Stefania Passera, Contract Designer in Residence (World Commerce & Contracting), CEO (Passera Design)

Stefania Passera is a contract design and simplification expert based in Espoo, Finland. She runs her one-woman consultancy Passera Design, and is Contract Designer in Residence at World Commerce & Contracting. In these roles, she helps organizations transform their contracts and policies into user-friendly, effective tools that work better for business.

Stefania is an all-rounder, backing her design expertise with a solid academic background. She has served as Assistant Professor at the University of Vaasa, Department of Business Law, and has earned her doctoral degree from Aalto University School of Science. She has guest lectured at prestigious institutions such as Stanford University, Bucerius Center on the Legal Profession, KU Leuven, UC Louvain, European University Institute, ESADE Law School, and California Western School of Law.

She is a co-founder of the Legal Design Alliance, a co-author of the Legal Design Manifesto, and the creator of Legal Design Jam. In 2020, she has received the European Women of Legal Tech Award.

Milva Finnegan has worked over 23 years in the contract and commercial management profession. She earned her Doctor of Science in Economics in the Field of Business Law from the University of Vaasa in 2021 where her research focused on user-centered contract design. She started her career at the Boeing company where she spent 12 years in various contracts and finance functions. After Boeing she started her own contracts consulting company, Karhu LLC, who helps companies with Contract Lifecycle Management system selection and implementation, contract management process improvements, and training. Milva holds the Supplier Relationship Management Advanced Practitioner (SRMAP) certification from WorldCC.

Paula is a lawyer with over 20 years’ experience of working in industry, having spent 13 of those years at IBM specialising in “as a Service” transactions, heading up the Cloud and Solutions legal team across Europe. In 2018, Paula left full-time lawyering to work with innovative organisations on the business side, initially joining late-stage start-up Globality as part of the legal services senior management team and then joining WorldCC as its Chief Legal Innovation Officer.

Today, Paula has her own consultancy PaLiDa Ltd and works as a legal innovation advisor to a broad base of clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups. She also works closely with Passera Designs on contract simplification and design.

Paula is passionate about better contracts and empathetic leadership.

As Lead Counsel for Legal Operations at Vodafone Group, I'm passionate about integrating legal design into our contracts. Working alongside World Commerce & Contracting (WCC), I've been involved in various initiatives to achieve this.

Building trust with our customers is paramount at Vodafone, and I believe contract design can be a powerful strategic tool, and we leverage it to shape positive customer perceptions of Vodafone.

To share my knowledge and empower others, I've developed the Vodafone Legal Design Toolkit. This toolkit encapsulates my experience and guides fellow lawyers in adopting a similar methodology for contract design. This not only streamlines the legal process but also reinforces Vodafone's commitment to transparency and customer satisfaction – a win-win for everyone!