Since the beginning of this year, lawyer Mariëtte Swart (1980) has been able to call herself the very first chief legal and compliance officer ever at online payment company Adyen. This has resulted in the abbreviation CLCO on her business card, a role in which she is responsible for all legal, but also ethical files of the company, which has been listed on the stock exchange since 2018. The title is the provisional crowning achievement of her work as general counsel, in which she also supervised Adyen's legal affairs as a corporate lawyer. It was also Swart who played an important role in bringing Adyen to the stock exchange and who – also not unimportantly – secured the banking license for the fast-growing company.
Before her arrival at the Dutch unicorn, Swart had already built up an impressive resume. For example, she worked for years as a senior legal counsel at M&A company Hogan Lovells, studied at the University of London, and did an internship at the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa), the predecessor of market watchdog ACM. 'Both professionally and personally. That challenge ensures that she continues to enjoy her work. She tries to organize her environment accordingly and make choices that can facilitate her growth and development.'
Does the new generation of managers have a distinctive style compared to the previous ones? Swart is not really sure about that yet. 'She does believe that within organizations in a broader sense, there is more attention for diversity and inclusiveness. More and more organizations are pursuing an active policy to offer equal opportunities and promote cooperation.'
The best companies actively promote diversity and inclusivity, Swart believes. 'Fortunately, Adyen has such a culture. We operate in a huge number of countries, with people of all different nationalities. So far, we have succeeded in bringing all these different backgrounds and skills together in our corporate culture, in a way that makes everyone feel heard and respected to a large extent.'
