GC Corner: An interview with Yosr Hamza

Yosr Hamza is a multi-award winning legal leader, founder, storyteller, caregiver, TEDx speaker, and inclusion advocate. She is currently the head of legal and director of legal & compliance for Gartner across the Middle East. With over 15 years of experience, she has led regional legal functions, built departments from the ground up, and advised global organizations on complex regulatory issues. Beyond her corporate role, Hamza is an advocate for diversity, inclusion, and disability rights. She co-founded the legal and compliance inclusion council at Gartner and volunteers her time mentoring junior professionals and promoting disability-friendly workplace policies. As a full-time caregiver to her son, who has a rare disability, she uses her personal experience to drive change. This also led her to co-found Yusr, an app designed to simplify life for caregiver families in the Middle East and North Africa, reflecting her mission to build a more inclusive world.

What’s the biggest pressure point you face as a GC today? Or the biggest priority?

The modern GC is basically a walking paradox: expected to be both strategic and operational, visionary and hyper-practical, risk-averse and risk-embracing. My biggest pressure point is living in that tension every single day. Add caregiving to the mix and the stakes shift. I don’t have the luxury of performative busyness. Every decision I make at work has to earn its place next to physiotherapy appointments, medical reports, and the emotional bandwidth my son needs from me.

So, my true priority is clarity. Clarity in process, in expectations, in escalation routes, in what matters and what can wait. Without clarity, everything becomes noise. I don’t have the time or the patience for noise anymore.

How has your approach to leadership evolved over time?

I used to lead the “textbook” way. You know, the polished corporate version of myself who thought every answer had to be airtight and every email had to sound like it was blessed by a panel of retired judges.

Life humbled me. Hard. Now I lead with a mix of precision and humanity. I don’t pretend complexity doesn’t exist. I don’t pretend to be invincible. I don’t pretend every deadline is reasonable just because it’s written in a slide deck. My team sees a leader who sets boundaries, names reality, and expects others to operate like adults. The shift is simple: I stopped performing leadership and started practicing it.

What’s unique about being a senior in-house lawyer in the Middle East today?

Everything moves fast here. Regulations evolve quickly, business models transform overnight, and the cultural nuance is non-negotiable.

But what’s truly unique is balancing the “global corporate framework” with the realities of a region where relationships, trust, and context are worth more than any template contract. You can’t hide behind jargon or policy. People want to know who you are, not just what your title is.

It forces you to be a lawyer and a cultural translator at the same time.

The toughest decision you’ve had to make in the last year?

Choosing who and where to spend my energy. When you’re a caregiver, every hour has a cost. And when you’re a GC, every hour has an expectation. I had to pull back from some high-visibility work this year to prioritise my son’s progressing medical needs.

The hard part wasn’t the decision. It was the guilt that followed. We don’t talk enough about that part.

One leadership habit you swear by under pressure?

Radical prioritisation.

When everything feels urgent, nothing actually is. I take the time to name the real problem, strip away the drama, and make sure we’re solving the right thing. My team has heard me ask “What’s the actual risk here?” more times than they care to admit.

It’s not glamorous, but it keeps the chaos at bay.

How do you personally recharge when things get intense?

I don’t “recharge” in the inspirational-poster sense. I don’t do spa days or silent retreats. My version of recharging looks like stealing micro-moments of calm between the madness.

An iced mocha before anyone wakes up. Ten minutes of silence in the car after physiotherapy. A late-night shower where no one is asking for help. Small pockets of oxygen. That’s how I survive long stretches of intensity.

One health or wellbeing practice that’s actually stuck?

Daily movement. Not the aspirational kind, but just consistent, honest movement. Walking. Functional strength. Anything that helps me stay strong enough to lift my son safely and show up for him without breaking my back.

Wellbeing stopped being optional for me. It became part of caregiving.

One tip for your younger self about building a flourishing legal career?

Stop waiting for permission.

You don’t need approval to take up space, to lead differently, to carve your own path. People will underestimate you anyway, so you might as well disappoint their expectations early and focus on exceeding your own.

Best book, podcast, or film recently discovered?

For the book, I’d go for ‘Courage To Be Disliked’, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. My podcast choice would be ‘How I Built This’, with Guy Raz.

I’ve also been gravitating toward audio books and podcasts that tackle memoirs of people who built meaning from chaos. Anything with honesty, grit, and a bit of dark humour… basically the literary version of my life.

One thing your team would be surprised to know about you?

I’m actually a part-time introvert in disguise. All the TEDx, panels, speeches, and public advocacy trick people into thinking I thrive on visibility. I don’t. I thrive on purpose. Visibility is just the tax I pay for the work I care about.

If you weren’t a lawyer, what would you be doing today?

Something at the intersection of policy building, advocacy, systems design and lived experience. Probably building something like my Yusr app anyway, because the world is painfully inaccessible and someone needs to fix it. I’d still be trying to make systems kinder and more functional. Law is just one of the tools.

Your go-to guilty pleasure after a long week?

A mindless Law and Order SVU episode or listening to a crime podcast while walking randomly in the shopping mall, and absolutely no attempts at being productive. And if I’m being honest: Coffee. Lots of it!

Beyond the job title, who are you?

I’m a caregiver first. Everything else orbits around that identity. It shapes how I lead, how I negotiate, how I empathize, and how I build teams. When you’re responsible for a child with complex needs, you develop a different lens for fairness, risk, time, and energy.

It forces you to be decisive, compassionate, and unwilling to waste people’s humanity. It’s the part of my life that grounds me and sharpens me at the same time.