Legal Lady Boss - Jacqui Ferrito
Jacqui Ferrito commands a room. She’s a brillant attorney who not only questions the status quo, she makes you question why you’re not doing it her way. She has a voice that you can’t help but listen to. It’s no surprise that she’s landed herself in the role of Chief Compliance Officer for Tiffany & Co. However, Jacqui’s impactful leadership is just one of the many layers that makes Jacqui so admirable. By reading her story, you’ll see that life is about taking on new opportunities and following your passions even if the path isn’t planned from the start.
Before you started your legal career, you were a ballerina. Tell us about that experience and how those learnings have impacted you as an attorney today.
Ballet was my first ‘true love’ having spent much of my youth and early twenties training and dancing with ballet companies. Ballet is a field that requires incredible passion and discipline, and my time dancing taught me that working hard and with intention for something you care about can be exceptionally rewarding. Ballet also teaches attention to detail, with countless rehearsals spent perfecting the position of your fingertips or placement of your foot in line with another dancer’s, which I have found helpful as a lawyer. I realized early in my legal career that diving deeply into a case, a contract or even a footnote helped produce good results for my clients and I believe that ballet was key in helping me to develop those skills.
From pointe shoes to Columbia Law, why did you decide to pursue a legal path?
After leaving ballet, I studied History and French in college before ultimately deciding to pursue law. At the time, I didn’t know much about being a lawyer but I liked reading and writing and wanted to be intellectually challenged so thought it might be a good fit. Now, I love being an advocate and helping my clients to solve problems, so it is funny to think that I sort of stumbled into the perfect career for me.
After almost five years of M&A at Cravath and Covington, you made the shift in-house. How did you know you wanted to make the move out of private practice? How did you end up working for Tiffany & Co.?
At the time that I left Covington & Burling, I was pretty happy at the firm and enjoying my M&A practice. I had always thought I might be interested in working in-house but wasn’t actively looking for a new role. Unexpectedly, Tiffany’s General Counsel and Senior Corporate Counsel, who were fellow Cravath alumni, contacted me to see if I would be interested in interviewing for a corporate counsel position. It was an opportunity to move in-house and work for an iconic New York company with a fantastic team of lawyers so I couldn’t pass it up. As a cousin of mine said – ‘when Tiffany calls, you answer!’.
Prior to LVMH’s acquisition of Tiffany, you handled corporate matters but moved to the compliance side. Why did you make that choice and how did you navigate having that conversation with your boss? What has been most surprising about the transition?
I started at Tiffany as a corporate attorney learning the ‘ins-and-outs’ of Tiffany and luxury jewelry. After three years, I knew I wanted to continue to learn new things, so I started discussions with our General Counsel about potential growth opportunities. At the time, those discussions were focused on taking on additional projects in different practice areas rather than changing roles because there weren’t any openings in our Department. Then, following the LVMH acquisition, our Compliance Officer was promoted to General Counsel and the Compliance Officer role became available. The role seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn a new skillset and expand my expertise. Expressing interest in the position was comfortable, in part, because I had already started the conversation about growth opportunities with my manager before the role became available.
In terms of what has been surprising, the biggest difference between the two roles is that compliance is much more self-driven. In my corporate role, my day-to-day work was driven by my clients’ business needs. On the compliance side, there are still business needs to address but I am also responsible for proactively developing and maintaining policies and programs that are solely my responsibility. That requires a level of strategic long-term planning and a focus on macro trends that I hadn’t previously experienced but has been incredibly rewarding. Also, while I always thought of my prior roles as interdisciplinary, compliance takes that to a whole new level. Implementing a successful global compliance program requires assistance and cooperation from IT, Human Resources and Finance, among others, and educating and inspiring those teams to progress and prioritize compliance objectives is a big part of my role.
What is a professional project that you are most proud?
Advising Tiffany on its acquisition by LVMH was a pivotal moment for me. I hadn’t been doing a lot of M&A work at Tiffany and was finding myself missing it a bit when rumors about potential LVMH interest in Tiffany started to circulate. I made known that I was interested in being part of the deal team and before I knew it I was back sleeping under my desk in the office like the old days! I had signed and closed M&A deals for years but seeing one of this scale from the in-house position brought a whole new perspective. Then, before closing, Covid-19 (and the resulting economic fallout) happened, raising questions about the financial viability of the transaction and numerous interim operating challenges that people looked to the Legal Department to help solve. And when the deal ultimately did close – I finally got the chance to see a full post-closing integration of two massive companies. As external M&A counsel, your job is done after closing so this was a first for me. It was amazing to see and advise on the entire M&A cycle from start to finish for a company that I care so deeply about.
Law schools often fixate on the hard skills you will use in your career, but we know that there is so much more beyond technical capabilities that make for a successful attorney. I know you are a master of organization and to-do lists. What are some other soft skills that have been instrumental to your success that you would recommend law students strengthen?
I think all lawyers have different tricks in terms of soft skills but mine are mostly focused around making life easier for my future self. For example, as a junior associate, I found I would leave meetings with pages of messy notes, which included both background and critical action items. I found that it would take me a long time to go back through the notes and identify the action items. To be more efficient, I started bringing two different colored pens to every meeting so I could immediately circle ‘to do’s’ in red in real time, which is something I still find to be a huge time saver. Similarly, I try to always take an extra few minutes while information is fresh in my mind to get organized so that I don’t need to backtrack and “re-create the wheel” in the future. Things like re-naming documents in files to better identify different versions, reorganizing and saving meeting notes immediately after meetings and keeping a master list can take more time upfront but actually save time in the long-run. Our General Counsel describes this as ‘leaving little breadcrumbs behind’ for future reference, which I think is a great metaphor.
On the personal side of things, you are a supermom with a household of five kids. What advice would you give to fellow moms?
I don’t know about ‘supermom’ but if that is defined based on sheer quantity of children maybe that is right! I am not always successful in this but I heard a panelist once advise to let go of responsibilities and obligations that don’t give you or your children joy and to not feel bad about doing so. With five kids at different ages, I have come to accept that I won’t be volunteering for the Parent Teacher Association any time soon but I will always make time to coach my girls in ballet or progress my daughter’s piano development because those are special moments for us that we all enjoy. Also - automate or outsource as much as possible. If there is food in the house and clean laundry in the closet, no one seems to care how it got there!
As Avocate is a mentoring program, how can mentees get the most out of their mentor relationships?
As a young mentee, I remember feeling embarrassed about my level of knowledge (or lack of knowledge) and uncomfortable discussing my true goals and preferences because I treated my mentoring relationships too much like a job interview. It is ok to be yourself and to ask ‘silly’ questions, which I guarantee your mentor also had at an earlier stage. Also, I recall being very conscious of not ‘overburdening’ my mentors with questions or problems. What I have learned is that most attorneys actually really enjoy mentoring young talent and that it is absolutely ok to reach out at key moments in your training and career with questions.
Finally, what are some words that you live by personally or professionally?
I have a mouse pad that says ‘Stay positive, Work Hard and Make it Happen’. It is a simple message but always seems to calm and inspire me. Also - Wayne Gretzky’s quote -“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” I have never played hockey but it is a good reminder that it is better to try and fail rather than not try at all.