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Claudia Oñate Greim summarizes what has kept her at Lockton for nearly ten years in one perfect sentence: “You can make a living anywhere, but here, I could make a life.”
The SVP, associate general counsel, and compliance and chief privacy officer at Lockton has more than earned recognition, having worked through three promotions since coming from the Ashcroft Law Firm in 2014. Leading a successful career as the mother of five girls, she aims to model what a driven and focused woman can accomplish both in and out of the workplace.
The daughter of Chilean parents, Greim immigrated to the US as a toddler, and learned English as a second language in kindergarten. She attended a large public high school and, despite being unsure about her collegiate path, worked to graduate at the top of her class. Her career in law wasn’t the result of inspiration from family or a lifelong fascination; it was much more unexpected.
“There was no real master plan at the time,” Greim says. “That’s the honest answer. It was a career I very much backed into, but it turned out to be the right life for me.”
“I’ve been mentored here. I’ve been nurtured here. Without that personal connection, a job is just a job. What has kept me here is the care and appreciation for the people that make up this amazing organization.”
Claudia L. Oñate Greim
While law school may have been an unplanned experience, Greim quickly figured out a path that made sense for her. Working in corporate governance, she took to corporate law, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), securities, and a variety of other work for three different firms before going in-house.
“I knew I wanted to be a part of a business environment at some point, and that seemed like the wisest move for myself,” the SVP says. “Corporate law provided a great background for me to be successful in-house.”
Lockton remains Greim’s first and only in-house employer to this day. The attorney says the positive reputation about Lockton’s culture is well-earned. The reason, she believes, is that Lockton truly understands that a company is no more and no less than the sum of its parts, and that the people are the heart and soul of any successful workplace.
“I think everyone here feels cared for and looked after,” Greim says. “I’ve been mentored here. I’ve been nurtured here. Without that personal connection, a job is just a job. What has kept me here is the care and appreciation for the people that make up this amazing organization.”
Greim is both a benefactor of, and a contributor to, that culture. The SVP is emphatic about making sure that she and her team are on the same page and that she is open to the idea of investing in a management or leadership course, though she readily admits that her current managerial approach is the result of ad hoc experimentation rather than formal training.
At the start of each year, Greim sits down with each member of her team for an informal, heart-to-heart planning session, a time which is anything but a performance review.
Wheels Down
In addition to being a highly accomplished in-house attorney and mother of five, Claudia L. Oñate Greim is also hell on wheels. The attorney can be found both with her family and without skating in the Kansas City area rinks and wherever business travel takes her.
Greim frequented San Francisco’s Friday Night Skate on a regular basis as a Stanford undergraduate and continues her infatuation today. “Whether it’s quads or inline speed skates, indoors or outdoors, I just love it,” Greim says. “I recently ditched a work dinner to skate the London Wednesday night skate [she caught up with the group via a double-decker bus after arriving at the starting point late] and plan to skate the Berlin inline skate marathon when time permits.”
“I don’t know what each individual person is doing at the granular level,” the SVP explains. “So, I want to make sure that my people can use my expertise to make their lives easier. We might discuss something substantive, HR-related, or something completely personal, but the essential thing is that my team knows that my door is always open.”
Greim has seen both the best and the worst that the legal world has to offer. She remembers when she found out she was pregnant with the youngest of her girls, twins. The response to that news, nearly every time, was an inquiry about when her “last day” would be. Obviously, she was going to stop practicing, right?
“My husband is also an attorney,” Greim explains. “I’m fairly positive he didn’t get that question once. There’s something ingrained in US culture that just expects women to hang it up at a certain point. It’s demoralizing.”
The news reminded Greim that she wants to demonstrate to her daughters that they don’t need to pick between a career and a family. Granted, the SVP admits that work/life balance is more of a fairytale in her world, but that despite the difficulty of working toward such an ideal, the effort is incredibly rewarding.
Greim says she’s ready and willing to counsel future lawyers, particularly females, about making their own lives and careers make sense for them.
“I’m extremely grateful that I’ve found women in leadership positions to look up to, particularly because there often seemed to be so few,” Greim says. “I’m always open to having coffee with someone who wants to advance their own career, because I know how challenging it can be at times, especially early on as well as transitioning into motherhood.”
With her girls now eighteen, fifteen, twelve, and ten-year-old twins, Greim has shown the next generation just how far one woman’s inspiration can take her.
Claudia is an outstanding contributor and seamless partner with the business and external counsel. She navigates high stakes issues with agility and instills great respect and confidence in her approach! Her knowledge of the business and efficient, pragmatic approach is demonstrated in her ability to devise innovative solutions to the most demanding legal and commercial challenges. Milbank thoroughly enjoys partnering with Claudia and the entire team at Lockton.
