Rachel Hyland catches up with TLD Lawyer, Siobhan Almond
I recently read an interview with Siobhan in Business Live about her role as Operational Partner at venture capital investors Praetura Ventures. Intrigued about how she balances this job with her work as a Client Legal Director at TLD, and keen to learn how each role impacts the other, I caught up with Siobhan for a chat…
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Q&A with Siobhan Almond
So, Siobhan, how long have you been with TLD?
Since May 2023.
And can you tell me about your TLD clients?
I’m working with a great client at the minute on a retainer basis in the logistics industry. They are all lovely people and hopefully I have managed to become part of their team in a way that suits them. I loved going to meet them in person and getting a tour of the site (with Hi-Viz and safety boots on no less!) and really getting to know them and their business.
I’ve worked on other discrete projects and have helped other lawyers with their holiday cover, which has been a great way to learn about other businesses and meet more people in the TLD network. I’m also working on a couple of new business set ups currently which is really exciting and something I love to do.
And you also work as an Operational Partner for Praetura Ventures, don’t you? Can you tell me more about them and how you balance those roles?
So Praetura Ventures is a Manchester-based venture capital firm and in my experience so far, it’s doing venture capital in a very different way. It’s focused on doing the best thing for founders and really promoting business in the North West. Some of the portfolio is based outside but one of Praetura’s main aims is to enhance the ecosystem in the North West and bring on growing businesses.
Praetura’s mission is to give founders “More than Money”. Obviously, its ultimate goal is to invest in businesses that grow and become successful, but it also offers these portfolio companies more than money. This is what drew me to the business. It offers the network and the support that new founders always need and has a range of operational partners that it offers to its portfolio companies in different guises. My passion is getting to know a business and understand its strategic growth plans and to use my experience and expertise to help them achieve that.
As well as helping founders in any way that I can post investment, I love to get involved in the process of assessing which businesses to invest in, meaning I can get involved with founders from the very beginning of their relationship with Praetura.
At my role at JD Sports, I spent a lot of time with the wider M&A Team and with the board assessing prospective businesses to acquire so I’ve been through that process quite a lot.
Do you think there’s a crossover between your two roles and do you feel like the skills that you get from one contribute to the other role?
Absolutely – that’s definitely the case.
Obviously, the more businesses that you are exposed to and founders that you work with, the different operational and management teams you speak with, the more you learn. You know what’s going well for them, how they’ve been successful, what could be better. If you know what’s not going too well, you see how they’ve coped with a failure.
Getting this diversity of experience teaches me a lot and helps me as a lawyer at TLD and as an operational partner at Praetura.
You were JD Sports’ top lawyer. Have you any ambitions you want to achieve at this stage of your career?
I want to try to spend some of my time at least doing something that’s for the greater good. I’m really passionate about finding that future global success. JD Sports started as one store in Bury in the 1980s and, in my lifetime, it’s gone from one store to a global, FTSE 50 company. That sort of phenomenal success can be achieved in a very short space of time, and I’d love to be involved in that next huge business and just see those founders grow from someone with an idea, all the way to that exceptional success and help them navigate all the challenges along the way.
You’re evidently very busy. What do you do when you're not working?
I’m quite keen on exploring diversity. I’ve come from the legal profession, obviously, which, when I started, was very heavily male oriented. More women are starting as lawyers now, but again, when you get to the partner, board and decision maker level, it is still very male. Also, the retail and FTSE 100 world is very male. I know that when you have that diversity of people around the table, you have diversity of thought and everything that goes with that. I am keen to explore ways in which I can help promote that in businesses generally.
I’m also a trustee of a charity called The Salford Trust, which aims to support young people in Salford to achieve their aspirations, where their financial circumstances have made those opportunities unaffordable. So, we’ve helped amazing swimmers, people aspiring to be Paralympians, musicians and gymnasts. People come to us and ask for a donation to help them to further their passion, whatever it might be. It’s a real love of mine. My dad has been on the board of that charity for around 30 years. So, to help carry that legacy on for him is important to me.
And then, I guess the rest of the time, I either spend on the football pitch watching my nine-year-old son play or watching him train and we’ve just got a new puppy who is demanding a lot of attention.
If you’re interested in getting Siobhan’s help in your business, drop her an email at siobhan.almond@thelegaldirector.co.uk.
Or, if you’re a senior lawyer from an in-house background and looking for a different way of working with more flexibility and more control, contact our Recruitment Manager Georgina Rylance for a chat on 07305 902876 or email: georgina.rylance@thelegaldirector.co.uk
