Karen Coppens, Global Head of Ethics and Special Adviser to the Chief Compliance Officer at corporate and investment bank Crédit Agricole CIB, speaks to In-House Perspective about her career in white-collar law and investigations, the challenges she has faced and why ethics and culture are important for business.

Karen Coppens decided to become a lawyer because she wanted to make the world a better place. Born in Belgium before spending her childhood and teenage years in Cameroon, the US and France, her interest in law sparked because of her experience witnessing inequalities between people from different countries and socio-economic backgrounds. ‘I saw the rights of those that were less fortunate or with limited education were often not respected,’ she says. ‘I decided to do law because I wanted to do my part to improve access to justice’.

A strong desire to help others has been present throughout Coppens’ career. Her former colleagues at Dechert nicknamed her ‘Miss pro bono’ because of the large amount of time she dedicated to such projects in addition to her client work. These included helping to prepare a manual to train Ukrainian judges on how to prosecute Russian soldiers suspected of war crimes and working with the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association between 2020 and 2023 to assist Afghan refugees. ‘I just think the situation in Afghanistan is appalling […] but unfortunately the situation keeps on getting worse, as women’s rights in particular continue to be restricted further, and that’s something I really care about,’ she says.

Because her father worked for the UN, by the time Coppens reached 18, she was used to international travel. Unphased by the prospect of moving to a new country alone she enrolled in a law degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the UK and later completed a Master of Laws at the London School of Economics.

Life-changing experiences

Torn between pursuing a career in corporate law or international human rights, Coppens decided to defer a training contract offer from Slaughter and May to complete an internship at the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTR) in Rwanda. At only 23 years old she interviewed perpetrators and victims of the Rwandan genocide. ‘Before working at the ICTR I was quite [a] naïve person and saw things in black and white but when I went to interview those who had participated in the genocide, I realised that some of them were just like you and me,’ she explains. ‘The circumstances they were in left many with little choice as their families were killed or raped and some did what they had to do to survive. This in no way justifies the perpetration of rape or genocide, but it gave me a different perspective and I realised there were many nuances.’

Coppens says her experience at the international court really shaped her as a lawyer because it made her realise that practising the law was much more about understanding the grey areas. ‘The nuance is what interested me, which is what I also like about white-collar law,’ she says.

After her internship in Rwanda, Coppens returned to the UK to complete her training contract and qualify as a solicitor. She made a firm choice to specialise in white-collar law early in her career and around the time the UK government passed the Bribery Act. ‘I did a lot of research on the subject, and worked on some internal investigations at the time, and I thought this area of law is more compatible with my skillset because the nature of my work is very international and I had a particular passion for it because I’d seen firsthand, in many of the developing countries I’d been to or lived in, the impact that corruption can have,’ she says.

What followed was a successful career in private practice specialising in white-collar law and investigations. In 2010 Coppens moved from Slaughter and May to DLA Piper and later joined Dechert where she went on to spearhead its white-collar practice in Paris. Coppens says that when she originally told her bosses she wanted to practise white collar law full-time, they were confused. ‘People thought I was specialising too early on in my career and was taking a risk,’ she recalls. ‘But I decided I was willing to take the risk as I knew what I wanted to do, and I wanted to take control of my career’.

The UK Bribery Act 2010 is considered a pioneering piece of legislation that revolutionised the corporate compliance industry. The criminalisation of the failure to prevent bribery led many organisations to overhaul their compliance programmes and adopt stringent anti-corruption measures to drive up standards.

While at Dechert, Coppens was part of the team that helped plane maker Airbus reach a landmark settlement with authorities in France, the UK and the US in 2020 to resolve foreign bribery charges.

Role models

In addition to boosting her professional profile, the Airbus case gifted Coppens with valuable mentors and friends. One of them – Robert (Bob) Luskin at Paul Hastings – taught her that it’s possible to be both a good person and successful in the law. ‘When I started my career, I found it really hard in law firms because I thought so many people could be ruthless and it was a tough working environment,’ she says. ‘When I met Bob, I thought this is the kind of lawyer I want to be because [he’s] so smart and well respected by peers and clients and a very kind, fun and decent human being who really cares.’

Coppens is keen to pass that message on to the next generation. She’s heavily involved in mentoring junior colleagues, especially young women, partly because she found it difficult to find female role models at the start of her career. In 2018 she led the efforts of the Global Women’s Initiative to create a support network for women in London and more recently launched a global mentoring programme for the compliance department at her current employer: the corporate and investment arm of French banking giant Crédit Agricole.  

For many women, fulfilling their ambition to excel in the legal field and be a mother is not easy. After Coppens moved to Paris in 2019 to build Dechert’s white-collar practice she became pregnant within three months of arriving in the city. But to have legitimacy in the French market she needed to pass the Paris Bar exam. ‘I underestimated how difficult that would be,’ she says.

Coppens began the preparation course for the exam while she was still on maternity leave and recovering from a C-section. For the next six months she worked full-time and studied in the evenings and at weekends. ‘With hindsight I don’t know how I did it and I missed out on six months of my daughter’s life,’ she says. ‘I was just so driven to get that piece of paper, and I made so many sacrifices that failure was not an option.’

Coppens believes the best way to support mothers in the workplace is to allow them the flexibility to organise themselves in the way they need. ‘When I came back from my second maternity leave, I found that people made assumptions because I had two young children,’ she says. ‘Just because I have two young kids doesn’t mean you shouldn’t let me fulfil my ambition.’

The cornerstone of a company

Coppens ended almost two decades in private practice to join Crédit Agricole CIB in 2023 as its Global Head of Ethics and Special Adviser to the Chief Compliance Officer. The role encompasses a broad range of responsibilities including sustainable finance, culture and conduct, data protection, tax governance, investigations and whistleblower complaints.

The aspects of the job she most enjoys are working with an international team and various stakeholders within the bank to make coordinated decisions. Coppens says that an effective ethics and culture programme at a global financial institution needs to be driven by one set of policies and practices that apply to everyone. She says it’s essential to take disciplinary action over misconduct when necessary. ‘You have to play a mix of the good cop and the bad cop and also do it in a politically savvy way, so people understand why you are doing it,’ she says.

Corporate culture and ethics are important, Coppens explains, because it’s the cornerstone of everything a business does. She says an organisation without clear values will struggle to convince regulators or employees about what is good and bad conduct.

Coppens also advises the investment bank’s Head of Global Compliance, Anne Girard, on sensitive matters. Girard was a significant part of what attracted Coppens to the role. ‘I was inspired to work with a senior dynamic woman with strategic vision who encourages her team to come up with innovative ideas,’ she says. ‘That is what I wanted from the next stage in my career.’  

Coppens says at Crédit Agricole CIB she feels confident asking for flexibility when she needs it. When an important call got scheduled at a time at which she had promised to take her daughter, excited to be dressed up as a lion, to a carnival, she plucked up the courage to ask her boss if they could rearrange the meeting. ‘I went to my boss’s office and explained that I had promised to take my four-year-old to her school carnival and my boss told me we would reschedule,’ she says. ‘I’m respected as an employee, but I’m also enabled to say when I’m a mother.’