Allison Girvin, Associate Corporate Counsel for Amazon Web Services Infrastructure Team

Allison Girvin is an Associate Corporate Counsel for the Amazon Web Services Infrastructure Team at Amazon, in Seattle, Washington, which means she provides legal services for the infrastructure group, specifically working with the energy and water business and procurement teams supporting Amazon’s data centers in the Americas. 

The Generalist

As much as Allison enjoys the energy and water infrastructure legal work, Allison prides herself in her varied legal background and her desire to learn new things. She sees herself as a generalist, which helps her in all aspects of her work as a legal counselor for one of the world’s largest companies. When she joined Amazon, Allison had no data center experience so she attended training, learned from business partners, and read relevant publications to develop her industry knowledge. This continued when she took a leap and branched out to support the energy and water teams with no prior experience in these two areas. Amazon has helped her grow in many ways and she hopes she can continue developing and growing while contributing to making the world a better place.

Allison and her team are committed to process improvements to better serve Amazon’s customers. She takes these goals into her day to day work considerations even without the direct consumer contact. “Customer obsession is one of our leading principles and it really drives what we do as a company each day,” she says.  She has her internal customer (the company) and all the stakeholders - finance, legal, business - are all part of the decision making on how to provide value to the customer. In contract drafting, the attorneys are encouraged to write in plain English to keep things simple and so the business teams can better manage and execute the contract terms. 

Meeting Amazon’s Climate Pledge and Renewable Energy Goals 

Within Allison’s legal team, there are several lawyers supporting the energy and water infrastructure team globally. Allison’s work is mainly transactional, drafting and negotiating contracts and counseling the day-to-day issues that come up. In the water and energy (infrastructure) team, she works with utilities, renewable energy developers, contractors and consultants to supply power and water to Amazon’s data centers. The best part of Allison’s job is being a part of something big that is making a global impact. 

In 2020, Amazon became the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy. In 2019, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge, committing to be net zero carbon across its business by 2040.  The Climate Pledge is Amazon’s goal to beat the Paris Agreement’s goals to be carbon neutral by 2050 by ten years. This means Amazon’s own company goals are to make its company carbon neutral by 2040, and to use 100% renewable energy by 2025. When speaking with her about this, it was clear she seemed concerned but motivated by having to meet such a public goal for the company. With well over one thousand employees working within Amazon’s legal department, I asked her why did she feel such pressure? She answered that she cares about her work, her company and the world.

Advice Given

Because the company has grown so quickly, Allison is considered a veteran as a five-year employee.  She’s mentored new employees and advises on how her mentees can be successful in their first year. She tells her mentees, “It's a marathon not a sprint. Try to find boundaries for yourself because the work will always be there. And stay flexible."

As with anyone finding their way in a broad field like law, Allison started her legal career in construction litigation and then found herself switching to transactional work. If she could give herself a talk in the beginning of her career, she would tell herself not to assume those in leadership positions are always right or have all the answers. As an Asian-American, a lot of emphasis was put on respecting elders when she was younger. Allison looks back at decisions made by partners or other company leaders that affected her and regrets not speaking up and asking questions. She believes having those answers could have made her path towards building her confidence in the profession a lot quicker. But one could say if it were not for such challenges, she would not be where she is today.  

One of the challenges of being an Asian American professional woman is the feeling of being an outsider, particularly in law school, where there were few minorities. She remembers hearing male students say their parents warned them that there were women who go to law school solely to land a husband, and get an M.R.S., not a J.D. making her wonder if that type of thinking would affect her own reputation in school. Allison believes representation in academics and in the workplace is important and is hopeful that more schools and companies take note and step up diversity and inclusion efforts.

Looking Forward

Though one positive aspect of the pandemic has been the lack of a commute to work, that extra time has been usurped by facilitating her daughter’s online education and managing her pre-school aged son. While Allison loves spending additional time with her kids she’s found that working from home has removed the boundaries of work-life separation. She would bounce between phone meetings with colleagues to helping her daughter with a math problem in a matter of minutes. “It's always busy at Amazon but I feel like 2020 was especially busy in working towards our goal to be 100% renewable by 2025. I miss in person meetings with my business team and legal colleagues. And as much as we try, it's hard to celebrate company achievements virtually.”

In addition to wanting to be a great role model for her two children, she wants to start playing tennis again. She had played tennis competitively in high school and college. And after a long hiatus due to burn out from the sport, she is excited to get back on the court for some exercise, stress relief and fun.

In 2021 with a new president, Allison is hopeful and already sees significance placed on climate and science again. She anticipates new legislation and challenges ahead. When asked where she sees herself in five years, she says, “Five years from now I'm helping an organization do big things whether that's fighting climate change, driving diversity and inclusion efforts or supporting innovation. I've realized over the years that I'm happiest when I'm working on something I believe will move the world forward and have an impact on future generations.”