General Legal Counsel

Reports to: CEO

Working location: Either Cape Town, Southern Suburbs, or up to 100% remote

Start date: ASAP

Working hours: Preferred: Flexible full time. Possible: Flexible part-time, minimum 60%.

About GVI

At GVI, our teams bring a range of specialised skills together for a common goal: supporting a more sustainable future.

We are an international multi-award-winning social enterprise. We offer conservation and community development programs in 13 countries, all aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and led by our teams and experts from the communities we operate in.

About the role

This is a once-in-a-career opportunity to apply your broad legal skills across every aspect of a fast-growing global social enterprise.

Reporting directly to the CEO, you will be involved in a fascinating range of work with immediate impact on the organisation.

About you

You are a qualified lawyer with experience across a wide range of commercial matters. You have strong academics and received extensive training, and as a result you are versed in legal drafting, regulatory compliance and risk management.

Now is the time to bring these skills into an extraordinary group of people who work collaboratively to achieve stretching goals, in a culture which values fun, human diversity, and success.

Goal and responsibilities

The role of the General Legal Counsel is to manage GVI’s legal relationships with its shareholders, customers, suppliers and statutory authorities – across, and between, all of its entities around the world.

1. Draft and maintain intercompany service agreements to meet GVI’s commercial goals.
2. Draft and maintain shareholder agreements.
3. Manage company secretarial matters and statutory compliance for GVI’s for-profit and charitable entities in 13 countries, working with local advisors where required.
4. Manage GVI’s terms of business with customers.
5. Manage GVI’s service agreements with suppliers, to cover financial, operational and liability risk.
6. Manage GVI’s compliance with travel industry regulations.
7. Manage GVI’s intellectual property.
8. Generally, identify and manage financial, legal and regulatory risks facing GVI.

Benefits at GVI

We’re not interested in empty perks like having a coffee culture. We do have coffee – if you join our central team in Cape Town, you could find yourself roped into coffee and snack challenges if you visit the office, but you could just as easily be taking your morning coffee at Roots cafe, high in the mountains of northern Thailand if you work on a base. Here’s what our global team enjoys:

• Social fund
• Training fund
• Half days on the first Friday of each quarter
• Collaborative, flexible culture
• The ability to grow across our 17 different locations
• Transparency – hear directly from the CEO consistently
• We laugh a lot, genuinely care about and support each other, and do the occasional dress-up

You can find out more about the type of work GVI does and who we are as an organisation here.

To apply

Please send your CV along with a cover letter stating why you feel you would be best suited to this position at GVI.

Please note: We will do our utmost to respond to all applicants, however, given the large volume of applications we receive, this isn't always possible. If you do not hear back from us within three-four weeks, please take it that on this occasion your application was unsuccessful.