Prof. Dr. Cordula Meckenstock

Prof. Dr. Cordula Meckenstock combines, as a lawyer, more than 15 years of leadership experience in compliance, ESG and transformation at international corporations with entrepreneurial action and academic teaching. Her career stages range from the Federal Ministry of Economics through Bilfinger, Siemens, BSN medical and Vestas to the Grünenthal Group and BayWa AG. Today she stands for building bridges between law, technology, sustainability and values-based leadership.

Since January 2025 she has led lawpilots GmbH, initially as Co-CEO, and since September 2025 as sole CEO. The Legal RegTech scale-up, majority-backed by FLEX Capital, is growing with AI-supported premium e-learning on AI compliance and data protection, information and cyber security, compliance and ethics, HR compliance as well as ESG. In parallel, she founded Albertina&partners in 2024, a consultancy for transformation and ESG serving C-level executives, supervisory bodies and investors. Since 2020 she has also been founder and shareholder of Compliance Kompakt GmbH in Leipzig, which advises medium-sized companies on ESG, compliance, whistleblower systems and internal investigations.

From October 2023 to June 2024 she was Chief People, Culture & ESG Officer of the BayWa Group (around €27 billion in revenue, 24,000 employees). In this newly created role with a transformation mandate, she reported to the CEO. She developed sustainability into a group-wide strategic function, built up People & Culture with a focus on transformational leadership and diversity & inclusion, and chaired the Group ESG Board.

At the Grünenthal Group (around €1.6 billion in revenue, 4,500 employees), she served as Global Compliance Officer from 2018 and as Chief Responsibility Officer from 2021 to 2023. She led four international teams across around 30 countries and reported to the Management Board, Supervisory Board and Shareholders’ Meeting. In under three years, she built up four global functions: Commercial Compliance, Internal Audit, Data Protection and Data Ethics, and ESG. Within a year, she established a complete ESG programme that enabled bond financing via an ESG risk rating. She also supported market entry into the United States and led an internationally noted internal investigation.

Previously, at Vestas Wind Systems (2017–2018), she was responsible as Compliance Director for compliance, enterprise risk management and data protection across Germany, Russia, Africa and Eastern Europe. As Global Compliance Officer of the BSN medical Group (2016–2017), she built a new compliance and data protection system across four continents under tight transaction deadlines. At Siemens Postal, Parcel & Airport Logistics (2014–2016), she redesigned the compliance system of the carved-out unit, which had hubs in Dubai, Singapore, the United States and Portugal. At Bilfinger SE (2011–2014), she implemented compliance structures for construction projects in high-risk countries and rolled out a global framework for internal investigations.

She began her career in 2010 as a lawyer at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, including work on the WTO Airbus/Boeing proceedings, and in 2011 as an Associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Munich.

Cordula Meckenstock studied law in Münster and Rome (Erasmus) and passed her First State Examination in 2005. In 2006 she obtained a Master of Laws in International Legal Studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. After her legal clerkship at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg (2008), she completed her doctorate in 2010 at the University of Leipzig on international investment protection law. In 2023 she completed an Executive MBA at the University of St. Gallen. She speaks German as her native language, is fluent in English, Italian, Spanish and French, and has basic knowledge of Turkish and Portuguese.

Since 2019 she has been an honorary professor of compliance and international criminal law at the University of Leipzig. As a visiting lecturer, she taught at the Steinbeis School in Berlin (2017–2023) and at the Executive School of the University of St. Gallen (2022–2023). Since 2022 she has been co-editor of the journal “ESG – Zeitschrift für nachhaltige Unternehmensführung”, published by C.H.Beck. In 2023 she co-authored a contribution on the impact of ESG for the World Economic Forum. From 2022 to 2023 she was a member of the advisory board of the digital health platform Myoncare.

As a keynote speaker, she has appeared, among others, at the heise Horizon Conference 2026 and, in 2024, at the CXO Luncheon during the World Economic Forum, where she also delivered the laudatory speech at the CSO Awards.

In a voluntary capacity, she is a jury member for business@school 2026 run by the Boston Consulting Group, and in 2024 she served as a juror for the Digital Future Challenge run by the Deloitte Foundation and Initiative D21. Since 2020 she has advised the Value Based Leadership Commission, and since 2012 she has served as a short-term election observer on OSCE missions