A dynamic and impactful General Counsel with experience as Chief Privacy Officer and Corporate Secretary. A creative and collaborative business partner. Acknowledged by team members and senior leadership for the ability to execute while gracefully managing the dynamics of a rapidly changing environment. Frequent speaker on data privacy, employment law and human rights issues.

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Mary M. Gardner helps clients identify, evaluate, and prioritize their risks; implement practices to minimize, monitor, and control those risks; and find satisfactory outcomes when those risks turn into potential liabilities. Mary maintains an extensive risk management and insurance practice, working with companies and executives seeking coverage for a wide variety of claims. She is a fierce advocate for her risk management and insurance clients, working tirelessly to ensure they obtain the full protection of their insurance policies and indemnification agreements, including through litigation, arbitration, and mediation.

Mary also works closely with corporate risk managers and in-house counsel to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their current risk and insurance programs, assisting them in securing coverage-enhancing modifications to their insurance policies and broad indemnification agreements, so that they are situated if (and when) a claim arises. She provides advice and counseling in connection with commercial transactions, including insurance due diligence and drafting insurance and indemnity provisions in deal documents. In recent years, Mary has played a leading role in negotiating, drafting, and assessing custom insurance programs for large construction projects.

Mary also represents various clients in investigations and litigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), state attorneys general, and the Department of Justice (DOJ), and in consumer class actions related to advertising, debt collection and licensing, payment processing, and telemarketing practices. She regularly counsels clients regarding creative solutions to complex advertising, marketing, payments, and telemarketing regulatory issues. Her clients include software companies, manufacturers, startups, payment processors, calling and text messaging platform providers, and companies in the hospitality, property management, construction, automotive, electronic retailing, payments, and direct-to-consumer marketing industries.

I advise clients on complex, cross-border commercial transactions and regulatory compliance issues in the Retail and Consumer sector and the Sports sector.

I support consumer brands in a variety of sectors on how they sell, market and otherwise interact with consumers in the UK and across Europe. I co-ordinate our European Consumer Law Group and work closely with consumer-facing clients that are launching in Europe on how to transact with consumers in a way that complies with consumer protection legislation, local regulations and market practice.

My experience includes supporting consumer businesses on cross-border projects in the technology, sports, media, retail, gaming, financial services, hotel and leisure, aviation, automotive, FinTech and healthcare sectors. I also have deep expertise in advising online platforms.

Additionally, I work closely with clients in the Sports sector on their commercial projects, with particular expertise in sponsorship, licensing, media rights and event staging. I've spent around 18 months on secondment to Arsenal FC and understand the commercial objectives of sports organisations.