In-house lawyers use position to speak up on diversity
It was while studying constitutional law at the University of Ottawa in the 1990s that Nassib Abou-Khalil, now chief legal officer at telecoms company Nokia, had a revelation. “It was where I learned for the first time about the right to equality,” he says.
Abou-Khalil grew up in Lebanon — “a country torn by war” — not even imagining that equality rights existed. Learning about them shaped his thinking profoundly, he says: “My desire is to see people who do not have all the odds on their side, who were disadvantaged in some way, get an opportunity in life.”
So the lack of diversity in the legal industry troubles Abou-Khalil, who came out to his Nokia colleagues as LGBT+ in 2019. When he is in a room with his peers, he says, “it is evident that women, people who are ethnically diverse or even, as in my case, LGBT+, are not present in the numbers that they should be”.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Alicia Clegg
