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CCCA_V7No1_Q&AHeatherCraford-FIN_CCCA 2/12/13 5:17 PM Page 43 Feature practices. Seminars are also a great way to stay in touch with other external counsel. If you held a seminar about moving in-house, what would you say? It’s a bit trite to say and it doesn’t just apply to going in-house, is around maintaining your professional relationships and your law school relationships because you quickly realize it’s a small world. There is rarely more than one or two degrees of separa- tion. So your professional integrity is paramount. You don’t ever want to be shortsighted and put that in jeopardy by acting inap- propriately . . .because it will come back to haunt you. It’s a gen- eral life lesson I think. Another thing, especially for women, is it’s important to develop relationships with people who can be your sponsor. It’s a different relationship than a mentor. A sponsor will kind of go to bat for you professionally, put you forward as somebody who can do a partic- ular job or take a promotion. They promote you as a professional. Those relationships don’t happen overnight and it’s important to foster them. Men tend to have those relationships more naturally. You tend to want to sponsor someone who is like you, is like- Do you have mentors? minded, and a man tends to be more comfortable sponsoring I don’t know if it had to do with timing and the timeline but I another man. You are going a bit out of the box as a woman to get haven’t really had mentors. I have had advisers, people I will go to a sponsor. More typically a sponsor will be a male because in your on specific issues. I see the mentoring relationship more long term, work environment males are typically senior people. and ongoing, and a constant dialogue. Probably the closest thing I would have to a mentor would be my father who was a lawyer and How do you balance life with five kids, a busy husband and always has been there as my adviser. He’d be my first call. a demanding job? I do it day by day. We have a fabulous caregiver at home. She’s Do you mentor other people? the only one we’ve ever had. She’s been with us for almost 18 I’m not a mentor in the formal sense but I do have younger years. Without her the house of cards would fall. It was much lawyers who reach out to me often, whether they are at law firms more challenging when the kids were young. I’m hoping we’re and thinking about their career paths and how they’re going to raising much more self-reliant children, so I’m not micromanag- have families, or whether they are already in-house and consid- ing them in a sense. ering other paths. Where does your energy come from? What do you tell others about making the switch? I play hockey, soccer 12 months a year. I sing in a choir. I still do I tell them it’s been a good experience for me and that there’s all of those things. That’s probably what keeps my energy level often a feeling – less so now – that if you went in-house you up, being active physically and engaging other interests of mine. were going to be doing much less interesting work and more repetitive work. That certainly has not been the case for me. It’s Any regrets becoming general counsel? been just as interesting as what I was doing at Torys. No, none at all. Work is dynamic. I’m with a very smart group of people here which allows you to grow professionally and other- How have you kept developing professionally? wise. And working here has allowed me to have a family and to I’m a seminar junkie. I go to many of them to keep current, to be a parent. understand the players in certain specialized legal areas; to hear a person, for example, who really knows a lot about foreign corrupt This interview as been edited and condensed for publication. PRINTEMPS 2013 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association 43