US contract lifecycle management platform Agiloft has hired Kristin Knox Esche as general counsel, replacing chief legal officer Jason Barnwell, who has moved to another role with the company.
Esche joins from Mitsubishi HC Capital America, where she was deputy GC. She brings more than two decades of experience building legal functions, most recently helping modernise and centralise Mitsubish HC’s legal function.
Redwood City, California-based Agiloft develops contract lifecycle management software for a range of businesses, including financial services, healthcare, legal, pharma and manufacturing, among others.
Eric Laughlin, CEO at Agiloft, said: “Kristin has sat on the other side of the table from us as the legal leader actually living with the contracting problems we build software to solve. She has run legal operations inside companies going through real change: mergers, agile transformations, the early days of generative AI inside a legal department. That’s exactly the perspective we want shaping our own legal function and informing how we build for customers like her.”
Esche arrives after just over a year at Mitsubishi, having previously spent 12 years at John Deere across a number of legal roles, latterly as associate chief counsel for global product organisation and innovation.
Prior to that she worked in private practice at Davis Wright Tremaine, Overland Borenstein Scheper & Klm and Thelen Reid & Priest.
She said: “I’ve spent my career translating complexity into clarity, whether that meant standing on a factory floor with engineers or designing the operating model for a unified legal department after periods of rapid inorganic growth.
“What drew me to Agiloft is that every part of that experience finally points the same direction. I have been the customer this company builds for, and I am looking forward to helping shape what comes next, both inside Agiloft and for its customers.”
Barnwell, meanwhile, was promoted to chief product officer earlier this month. He originally joined as CLO last December from Microsoft, where he spent 15 years, the latter part as associate GC for monetisation and business planning.
Earlier this month, US data and analytics business Alteryx hired Steve Holsten as its CLO from ElevenX Capital, replacing Christopher Lal who departed in May to join customer engagement platform Braze.
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