William “Bill” Min has always been the type of person who’s prepared to pivot to follow his North Star.
When he was recruited to join LexisNexis® Risk Solutions Group as executive vice president and general counsel for its expansive brand portfolio, he was not devoid of career opportunities. He took the job because he felt it allowed him to use his background and experiences to drive change and have a positive impact.
He was drawn in by the fact that the company understood his value as a professional with a legal background as well as a business mindset. What made the job perfect for him was that they embraced his “yes” mentality, not only in terms of achieving business results but building an enviable corporate culture.
Min was determined to “provide an environment where team members can thrive; embrace an inclusive and respectful workplace; boost innovation and creativity; attract and retain high-quality talent; improve employee engagement, satisfaction, empowerment, and loyalty; promote the employer brand; and support career development opportunities.”
If that sounds like a tall order, it’s because you’ve never met Bill Min. At LexisNexis® Risk Solutions Group, he’s responsible for all legal, compliance, privacy, and regulatory matters across the global organization, and he’s very good at his job.
However, it’s his drive to champion and empower workers that has earned him a reputation among peers and staff. Getting where he is today was a long and winding road.
Conquering the Forked Road
Born in South Korea, Min immigrated to the U.S. with his family as a child. Both of his parents were physicians, so it was no surprise when he attended the University of Pennsylvania to earn a bachelor’s degree in the biological basis of behavior and took the MCATs, that he was en route to medical school.
What shocked everyone was when he decided to put a pause on medical school and went to grad school at the State University of New York at Stony Brook instead. While there, he took an interest in law. After earning a master’s degree in liberal studies, he sat for his law school entrance exam, scored well, and went on to earn a Juris Doctorate from the Fordham University School of Law.
He joined a law firm in New York as an associate in the mergers and acquisitions group. While the work was interesting, Min found himself at odds with his work-life balance. When he was presented with an opportunity to work as in-house counsel for the Korean conglomerate SK Global, he jumped at the chance and found that he enjoyed the business environment.
Four years later, he joined the Sara Lee Company, where he focused on the legal side of their apparel businesses. He remained with the company for four years before accepting an opportunity to join Starwood Hotels and Resorts.
Over the next 16 years, he held five positions with the company, eventually becoming a senior executive and developing the company’s first global privacy program.
When Starwood merged with Marriott, Min decided to use the opportunity to take some time off to spend at home with his wife and their newborn son while he reassessed his career. After several months of contemplation, he knew he wanted to do something completely different than what he’d done before.
He accepted a position with Live Nation Entertainment to develop its privacy function, but shortly after, he took a job to work with a colleague at Western Union as deputy general counsel, where he was offered the opportunity to build his own team. This was a challenge he’d been looking for.
During the progression of his career, Min discovered a passion for leadership and developing talented professionals as part of collaborative teams. He reflected, “A theme of mine is to be very mindful about my experiences from the past … and maybe not repeat some of the experiences that I saw from former colleagues and managers.”
He knew his time at Western Union was a steppingstone to become part of an organization’s senior leadership team, so when LexisNexis® Risk Solutions Group offered him the opportunity to lead the legal department and have a seat at the table, he knew he was ready.
A Tale of Two Teams
When Min was hired by LexisNexis® Risk Solutions Group to ostensibly merge the company’s two legal groups into one unified team, he aimed to embrace a yes mentality something that is critical especially when working in a business environment.
This meant supporting the organization in ways that achieved business results while managing risks in the background, essentially making the win-win a priority.
“At the end of the day, maybe the business team achieves 85 or 90% of their wish list, but the business is happy because they essentially achieved what they were aiming for, and behind the scenes, the legal team has appropriately managed risk to handle the regulatory or compliance or the legal issues without the legal risks being the main focus of the conversation with the business team. The conversation is focused on partnering with the business to formulate creative, pragmatic solutions to advance the business objective,” he says.
In just over two years with the company, he’s made radical changes for the better, completely reworking the organizational chart, helping current and new employees into positions that are right for their skillset and ambitions, and empowering team members to build upon high-level goals in ways that work for their departments.
Perhaps it’s because of these changes that Min has generated incredible double-digit growth in Employee Opinion Scores in such a short time.
Creating a Progressive Corporate Culture
Although Min oversees a team that covers legal, compliance, regulatory affairs, and privacy across the enterprise, with offices spread across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, he says a lot of his job involves focusing on team development and their career development opportunities.
“The whole traditional notion that people have of getting promoted by just working hard doesn’t work. How do I engage people in a way that provides them with new experiences that add other types of value?” Min said.
This can mean helping them move into new positions on his team, with other groups, or within the RELX umbrella that includes LexisNexis® Risk Solutions Group. Sometimes, it even means supporting those who find amazing roles outside the company.
Embracing this progressive attitude has helped the company develop a reputation as an exciting place of employment, one where the job isn’t just about competence and compensation (although Min admits both are obviously important), but where the right cultural fit is essential.
Min is looking for people who show initiative, continue to learn and grow, and are willing to share their experiences and pass on value to others. “A lot of the same qualities that I hope I share with my team are things that I would like to see reflected,” he says.
Along those lines, Min serves as the executive sponsor for the EDGE Employee Resource Group, which strives to increase inclusivity by inviting diverse employees to join, share their stories, and learn about others.
He’s also an executive sponsor in the Ignite and Accelerate program, which has its current focus on recognizing women in the corporate environment and helping them to become qualified candidates for leadership positions.
His goals are to raise cultural awareness, build relationships, and create positive change overall for the organization. He accomplishes this with five guiding principles that inform his leadership style.
Five Guiding Principles
Shortly after joining LexisNexis® Risk Solutions Group, Min created a vision and mission statement. His goals were to “harness the power of good judgment, ethics, and the law to foster business opportunities and adeptly manage risk. We enable teams to do great things together.” To that end, he created five guiding principles:
● Integrity
● Respect
● Diversity
● Creativity
● Excellence
Min provided his team with high-level organizational goals but then tasked them with taking the reins to develop in ways that made sense for them.
The result was a grassroots movement called “powered by the people” that included commitments to embracing an inclusive and respectful workplace, creating an environment where team members can thrive, and attracting and retaining high-quality talent, among other things.
One group, called Magnetic Force, works to highlight employees through interviews where they share their stories with the team. Another program matches team members with mentors to create an environment and culture of support and growth. Min wants to foster allyship and engagement, and by all accounts, he’s succeeding.
Fun is also an integral part of the culture he’s developing. He says, “When you’re doing things that are more activity-based, a lot of the titles disappear. People are coming together and actually engaging at a different level and getting to know one another.” This is good not only for the team but for the company and its reputation as a great place to work.
Developing a Personal Brand
When discussing what advice he would give other professionals, based on his unusual career path, Min reflects that “If you like doing it, you’ll be successful at it, right?”
He compares it to how companies focus time, money and effort on building brands. “Every individual also has a brand, and at the end of the day, whatever your brand is, you need to be true to yourself. So, if something or somewhere is not aligning with that, then perhaps that’s really not the place you’re supposed to be.”
Min has said “yes” to a diverse span of opportunities throughout his career, which have altered his trajectory in incredible and sometimes unforeseen ways.
He’s done so not necessarily for professional gain but for personal satisfaction. The result is a career that has landed him in a leadership role at a company that respects and values his skillset and ideals, and it’s clear that he’s already making the most of it.
