Interview with Monidipa Fouzder
Zoe Mortimer and Alexandra Geelan are about to celebrate their first anniversary as founders of Hemisphere Consultants in London. Commercial law specialists, they provide legal services to female- and minority-led businesses.
Why did they decide to focus on these sectors? The duo, who met at their previous organisation, tell me they held a breakfast club, which began as a celebration of Black History Month. Attendees found the club valuable so Mortimer and Geelan kept it going. They met people from different backgrounds, heritages and professions, and identified a collective need for support, especially from a legal perspective. Surrounded by people with business ideas, they did not want lawyers to be a ‘blocker’.
With Hemisphere Consultants, they also wanted to create an environment where women and people from minority communities are not ‘talked over’. ‘It has happened to us when dealing with male clients. They would explain aspects of the law and they would be talking over us and explaining advice to us,’ Geelan said. They also wanted to create a ‘safe space’.
Having spent years working as a corporate lawyer, Mortimer wanted to focus on the equity, diversity and inclusion sector. Mortimer tells me that in 2020, while working at accountancy giant EY and following the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by police in Minneapolis, she was asked to set up an anti-racism taskforce. ‘It became clear this was not just a desk job. Ultimately, it required so much buy-in… It was a big job. So, I went into DEI work, balancing the two. I was still a lawyer.’
Geelan was admitted in Australia and was only 20 when she qualified. ‘I bounced around for a long time. I really struggled with it.’ She worked in several areas of law, such as wills and estates, conveyancing and family. ‘I was too young to be dealing with divorces and child custody cases… commercial law was a better fit for me.’
Geelan found her ‘home’ in the law working with scaling and high-growth tech companies on their contracts, templates and compliance. She found they were innovative and looking to challenge the status quo in their industries. They were also more commercial and outcomes-focused, ‘which aligns with my style and approach as a lawyer’. Geelan moved to London, which she describes as the ‘epicentre of innovation’, in 2021.
Hemisphere Consultants was set up last July. On the name, Geelan says: ‘It represents our different backgrounds. We’re from two different parts of the world. We’re almost as different as two people can be – but see how the two halves of us work and create something magical when we’re allowed to be our best and strongest.’
The breakfast club informed the approach Mortimer and Geelan wanted to take with Hemisphere Consultants. ‘We wanted to create that sense of community in the work we do and encourage people to pay it forward,’ Geelan says.
Of their success stories so far, Mortimer says they helped a female business founder build a platform with a ‘social impact edge’ to it. The support they provided included advising the founder on questions to ask when speaking to investors and guiding her through options. ‘She probably would not have had that level of strategic support from a law firm. Or if she did, it would have been at a cost that was unaffordable as a start-up,’ adds Geelan.
Most of the clients Mortimer and Geelan work with ‘started their business to solve a problem and to try to give back to the world and make it a better place,’ says Geelan. ‘We’re trying to do that as well, but in our small part of the commercial world.’
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