Newly appointed as senior solicitors, Emma Hastings-Bray and Felicia Linch, strengthen our well-established regulatory team here at Wilkin Chapman.
Emma supports businesses with all aspects of data protection while Felicia specialises in corporate governance, with both of them working with a wide range of organisations to help them deliver their objectives.
Emma Hastings-Bray, senior solicitor at our Grimsby office, focuses on data protection and information law. She joined our firm three years ago as a solicitor before being promoted to this senior role. Emma said:
“I have spent the majority of my legal career in the data protection and information law sector. It’s great to be able to use that experience to help businesses thrive and use data with confidence in the ever-changing digital world.
“I lead on all aspects of data protection. I work with organisations to ensure they’re compliant in all of their activities.
“What makes our offering unique to the area is that we provide a full range of data protection services. Our service has something for everyone and every budget from basic data protection compliance to ongoing support.”
”We provide an audit service, where we go in, assess an organisation’s current level of compliance and work closely with them to put steps in place to build a high level of data protection governance. I also work with organisations when they have had a personal data breach and we work with data security partners to detect what’s happened and support organisations through the whole process.”
“We help organisations ensure that their employees are aware of their obligations and we provide bespoke training. We also offer a data protection advice line that offers unlimited advice on all areas of data protection law for a fixed monthly fee to ensure organisations are getting the right advice.”
Felicia Linch joined our Lincoln office in July 2023, bringing with her a wealth of experience in strategy and legal consulting in a career that has taken her around the world, working with public, private and third-sector clients. She said:
“Since joining the firm I’ve been working with organisations that are looking at sustainability issues and ESG, building on my years of experience by advising on strategic growth and public value. We help with corporate governance, including developing a culture that supports good governance, and we also look at sustainability and how to implement it properly so organisations aren’t greenwashing.
“I've been a consultant for the past 20 years, with a particular focus on Small Island Developing States in the Caribbean, where I was a governance adviser on a number of large-scale public-sector transformation programmes. I advised on policy, drafted legislation and implemented programmes focusing on sustainable economic development and enabling the public sector in an era of digital transformation. I then returned to the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic to combine my legal qualifications and overseas experience into a service that is of value to a range of organisations.
“We’re practising what we preach as well, so I’ve been working with a team on our firm’s ESG and sustainability policy and how we will incorporate that into our strategy, and we’re finding we already do quite a lot that can make a positive impact. We also do lots of great corporate social responsibility initiatives across the firm, with champions being formed across the different locations which will feed into our social value impact.”
