Are You and Your Organisation Contributing to Modern Slavery?

Catherine worked in Allen & Overy’s London and Hong Kong offices for over 20 years advising on a wide variety of finance related matters. She was heavily involved in the firm’s corporate social responsibility and pro bono activities, including being a member of the firm's Global Foundation Executive. Catherine also led a number of initiatives relating to the mentoring and training of staff across all aspects of their work. In April 2012, Catherine retired as a Partner of Allen & Overy. Catherine has been involved with Community Business since its inception, providing pro bono legal services and signing up Allen & Overy as the first member of Community Business. She held the position of Deputy Chair of the Community Business Leadership Team from January 2005 to March 2012. Catherine was invited to be part of the Board of Directors of Community Business in January 2011. Catherine is currently dividing her time between working on a voluntary basis for a number of NGOs and indulging her passion for travel. Catherine also has a consulting role with Allen & Overy as Head of Pro Bono and Community Investment, Hong Kong.

Ms. Archana Kotecha is a counter-trafficking expert and activist with extensive experience in the areas of advocacy, policy work and casework relating to trafficking in persons. Ms. Kotecha is a UK qualified barrister and London School of Economics graduate who started her career practicing corporate law with KPMG then with DLA Piper. After 7 years as a corporate lawyer, Ms. Kotecha joined the UN Refugee Agency's Legal Protection Team in London and subsequently the Immigration Advisory Service and Stop Trafficking UK in London. She has worked on a number of trafficking related asylum cases and produced an anti-trafficking toolkit for UK lawyers. She has served on the Victim Care Committee of the UK Human Trafficking Centre that was instrumental in setting up the National Referral Mechanism of the UK in 2009. She was also a committee member of the NSPCC's anti-trafficking hotline and contributed to a number of anti-trafficking and refugee stakeholder groups in the UK.

Following a move to Hong Kong, Ms. Kotecha has joined Liberty Asia as Head of Legal. Since joining Liberty Asia Ms. Kotecha has produced a Hong Kong focused Victim Identification Toolkit/NGO training and several other publications focused on modern day slavery and related issues in South-East Asia and beyond. Ms. Kotecha is involved in lobbying at the Legislative Council level and advising human rights practitioners and governments on trafficking in persons. She is recognised as a regional subject matter expert and regularly advises various ASEAN bodies and specialist inter-agency teams in different countries in the region.

Ms. Kotecha is responsible for running regional legal projects including a regional Legal Impact Hub that aims to build access to justice for victims and promote creative use of laws across the region to combat trafficking by promoting a better understanding of laws, using strategic litigation and forging better partnership amongst various stakeholders within and across borders. Disrupting activities’ of traffickers by improving modern slavery’s visibility within financial institutions, educating NGOs and lawyers on anti-trafficking legal frameworks and victim identification are also key aspects of Ms. Kotecha’s work. Through her work with Liberty Asia, Ms. Kotecha engages extensively with financial institutions, regulators and other corporations with a view to improving human rights due diligence processes that highlight human rights related risks and liabilities. In addition, Ms Kotecha has been focusing on the application of anti-money laundering frameworks and existing risk structures within these institutions to identify and disrupt human trafficking networks. In June 2017, Ms Kotecha was named as one of the top ten innovative lawyers in Asia Pacific by the Financial Times Asia and she is also an alumni of the prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program run by the US Department of State.

Helen Colquhoun is a Partner and Head of the DLA Piper Employment team in Hong Kong.

Helen is triple qualified in New York, England and Wales and Hong Kong. She advises employers across a range of industries on both contentious and non-contentious employment issues (particularly for international employers requiring Hong Kong, US and/or UK advice) such as risk management, restructuring, managing employee hiring and terminations, design of incentive schemes, and drafting contracts and handbooks.

As a triple qualified employment lawyer with over 10 years’ experience, Helen is well-placed to provide a single source of advice for clients who require advice in more than one jurisdiction.