I am Vanessa Vilar, was born in Brazil and have been living in the Netherlands for more than 2 years now with my family. I have started my professional career in private practice, but joined Unilever 22 years ago, having performed several different roles withing the legal function until I moved to the Netherlands to take the Ice Cream Group General Counsel role, reporting to the Chief Legal Officer, and supporting the President of the Ice Cream business and his leadership team worldwide.
Unilever Ice Cream
I work for the Ice Cream Business Group at Unilever. In March 2024, Unilever announced the planned separation of Ice Cream which we expect to be completed by the end of 2025, and earlier this year Unilever has announced that the business will be separated by way of demerger through listings in Amsterdam, London and New York stock exchanges. We have also announced that the business will be headquartered in Amsterdam, and revealed the new company name, The Magnum Ice Cream Company. The Magnum Ice Cream Company will be a world-leading business, which turnover was 8,3 billion euro in 2024, operating in a highly attractive category with five of the top ten selling global ice cream brands like Ben & Jerry’s, Wall’s (Ola) and Magnum..
The Legal Team
The future Ice Cream legal team is being built as we speak. This is an exciting time for me and the entire Ice Cream legal team as we fell that we have been given a white canvas, and we can be as creative and innovative as we want. Having been part of Unilever is inspiring the choices and decisions we make. As you know the legal team at Unilever is innovative and is always striving for innovation and improvement. Last year, the Unilever legal team’s pioneering work with Gen AI received industry recognition when we won the Most Innovative In-House Legal Team in Europe and In-House Legal Team: Innovation in Using Generative AI categories at the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Awards. These awards celebrate the exceptional talent that powers our legal team at Unilever. It reflects our commitment to accelerating our digital transformation through the bold adoption of Generative AI tools. Together these innovations have driven exceptional operational excellence and revolutionised the way the team partner the business in a more effective and efficient way. The opportunity for us in Ice Cream as we are separating from Unilever is to keep the same level of professionalism, innovation and pioneering in a stand-alone company.
Challenges
Currently, we are working on the separation of the ice cream business from Unilever. As one can imagine, this is a gigantic task, involving multi-stakeholder and several interdependencies across the business. For the legal function, it is a challenging and beautiful opportunity to take all the benefits from a well-recognised and organised function and designing what the future should look like, considering the size, presence and scale of the ice cream business. It is really rewarding being part of the foundation of the leading Ice Cream company in the world, and to build a world-class legal team, which is frontline first, data-driven and tech-enabled, and who wins with integrity.
Beach and Magnum Almond
I really love the sunshine and spending time with my family by the beach, it recharges me and keeps me grounded. Specially if accompanied by one of our delicious ice creams – my favourite is definitely Magnum Almond.
