up a little bit because you and I met when we were both federal prosecutors in the District of Massachusetts. I would love to understand a little bit more about your role at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and how that took you to Lilly in the first place.
Veronica Lei: Yes, that was such a great time in my career, and I’m sure you look back on it fondly as well. Being an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA), I think basically from law school and graduation, was a career dream of mine. I was in the Asset Forfeiture Unit, which is a really niche area of law. My old supervisor, I think she called it “Byzantine” at some point, but it’s basically the seizure and forfeiture of assets connected to criminal activity. It was a really great position because it straddled the Civil and Criminal Divisions, so both sides of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. It actually touched almost every kind of case, so it enabled me to meet a lot of people in the office, which was great. One of my best friends in the Office was a coworker I carpooled with—she just happened to be a health care fraud prosecutor. When she actually left the Office, she went in-house to a medical device company after the government, and she actually really loved it. She’s been in-house since. We stayed in touch, and she had told me that the type of work she was handling was really interesting—a 10,000-foot level. The caliber of people she got to work with was excellent. She encouraged me to look in-house instead of going to a large law firm, which is actually also a natural path for people leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She thought that I would be a good fit in-house, and so, that’s what led me to look at in-house roles. I was specifically looking at Indiana because my husband is from there and we have family there, and anyone with little kids probably knows that extra help is always needed. So, that’s the path that led me to Eli Lilly.
Sarah Walters: Tell me a little bit more about the transition going from the U.S. Attorney’s Office to an in-house role with a huge company. I obviously took a different role—I went back into private practice after the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and I also have incredibly fond memories of working in the Office and how collaborative it was.
Veronica Lei: I think when people go from the government into an in-house role, your experience obviously depends on where you land. As you mentioned, Lilly is a large, multinational company. We’ve got, I think, upwards of 40,000 employees across the globe at this point. When I first went in, it was like going down the rabbit hole—I had no concept of how large, complex and sophisticated a company like this could be. I remember thinking to myself, “There’s a simple contractual dispute (simple for the litigation team). Another large company was sitting in country A but using country B’s laws, and none of this was in America. This was very far flung.” To me, that was just amazing, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Even though I’ve been at Lilly for almost nine years, and I’ve been in legal that entire time, I have held four really different roles. What’s great about a company that’s so big and complex is that you could really spend your entire career here and never know all of it.
Sarah Walters: You mentioned your multiple different roles at Lilly. I’d love to hear a little bit more about the different roles that you’ve held there.
Veronica Lei: My first job was privileged internal investigations. I say “privileged” because a lot of people who are at large companies probably know that they’re just routine investigations that legal does not run, and then there’s a small subset of that which legal does run. My first role was managing those internal, global, privileged investigations, and, of course, handling some of them myself. That was actually a fantastic first role coming out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, because as I said to an old colleague of ours, it’s almost like I was a little U.S. Attorney’s Office within this basically large town of a company. Running my own investigations, collecting evidence, piecing together what we understood happened was just very familiar, but at the same time, I was in this huge organization that I was learning. So, it was nice to be able to move skills that we already have, and that gave me the luxury to really try to catch up and learn the company.
Going from internal investigations, investigations was on a larger litigation team. Sarah, as you know, we’re obviously litigators in the government, and so, being on that team, and since I was from the government, I started handling requests for information from various government entities. My supervisor at the time had basically said, “Well, you’re from the government, why don’t you handle these?” I’m not disclosing anything that hasn’t already been disclosed in our public filings, but handling those matters eventually led to me to directing and managing what eventually grew into a pretty huge docket of various pricing-related matters—that’s how I evolved back into a litigator. Then, I came back around to investigations where I was no longer just managing them here and there—I created a team, built that up, built a process, and took a first turn at supervising, which I have to say was probably one of the hardest roles I had. And then, I had the opportunity to really counsel and be in the trenches more with the business, which is where I am now and have been for about the last three years.
Sarah Walters: Veronica, I want to pick up on something that you said earlier about learning about the complexity when you’re moving from the government into a company like Eli Lilly. For our prosecutor friends everywhere—I think you and I have talked about this quite a bit—when you’re sitting outside the business and questioning the business, you look at the whole thing so myopically and think even responses to requests should be simple, when they’re simply not. I feel like in my role, too, I spend a lot of time right now representing companies as outside counsel dealing with government inquiries. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the prosecutors understand the business and that the inability to respond on a dime, exactly the way they want us to, is not lack of cooperation, but a demonstration that the business is complex. I love that about my job, and I know you love it about your job, of getting to understand how the businesses work and the complexity and the incredible work that these companies do, gives you a much deeper perspective than when you’re sitting in the government.
Veronica Lei: I think back to when I was a second-year associate or a third-year associate. It was my first three years at a large law firm, and I was doing document review at the campus of a huge client. We had to ask in-house counsel, “Where are these particular documents? Where are they?” And it took him several days to get back to us. Even when we landed at the campus, he wasn’t quite sure where they all were, and I didn’t understand why he didn’t know where everything was. But now that I’m in that role, I completely get it—you just will never know where everything is.
Sarah Walters: Our clients do not become successful by just preparing for litigation, but instead, they’re trying to do what Lilly does, which is find therapeutic treatments and other things. And that’s not necessarily set up perfectly for responding to government requests and outside-counsel requests. Again, you’ve held a lot of roles within Eli Lilly both more directly in line with the business and supporting the business in the litigation and the legal role. Tell us a little bit more about what you’re most proud of in your career to date.
Veronica Lei: Whenever anyone asks me about that, my mind goes to the same place. Not to say that I’m not proud of the relationships I’ve built, the teams I put together at certain points, the teams I’ve led, the results I’ve obtained, but my mind always goes back to when I was handling that large cluster of pricing-related matters that I mentioned before. They came in as a trickle and then it became a constant flow. This is all publicly disclosed, but the requests came from different areas—state level, federal level, private litigants, state court, federal court—and it was nonstop. What’s cool about those issues was that they weren’t just legal issues, they were really an issue of American public concern and U.S. policy but also of the company itself. Not just the legal team, but a lot of people cared about it for personal reasons, for business reasons and for moral reasons. I look back on that time with great fondness and pride mainly because of the team that I ended up on. Because of, I think, the newness of the matter, the importance of the issue, and the lives that insulin touches, we had a huge cross-functional team that pulled in from a lot of different areas in the company. And for the first time, I think in my legal career, I was really in the trenches in the business. I’m actually told it was uncommon for a litigator to be embedded in the business—usually business counsel is embedded in the business that deeply.
What was great was basically, I’ll call him the “captain” of our team—he was the business leader—he really encouraged all of us, just to use a metaphor, to “get out of our swim lanes.” He called on us all the time to just pitch in, and not be pigeonholed as a lawyer, as a policy wonk, as a marketer or a data analyst, but just as teammates, and to throw out ideas and to build on top of them. He really created an environment that made it safe to just throw out any ideas that were not necessarily your specialty, but he still wanted to hear them anyway. I’d say he fostered a feeling of family on that team, and that really encouraged safety and therefore creativity. I’ll say too, because of those strong bonds, the team worked really, really well together. Even though many of us ended up rotating to different parts of the company, we actually still keep in touch. And so, it was a great team, a great experience and just a good feeling.
Sarah Walters: That sounds like such an incredibly important issue for the company and a testament to you, too, that you were selected to be part of that team. How has that experience carried you forward? Because now, you are more embedded in a different part of the company’s business, and how has that experience influenced you there?
Veronica Lei: I really loved being on a set team. I think working in investigations and litigation was rewarding and also allowed me to see all different parts of the company. I wonder if the litigators and investigators feel this way now, but it was in set chunks—it wasn’t continuous. Being on the insulin pricing team allowed me to be a consistent, constant member of a team with certain common goals and longevity, and I really liked that. That’s what ended up leading me to my current role, which is as business counsel. I have to say, one of the best parts of my job is actually having a strong team. The Lilly team that I work with, they’re all really sharp, they’re fun, really supportive of each other, creative, they want to get to the best result, and they’re really practical. I’ve since actually relocated to the Boston area, which is how you and I had reconnected, and it has been wonderful, but I sometimes go back to headquarters, which is in Indianapolis for in-person meetings, and I love seeing those businesspeople. They work so differently from lawyers. Even today, I was in a meeting watching one of my business leaders handle a negotiation and I pinged him and I said, “You are just great to watch in those meetings. I learn so much every time.” Being a member of the team and being made to feel like I belong there is one of the best parts of my job.
Sarah Walters: I have no doubt that you very much belong there, knowing you as I do and how accomplished you are. What are you most focused on now from a career standpoint?
Veronica Lei: I’m three years into being a business counselor, but I’ve also taken on new teams, and so, just when I thought I had a handle on everything, I am now learning what feels like is entirely different. As I said before, I was on a team that actually partnered with another large company. It was a different culture, so that was actually very interesting and has been a great growing experience because you can’t assume that everyone is like you—that the Lilly way is the way. It just isn’t—there are so many other companies out there. Now, I’ve expanded to other teams that are only Lilly teams. For the first time, I have to learn how we do it, and so, I feel like I’m back at the starting line for that. While that keeps me on my toes, it also takes more time to learn something new, so I try to do the things that I already know quickly, and I’m trying to catch up to at least be competent on the things that I’m learning for the first time. At the same time, in my personal life, my kids aren’t little anymore. We really did need that help just making them safe and taking care of them when we were back in Indianapolis. But now, they are middle-to-big kids, and with that comes a whole host of activities, interests and a different relationship with them. And so, I think I’m trying to balance my ability to not have any commute but also to ramp up quickly to be competent in the new parts of my job balanced with the need to focus on the most important people in my life, which is my family.
Sarah Walters: That is an incredible balancing act. We’re lucky to have the rewarding and the interesting careers, but obviously, they are the most important people in our lives and the people that we started off doing this for in the first instance. Playing off of that for a moment, and I think this is probably going to be my last question: What piece of advice would you give your younger self, now that you are sitting where you are, you have done private practice, you’ve been a prosecutor, you’ve had some really amazing roles at Lilly, and you’re a mom and have an incredible family? So, looking back, what would you tell the younger Veronica?
Veronica Lei: I think the best way to put the advice that I would give myself is you don’t always have to do the maximum for the maximum. One of our old coworkers said to me at one point, “Some of this stuff is more important than others, and that’s what you need to focus on. Other stuff that’s less important, routine processing or filing of things, that doesn’t have to be perfect.” I probably shot for doing the most for everything, because I was always worried about my personal reputation and what that would mean in the future. For corporate lawyers who may be listening, I guess the term is “building your personal brand.” You’re always worried about building your brand and then protecting it, because your brand is basically what you’ve got. It’s how people judge you. It’s how people expect you to behave. It’s your reputation that precedes you. I was always worried that if I took my foot off the pedal, or if I didn’t do something, that brand would suddenly change overnight—and it really doesn’t. There are certain points in my career where I had not gone to something important that was personal, like a cousin’s wedding or a college friend’s wedding. Now that I look back, I don’t even remember what I was working on at the time, but I do remember not going to that event and wishing I had. It really wouldn’t have killed whatever I was working on, and it wouldn’t really have killed the organization I was at if I missed out on three days. In the end, I think your brand holds, and also, the organization holds. And so, that’s the one piece of advice that I would give my younger self, and frankly, that I think a lot of us who are probably hard-working attorneys have a hard time practicing still. I think that’s what I would say to my younger self.
Sarah Walters: Veronica, I think that’s so important to take a step back and reflect. I think something else that you and I had talked about was giving yourself grace and recognizing your own expertise. We talked a little bit about your different roles, but that you do have an expertise in areas that you may not even recognize that allows you to do something more efficiently, and therefore, gives you the time to focus on something else, whether that be something within your role in your career or something outside of that.
Veronica Lei: Absolutely. I think growing that expertise is both a blessing and a curse, because a lot of people who are maybe driven or type A are always looking for the next thing, but you just got that expertise. You’re a subject matter expert, and you’re able to knock out questions early, or at least find the answers to questions faster than anyone else could. It’s okay to take a breath and actually revel in that expertise for the moment, because you can do things quickly. As you said, that allows you to then work on other things, whether it’s ramping up your knowledge base on another topic, pursuing a hobby or spending time with others. So, I 100% agree with that.
Sarah Walters: Veronica, as always and not surprisingly, I’ve loved having this time to talk with you. I’m so glad that you’re back in the Boston area and that we’ve been able to reconnect after spending some formative years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office together. So, thanks again for your time and it’s been absolutely lovely talking to you.
Veronica Lei: Yes, thank you so much. And thanks to Ropes & Gray for having me. It has been so nice reconnecting—I’ve really loved it.
Christine Moundas: Sarah and Veronica, thank you both so much for that insightful discussion. And as always, thanks to our listeners. For more information about Ropes & Gray and our Women’s Forum, please visit www.ropesgray.com/women. You can also subscribe to this series wherever you typically listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify. Thanks again for listening.