Manjaree Chowdhary

With a legal career spanning 22+ years, Manjaree brings strong expertise, strategic thinking, operational excellence and credible business partnership to her stakeholders.
A master in laws from the University of London, Manjaree made a mid-career shift from academics to law after serving as a Professor for English Literature at Panjab University, Chandigarh for 6 years. Starting as a litigator, she soon went into corporate practice with Dua Associates, where she rose quickly to manage large multinational clients and undertake complex domestic and cross-border transactions. Manjaree moved in-house when she joined the multinational conglomerate GE in 2001. In over 16 yrs. with the company, she managed overseas and domestic assignments across the Plastics, Healthcare and Power verticals handling challenging assignments from mergers and divestments, establishing strategic business ventures, setting up robust enterprise risk and compliance processes to building a sustainable industry and Government interface in a dynamic competitive environment. She has the unique experience of managing and advising high-powered boards of both private and listed companies. Manjaree joined Maruti Suzuki, the Indian automobile leader in 2018 as its first woman General Counsel, where she is a valued business partner to the Board and the Management.
Leading from the front in her collaborative and adaptive leadership style, Manjaree has developed strong and credible teams. Externally, she has leveraged her functional and business understanding to lead significant industry initiatives notable among them being the formulation of a “Voluntary Code of Ethics” adopted by NATHEALTH, the National Healthcare Federation of India. She is a visiting speaker at IIM Bangalore, law schools and regularly speaks at various legal and industry platforms. Additionally, Manjaree has also led various diversity programmes and remains passionate about corporate social responsibility and pro bono initiatives.
Manjaree has been recognized by the Indian Corporate Counsel Association in its first edition of “Trailblazers – India’s Finest In-house Counsels” in 2016, has featured in the India “Top 100 Powerful Women in Law” in 2017, awarded the “Outstanding Woman Leadership Achievement Award” at the CXO and General Counsels Leadership Summit and Excellence Awards in February, 2018 and most recently been recognized as one of the twenty-five General Counsels for their contribution to the Indian corporate legal sector and felicitated at the Indo-UK Law Society Summit at the House of Lords in London in November 2018.
Manjaree is located in Gurugram and enjoys reading, dancing, interior designing and the movies.