Shalini Rajoo is a seasoned legal, compliance, and human resources leader with over 20 years of progressive experience in Am Law 100 and Fortune 500 roles. She excels in designing and implementing strategic, innovative, and impactful compliance programs. By partnering closely with stakeholders to understand what drives them and their business success, she has successfully built programs and initiatives that optimize the balance between achieving business objectives and maintaining excellence in business integrity and compliance.
Shalini’s legal career started in South Africa where she was a public prosecutor and later the head of the Consumer and Corporate Regulation Division of South Africa’s national Department of Trade and Industry. In this role, she collaborated closely with the Minister of Trade and Industry as well as members of both houses of Parliament to oversee policy, legislation, and industry regulation in the areas of corporate law, intellectual property rights, competition law, liquor, gambling, and the National Lottery.
After moving to the US, Shalini continued her legal career in New York City, where she spent ten years as a commercial litigator, first with Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and then with Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, where she was Special Counsel before leaving to join the Commercial Law Department at Eastman. After serving as in-house business lawyer to different business divisions at Eastman, Shalini was promoted to the role of Director of Global Business Conduct.
As the leader of Eastman’s global ethics and compliance function, Shalini reported to the Chief Legal Officer and the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors. To support the company’s continued growth and strategic objectives, she led the initiative to redesign and implement a more strategic, fit-for-purpose ethics and compliance program based on government guidance (including the DOJ's guidance on the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs and the United States Sentencing Guidelines) and industry best practices. This initiative resulted in an overhaul of the company’s ethics and compliance protocols, including its investigations practices, as well as the development of the company's first in-depth investigations reporting dashboard, and a “Listen up” program embedding principles of psychological safety in day-to-day management practices. Shalini's leadership in conducting the company’s first global compliance risk assessment laid the foundation for continuous improvement in the company’s compliance practices.
In her most recent role as Director of Talent Risk & Relations at Crowe LLP, Shalini established the firm’s first Talent Risk & Relations organization, built an independent internal investigations function, and led the creation of its first HR Compliance function. Her initiatives resulted in a significant reduction in investigation times, allowed the firm to proactively monitor and assess the impact of local, state, and federal laws, and design compliance processes and to ensure sustained compliance with the applicable laws. By creating this function and systematizing the firm's efforts to comply with employment laws, she helped to enhance its compliance capabilities and decrease the risk of compliance violations.
Shalini has been educated in South Africa and the United States. She earned her Bachelor of Social Science, post-graduate LLB (JD equivalent), and LLM in Procedural & Clinical Law at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Durban. After moving to the United States, Shalini earned an LLM in Law & Business from Northwestern University and a Certificate in Business Administration from Kellogg School of Management. She is admitted to practice in New York (admission in Tennessee pending).
Shalini was born in Durban, South Africa, and has lived in Vancouver (Canada), Pretoria, Chicago, New York City, Syracuse, and Kingsport, Tennessee. Given the many places she has called home and her love of travel, Shalini is not only proudly South African, but proud to be a citizen of the US, and more generally of the world.
