Canadian Lawyer InHouse

23 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 A s far as deals go, in the adventure travel business it was big, and it happened at one of the trickiest times of year — between December 2016 and January 2017, Melissa Reiter played an instrumental role in G Adventures' acquisi - tion of five U.K.-based brands in two com- plex transactions — Just You, Page & Moy, Travelsphere, Swan Hellenic and Voyages of Discovery. The acquisitions increased G Adven- tures' total annual global revenue to $600 million and the workforce to more than 2,500 employees. As director of legal and privacy officer for the company, Reiter led the integration of the acquired companies into the business, including a full review of existing contracts, compliance and regula - tory practices. paper and reduced the company's environ- mental footprint. Reiter implemented DocuSign, an au- tomated contracting process, for sales and buying. This allowed G Adventures to au- tomatically set parameters for contracting approvals so that basic contracts within ap- proved guidelines can be approved automat- ically rather than manually reviewed. The DocuSign process frees up significant time for legal and sales teams, as well as having a direct cost benefit for the business. "By introducing DocuSign to different de - partments at G Adventures, we've improved the efficiency of our processes across the cor- poration, so things that might have taken sev- eral weeks because we have people in the busi- ness located all over the world or travelling all over the world we can now do in an extremely mobile and agile way that lets us adapt to the needs of a global business," she says. She also conducted a trademark audit of existing marks within the business and flagged new trademarks to register to better protect the company's IP. G Adventures continues to expand into new markets and in recent years developed operations in Africa, India and Germany as a result of an increased number of travel - lers and presence of the business in those regions. Reiter was responsible for all legal and regulatory aspects of the expansion. Reiter has also created a privacy compli- ance training program for the global sales team and developed templates for sales and supplier standard contracts. Members of the global team are now empowered to proac- tively consult with the legal department be- fore and when issues arise. Under her leadership, the legal team has doubled in size and the department's in- volvement and profile within the business has grown significantly. As part of the company's Innovation Committee, Reiter develops special proj- ects and initiatives that aim to make a sig- nificant impact on the business and "pres- sure tests" those ideas before presenting them to the executive committee for ap- proval and execution. Reiter has also been a Pro Bono Students Canada lawyer project mentor. IH By Jennifer Brown Taking to new heights adventure travel "It was a very busy and exciting time for our deal team," says Reiter. "We were a lean team of about four working in a boardroom over a tight time span to do the acquisition. Because of the circumstances of the acqui - sition of those brands we were working with a [bankruptcy] administrator. As a distressed acquisition, we had a lot of competitors in the space who were also vying to acquire those brands and that IP and so it was an exciting and busy process working with internal team and external counsel." G Adventures is a Canadian global tour operator founded in 1990 that offers trips to adventure travel seekers inter - ested in getting off the beaten track. The company has offices in 28 different countries and operate tours in more than 100 different countries. Reiter is responsible for le - gal affairs for all of the G Ad- venture businesses as well as responding to the day-to-day legal challenges faced by G Adventures' operations around the world. It was a big leap moving from private practice to in- house in 2015, but Reiter says she has loved every minute of it. She was called to the bar in June 2010. Since she arrived at G Adventures, Reiter has led the conversion of the global busi - ness from a paper-based, manual contract- ing model to a more efficient automated and digital contracting processes. As a re- sult, the original contracting process of two to three weeks was reduced to one to two business days for many contracts entered into by the business, saving G Adventures thousands of dollars in time required for all stakeholders to review and process a contract. It also eliminated the use of CATEGORY: Tomorrow's Leader DEPARTMENT SIZE: Small COMPANY: G Adventures Melissa Reiter, director of legal and privacy officer PHOTO: RAMESH PURADCHITHASAN

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