Bianca Adams-Thomond

Bianca Adams-Thomond is Managing Director for the EMEA In-House Counsel Practice. Based in the London office, she has combined her wealth of experience and market knowledge to grow the firm’s activities throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Bianca focuses on the placement of general counsel and a variety of in-house counsel, senior compliance and IP professionals throughout the EMEA region. In addition, Bianca partners with colleagues throughout MLA to offer clients and candidates a truly global service regarding search mandates in the USA, Latin America, Asia and Australia.

Bianca has a reputation for successfully undertaking search mandates in mature and emerging markets within the region, including in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, UAE and the United Kingdom. Success across the region has allowed her to continue to grow local and international networks, which prove imperative for each search undertaken.

As a Diversity & Inclusion champion, Bianca believes in fostering an inclusive environment for all. They know that maintaining a diverse workforce is essential to building a strong and vital organization. For them, every search is a diversity search. Bianca and the team help organisations to recruit legal professionals with the skills and diverse characteristics essential to their success.

Born in the UK, Bianca enjoyed the challenge of growing up with three brothers and gained her can-do positive attitude from her working mother/single parent. Bianca lives with her husband and sons in South London. In her spare time, she enjoys exploring London's beautiful parks, yoga, health and fitness, cycling, kitesurfing, skiing, photography and overseas travel.

Bianca is also involved in various community projects in her local area. She is a regular volunteer event director for SportInspired, a social enterprise established in 2008 to build happier healthier communities through the power of sport and the positive influence of business. She enjoys this work as it helps overcome social challenges in some of London's toughest communities, particularly connecting young people to professionals as mentors through their CSR activities.

Following a period of travel, Bianca entered the world of legal recruitment in 2000 when she joined one of London's first legal recruiters, Chambers & Partners. As part of the in-house team, focusing on placing lawyers in both the commerce & industry and banking & finance markets, she gained a breadth of experience and grew a strong network across the UK and Europe.

In the spring of 2007, Bianca was approached to join an international boutique multidiscipline search firm in London in order to establish their Legal in-house search practice. There she led the growth of team and became the go to recruiter for a whole host of companies wishing to recruit for their in-house legal departments in Europe and the Middle East; be it the general counsel, generalist in-house counsel or specialist lawyers such as M&A, IP, litigation, compliance, data privacy etc.

Aware of her experience, Major, Lindsey & Africa approached Bianca with the opportunity to develop the firm's General Counsel/In-House Search Practice throughout Europe, Middle East & Africa in 2011. Taking into consideration MLA’s fantastic reputation, global reach, market positioning and the calibre of people on board, it was an easy decision for her to make. She is known for building long-term relationships and partners with a range of private and public companies, large U.S. multinationals, FTSE-listed companies, dynamic startups, private equity houses and hedge funds seeking to recruit and retain top legal talent.