Gitte Groenewold-Wong worked as a lawyer with NautaDutilh (Rotterdam), Van Eps Kunneman van Doorne (Curaçao), and co-founded the law firm Legaltree with two former NautaDutilh colleagues. She worked in many companies as interim legal counsel in various sectors and on various legal matters, such as corporate, finance, sanctions compliance, commercial contracting, privacy, etc. She joined Prosus as interim legal counsel in 2018, transitioned into a permanent position and is now Head of Group Legal at Prosus.
Prosus
Prosus is a global technology company, unlocking an AI-first world for our 2 billion customers. With investments in more than 100 companies across the world, we are building local ecommerce champions in growth markets. With leading positions in Food Delivery, Classifieds and Fintech, Prosus has created its own unique technology ecosystem, driving innovation, knowledge sharing and growth across our portfolio. Through the Prosus Ventures team, the group invests in new technology growth opportunities within AI, social and ecommerce platforms, fintech, B2B software, logistics, health, blockchain, agriculture and more. Under the leadership of our new CEO, Fabricio Bloisi, we are leading the AI revolution, reshaping the digital landscape and setting new standards for global growth and development. We empower local entrepreneurs to create impactful products for over two billion customers and foster thriving communities. Our dedication to talent development ensures meaningful career growth while generating sustainable value for shareholders.
The Legal team
The Prosus Legal and Corporate Affairs team is a very diverse team headed by our Group General Counsel. We have around 40 lawyers and legal professionals covering topics such as M&A, IP, Privacy-AI, Competition, Contracting, Employment, Ethics & Compliance, Corporate and Public Policy.
My team (the Group Legal team) has 9 people (80% women), 5 different nationalities and varying ages. We have paralegals and (senior) legal counsel in the team, including 2 former candidate civil law notaries because of the very technical “book 2” corporate work related to our corporate transactions. The team’s responsibilities vary from corporate & finance, corporate housekeeping & administration for a lot of our group companies, reporting, commercial contracts & AI advisory. I am a member of two group compliance committees. We will soon also oversee the legal & corporate secretarial function for some of our fintech businesses.
We are team players and like to work with other people and teams. Our team really stands out in managing internal corporate projects and working in multi-disciplinary transactions with other departments like Tax, Finance and Treasury, while also taking care of all transaction logistics (which can be very challenging at times).
The work at Prosus Group level is interesting as a lawyer because of the different businesses and the fact that we operate at a global level. The group is continuously going through transformations because of M&A as well as organic growth of our companies.
Our work is very diverse, and this is also true for the Prosus organisation. We work with a multitude of nationalities. This diversity in cultures makes the work even more interesting and I would say that there is a real team spirit.
What challenges do you & your team face and what are your top priorities for 2025?
I think that a big challenge for everyone working in the inhouse legal function is the balancing act between demanding day-to-day business, actively following the increasingly complex legal & regulatory developments, and at the same time invest time in important things like innovation & continuous personal development of our team.
One of the hot topics for our group is the AI regulation, but also how we can make the most of AI as a legal department. Under the leadership of our new CEO, we have a strong focus on using and leveraging our internal Prosus AI tool, Toqan, in our daily (legal) work. We made automation of our template legal documents and internal transactions (i.e. document generation) part of our job for a few years already and we learned that although you need to invest a lot of time into automation and innovation, it allows us to respond much faster, with better documentation and less (drafting) stress (approx. 90% time saving in some cases). We are now actively exploring new territories with AI. So, besides our day-to-day work, we have made it a top priority for the next months to use and test Toqan in our legal work. We are also testing other systems for AI review of commercial contracts. We use our AI tool every day, not only for inspiration or suggestions on any topic, but also to review drafts & presentations, to summarize long texts and improve readability, to help explain certain concepts or legalisation, etc; we feel it is a true time saver and differentiator. Although we automated a lot of our core legal documentation already and our team is pretty good in efficient project management, we still believe we can improve further and eliminate more manual work, increase our productivity and speed through AI.
I really enjoy the entrepreneurial spirit and energy in our group that allows everyone to experiment with AI in a controlled environment to improve our businesses and the way we work in our group functions. A key aspect is that we set up small tests to see what works and what doesn’t: with our IT & AI teams we are now testing a connection between Toqan and some of our internal databases with contracts and corporate information, and we analyse how it responds to questions about that data, which is extremely interesting. Besides leveraging AI for our daily work, we also aiming to visualize certain legal data into legal dashboards, create automatic board reports and streamline our intake.
Can you also tell us something about your activities outside of work?
I play field hockey and like to ski with my family and friends. I also like to cook. I am married and a mother of three kids, so that also keeps me pretty busy outside of work…
