Wanji Walcott & David Wilkins in Conversation

Wanji Walcott, general counsel at Discover, and David Wilkins, CLP faculty director, discuss the changing legal profession, the transformative role of the general counsel, and leadership in uncertain times, in this conversation moderated by Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Associate Dean of International Affairs at University of Pennsylvania Law School.
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Wanji Walcott is Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at Discover Financial Services, and a member of the company’s Executive Committee. She is a high-impact global financial services executive with a proven track record of building and leading diverse teams and fostering a culture of collaboration as a trusted advisor. Ms. Walcott is responsible for Discover’s Legal Organization, Government Relations and the company’s Patent & Innovation Program.
With a passion for helping others, Ms. Walcott is committed to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) and serves as executive sponsor of HOLA, Discover’s Latinx Employee Resource Group. She leads the company’s DE&I Task Force and is an active participant in the Legal Organization’s pro bono program, which provides free, high-quality legal services to those in need.
In 2021, the Pro Bono Institute honored Discover and Ms. Walcott with the Laurie D. Zelon Pro Bono Award. She was also recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business as a Notable General Counsel in 2021.
Prior to joining Discover in 2019, Ms. Walcott was Senior Vice President and General Counsel at PayPal Holdings, Inc., where she provided counsel to senior management and the board of directors, was accountable for all areas of the global legal department and provided legal support to corporate affiliates, including a bank. She has also held senior positions at American Express, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, DSET Corporation and Lockheed Martin.
Ms. Walcott serves on the Board of Directors of Foresight II (NASDAQ: FACQU) and has served on a number of non-profit boards, including her current role as Board Chair for the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) and director roles at movement.org and The Gunnery School. She holds a B.A. and J.D. from Howard University. She is licensed to practice law in New York, New Jersey and has a Limited License as In-House Counsel in Illinois.
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David B. Wilkins is the Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, and Faculty Director of the Center on the Legal Profession and the Center for Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry at Harvard Law School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow of the Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics.
Professor Wilkins has written over 80 articles on the legal profession in leading scholarly journals and the popular press and is the co-author (along with his Harvard Law School colleague Andrew Kaufman) of one of the leading casebooks in the field. His current scholarly projects include Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies (where he directs over 50 researchers studying the impact of globalization on the market for legal services in rapidly developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe); After the JD (a ten-year nationwide longitudinal study of lawyers' careers); The Harvard Law School Career Study (examining, among other things, differences in the experiences of male and female graduates and the careers of lawyers who do not practice law); and The New Social Engineers (charting the historical development and current experiences of black lawyers in corporate law practice).
Professor Wilkins teaches several courses on lawyers including The Legal Profession, Legal Education for the Twenty-First Century, and Challenges of a General Counsel. In 2007, he co-founded Harvard Law School’s Executive Education Program, where he teaches in several courses including Leadership in Law Firms and Leadership in Corporate Counsel.
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Rangita de Silva de Alwis is a globally recognized international women’s rights expert. She serves as the Associate Dean of International Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where she teaches International Women’s Human Rights; Women, Law, and Leadership; and the Policy Lab, including the Policy Lab on AI and Bias, and directs the Global Institute for Human Rights. She was named the Hillary Rodham Clinton Distinguished Fellow on Gender Equity, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She is a Fellow with the Private Capital Research Institute at Harvard Business School on a study on diversity and inclusion in private equity (2021-2022). Rangita is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession where she is co-authoring a study with Under Secretary General Mlambo-Ngcuka on the transformative impact of business leadership, innovation, and inclusion on accelerating the SDGs.