Charisma Starr, Managing Director at Ankura, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, for ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive.
Charisma Starr is a Managing Director at Ankura based in Chicago with 22 years of leadership experience in legal technology, corporate operations, information governance, and e-discovery. While in a previous key role inside the legal department of Exelon, a Fortune 100 energy company, Charisma led the transformation of legal technologies and e-discovery operations, increasing efficiency and reducing cost while modernizing legal systems. As a founding member of Reveal and as the litigation support department manager at Kirkland & Ellis, an AmLaw 100 law firm, Charisma acquired a wide variety of legal operations, information governance, e-discovery, and technical experience.
Charisma’s discussion focused on four areas: her unique experience in the eDiscovery industry, what drives her, her favorite kind of work, and the work she is most proud of having done. Along the way, she compared and contrasted different roles she has held, talked about her days with Reveal when it was just starting up, and shared her thoughts on how eDiscovery is changing and where it is headed.
Key Highlights
- [2:43] What makes Charisma unusual, if not unique, in the eDiscovery industry.
- [3:55] Comparing and contrasting law firm, software, corporate, and consulting roles.
- [6:17] What her current role is like.
- [6:50] The biggest challenges posed by a consulting role.
- [8:08] Transitioning from a decision-maker role to one as an advisor and implementer.
- [9:34] Advantages and challenges of looking from the outside in.
- [10:22] What motivates her.
- [12:01] Her favorite kind of work.
- [12:55] As an example, a major corporate transformation project.
- [15:17] The work she is most proud of, including working at Reveal when it started up.
- [17:29] What it was like during the early days at a startup software company.
- [20:20] Comparing her experiences at Kirkland, Reveal, Exelon, and Ankura.
- [22:25] Returning to her current role at Ankura.
- [22:55] What draws her to early days in projects and organizations.
- [23:39] Advice on how to do land a role like hers.
- [24:38] Thoughts on the future of eDiscovery and the evolving role of corporations.
- [27:00] The evolution of ECA and the eDiscovery process.
- [28:14] Is it time to change the EDRM diagram?
Key Quotes
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- “In all of those things that I do, I am always looking for where are the pain points, what are the challenges to the day-to-day staff, what are the goals of the client or the corporation, and what do we need to do to achieve those. And then whatever that is, you figure it out.”
- “I like working with [clients] to understand what their goals are, what their requirements are, and then helping build the technology, the process, the solution, the future.”
- “Technology is made by human beings, and it is always changing. You are iterating on it, you are improving it. That was my biggest takeaway and it was a really helpful takeaway. If I had not had learned that at Reveal, I would not have been as successful as I was at Exelon.”
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