Gautam Bhattacharyya welcomes Eunice Shang-Simpson (arbitrator, mediator, and lecturer-practitioner) to discuss her career journey, including key roles as a prosecutor, policy advisor, and practitioner. They explore her career highlights, transformational moments, and inspirations, before discussing the challenges and opportunities for improving parity and access in the legal profession, and how the industry can evolve to support future legal professionals. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello and welcome to Arbitral Insights, a podcast series brought to you by our International Arbitration Practice lawyers here at Reed Smith. I'm Peter Rosher, Global Head of Reed Smith's International Arbitration Practice. I hope you enjoy the industry commentary, insights and anecdotes we share with you in the course of this series, wherever in the world you are. If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed, please do contact our speakers. And with that, let's get started. Gautam: Hello everyone and welcome back to our latest edition of our Spotlight on Arbitral Insights podcast series and I'm delighted to have with us today as my guest the fabulous Eunice Shang-Simpson. Hello Eunice. Eunice: Hello Gautam, thank you very much for that. Gautam: It's really good to see you and I'm going to introduce you like I always do and in these things my challenge with introducing you, is to try to keep it to a manageable amount because you're such an illustrious person. But I'm going to try and do this as summarily as I can. So for our listeners, Eunice, apart from being a great friend, is an international arbitrator, mediator, and speaker. Eunice was formerly a council member of the Law Society of England and Wales. She is currently a lecturer practitioner at Canterbury Christ Church University in England and has recently achieved her PhD. Many congratulations again on that, Eunice. A superb achievement. And we'll touch upon your PhD thesis in the course of our podcast. She focuses in terms of her practice in international trade and investment arbitration, including investor state dispute resolution. Eunice is a member of the Ghana Bar, as well as being a solicitor advocate here in England and Wales. And she truly is, as I said in the course of my introduction a while ago, very illustrious. She also has experience of being a Crown Prosecutor and advising on policy. She, as I mentioned, is also an academic and we'll touch upon that in the course of our podcast. One other thing, and the great thing about doing these podcasts is we get constant updates. And just on this morning of this podcast, just before we were about to record this, I noted the wonderful news that Eunice has been made a Freeman, but I'd like to say a Freewoman or a free person of the Worshipful Company of Arbitrators. And that was further to a ceremony last week in London at the Mansion House that's a really wonderful accolade Eunice and that really is it's just so well deserved. I saw the photographs and uh and you know and I must say your outfit was absolutely stunning I've got to tell you, you wore traditional clothes. Absolutely you were looking wonderful I've got to tell you. So thanks again for being on and I'm much looking forward to our podcast, Eunice. Eunice: Thank you, Gautam. That's amazing. Thank you for that introduction. It's such an honor. Thank you very much for inviting me. Gautam: No, thank you. Now, let's start with how you found law or how law found you. So why don't you tell our listeners what first drew you to the law? Eunice: Well, I've always been insatiably curious, I must say, since I was a child, always asking why, why not, and stuff like that. I'm the eldest of three with two younger brothers. I grew up with a close family and spent lots of holidays at my grandparents' home in Ghana in Cape Coast with several cousins. And I always seemed to be the one prepared to negotiate, you know, later bedtime hours, extra treats for eve