On the first Tuesday of every month, we’ll announce a new Fearless Female, including a video interview of them sharing their business story. Want to be featured as a Fearless Female?
Contact Memberships for more details. The Fearless Female Program would not be possible without our Title Sponsor, Scotiabank.
To learn a little more about the Scotiabank Women Initiative, and why they’ve chosen to sponsor this program, see the video below.
The Fearless Female we’re featuring for the month of November is Alysia Christiaen, Chief Brand & Strategy Officer at Lerners LLP.
Alysia Christiaen is the Chief Brand & Strategy Officer at Lerners LLP, where she leads firm-wide business development, marketing, and brand initiatives across multiple offices. With over 15 years of experience as both a practicing lawyer and strategic leader, she combines deep legal expertise with a proven track record of driving revenue growth, strengthening market presence, and fostering cross-practice collaboration. She is also deeply engaged in the community, serving on the board of the Parkinson’s Society Southwestern Ontario. Alysia is a frequent speaker on privacy, innovation, and strategic leadership. She describes herself as a fashionable foodie who loves to share recommendations for hidden gem restaurants.
To learn more about Alysia’s journey as a Fearless Female, watch the interview below (or read the written format).
How did your education and professional background prepare you for a leadership role?
I’ve been lucky that I have really, I don’t want to say necessarily reinvent myself, but I have done a lot of transitioning through my law career.
Most lawyers’ kind of go into one practice area, and that’s where they spend their entire career. They become very much an expert in that one area. For me, I tried a whole bunch of different ones.
Part of it was with a personal injury. That’s what I was hired to work in after law school. And then from there, it was kind of where there was need. And the privacy practice was one that I went to our executive committee and said, I have an interest in this area of law. It’s still a very burgeoning, developing practice area. And I said, there’s a bit of a gap in the service that we’re able to provide to clients. And I expressed an interest in doing some certifications for the privacy law. I was very fortunate that Lerner’s executive committee at the time was like, yeah, this sounds like a great opportunity. We’ll support you in trying to develop this practice area.
So that kind of recognizing opportunities and being willing to take the risks to pursue those has certainly helped prepare me for leadership. And for me, transitioning out of personal injury litigation and into the corporate world, that really stemmed from me recognizing that I was no longer happy doing personal injury litigation. I can’t work another 30 years doing this. It’s not bringing me joy. So that’s when I went to the executive committee and said, this is not working for me. I love the firm. So, I did not want to leave Lerner’s, but I wanted to leave personal injury as a practice area. And I was very fortunate that Lerner’s supported me in that transition. Despite having spent 12 years building a book of business doing one area of law, they helped me transition.
And I think that really speaks to Lerner’s embracing innovation, thinking outside of the box, because it’s very uncommon for a litigation lawyer to transition into a transactional lawyer at my vintage. There’s a lot of movement when you are younger, you’re still trying to decide what practice area you want to land in. To do it at my, I think it was 12 years out when I made that transition.
So, I think also that whole experience helped me in terms of becoming the leader that I am today in recognizing the importance of your mental health, mental wellbeing, your job providing you with purpose and joy. You’re not going to do the best job for your clients if you aren’t happy and you’re miserable every day at your job. It just becomes very hard to give it your all when just being there is a struggle for you.
I try to lead my team with that in mind. I want to make sure that they are feeling fulfilled, that I’m creating a space where they feel comfortable coming to me to tell me if they aren’t feeling joy. Because I was very fortunate in having that feeling when I went to the managing partner and had a very frank conversation.
It was essentially like, I’m not happy. And I was fortunate to have him be like, let’s put our thinking caps on and we’ll figure this out. It’s certainly something that I bring into my leadership with my team.
I want them to know that they can come to me, and we’ll come up with a solution together.
When did you join Lerners?
I joined Lerners in 2009. That’s the year that I was called to the bar. I became a partner at Lerners in 2016 and then transitioned into the role of Chief Brand and Strategy Officer this year in July 2025.
What are some of the highlights of your career so far?
It’s not necessarily like, you know, it’s in the paper type of accomplishment. But I think just having the confidence in myself to, you know, make these transitions, very stressful. And, you know, I just kind of thought, you know, there’s no better investment that you can make than in yourself. To me, you know, investing myself and my happiness, you know, it’s low risk.
And so, I’m quite happy that I had the courage to do the career transitions that I have. Because, you know, I think about where I was in terms of happiness, you know, during the pandemic with my career and what I was doing, and where I am now. And it’s just, it’s night and day.
And it’s all because I was willing to take a risk and just see what happens. And, and it’s really, I’m lucky it’s worked out.
Tell us about the Rising Star Award that you received.
I did win the rising star, which is an award given to young lawyers under the age of 40 that are excelling in their law practice, which was a nice accolade to receive.
It’s, you know, it’s a national award. So, you are applying and going up against, you know, very talented peers across the entire country. So yeah, it was a really, it was great honor to be recognized with that award.
What challenges have you faced in your career?
Yeah, so I would say like, one of the challenges that I’ve had to face is having to rebuild my team. There were some exits last year; there were some leave of absences. And they all happened at one time.
And it was stressful, for sure. I laugh because I’m almost have my full team compliment. But up until today, so just the end of October, there’s been one day this year that I’ve had a full team.
So yeah, so that has certainly been a challenge. And I, you know, I commend the team, because we have been able to kind of rise to the challenge. We’ve been able to execute on deliverables for the firm.
It’s been nice to be able to really reflect on the team members that we need to add the skill sets that we need to incorporate onto the team. So certainly, it was stressful. It all in terms of that challenge, it also provided me an opportunity to get into more of the operations side of my team.
Having spent so many years practicing law, I understand the service that we are selling. But I don’t have the same skill set when it comes to the actual marketing side of my role. So I was able to get exposure, hands on, because we, you know, you jump in, when there’s, you know, a need on the team.
You know, I very much of the mindset that we’re a team, we win as a team, we lose as a team. I have often said, the worst thing that you can say to me is that something is not your job. The job is to make sure that the team is succeeding.
And if that means that you need to be, you know, making a social media post on Canva, if you are a director, that’s what needs to be done. Because that’s where, you know, we’ve got a red flag there, we’ve got a fire to put out there. So that’s where we need to direct the resources.
So very much like we’re a team. And certainly, it’s a philosophy that I stand by. And if my team needs me to be in the swag closet, pulling swag, because a lawyer has a dinner that they’re going to tonight, and they’re like, oh, I need to bring some things to hand to my guests.
Okay, where’s the closet key? And I’ll go down and pull that because everybody else has something that they’re working on and needs their attention. So very much a team approach.
Knowing what you know now, is there anything you’d do differently?
No, there’s nothing I would do differently. Everything that I have done to date has given me the skill set that I’m able to leverage today. You know, litigation, you know, can think on my feet, I can, you know, defend a position, doing the transactional work, expose me to the demands that a business owner is faced with. And at the end of the day, that’s what a law firm is. We are a business.
We’re providing a professional service to our clients. But you know, just like an accounting firm is a business, so is a law firm. So, I’ve been able to gather a skill set that I’m able to rely on in this role.
What methods and strategies have you used to help you grow professionally?
So, the methods and strategies that I’ve used to build my career, certainly mentorship has been key. And I’ve been very fortunate to have some amazing mentors through my both through my law career and now in my executive position that has been extremely helpful in terms of having people that I can go to bounce ideas off, you know, kind of talk through things. Like literally, with one of my personal injury files, two weeks ago, I reached out to a mentor, even though we’re both partners, and I literally was like, I just need to talk this through with you.
Like I need to just have a second set of ears on this to make sure I’m not missing anything. And right away, he’s like, yeah, no problem. Like, let’s talk this through.
So that has been important to me or finding allies. I can’t stress enough how important it is for women to find allies, to find, and they don’t necessarily have to be other women, but certainly having people that are going to be singing your praises and your accolades in rooms that you’re not in. That has been, I’ve been so lucky to have built relationships with women like that.
I certainly try to have that kind of a role for, you know, the women in my life. When I can, you know, shine a light on one of my friends, on a colleague, that’s certainly something that I want to be able to do, because I’ve been fortunate enough to have a network of women who have done that for me. Community involvement has been a huge part of how I have built my network.
I’ve sat on several boards throughout my career. One local group that I love being part of is SheShares with the Waterloo Region Hospital Foundation. It is an organization that harnesses the collective power of women.
So everybody, you know, comes together, we all donate funds, the funds get pooled, and then at the end of the year there is a meeting where we hear from members of the hospital about different projects or initiatives that are in need of funding, and the group together decides which of these projects we want to support with the funds that we’ve raised throughout the year. So that’s a great local initiative that, you know, I can’t speak highly enough of. Again, business development has certainly, obviously, moving into the role that I’m in now, has been something that I have been able to excel at.
It’s not to say you might not have to go into the room with hundreds of people on occasion, but spend the bulk of your business development time on initiatives that you like doing because business development is, it’s not always where you want to spend your time. It’s very future looking. It’s not what’s going to put money in the revenue line right now. It’s about what’s going to put revenue in that line down the road.
Tell us more about your involvement in the London Sciences Health Foundation
Yes, so currently, I’m on the board for the London Health Sciences Foundation for Tech Alliance, which is a very similar to Communitech here locally in KW. I’m also on the board for Parkinson’s Society Southwestern Ontario
Tell us more about Lerners Women’s Symposium
Yeah, so the Learners Women Symposium is an annual event that we put on where we bring in a speaker who will talk about various topics of interest to women. And then we have an opportunity to network with the attendees.
So, it’s very much open to women of any stage of their career from any industry to really learn a bit from our speaker. And then to have an opportunity to meet people who might not necessarily be in their circle. So, it’s been a great success.
I’m really, happy with that initiative. Last year, we had a comedian come and speak to us about mental health. We’ve had a professor from Rotman School of Business come and speak about networking.
So, we really tried to identify an issue that would be of interest to female professionals, female leaders, so that they have an opportunity to come and learn as well as to meet some new people.
How do you personally define success?
So, I personally define success as happiness. I, you know, went through a period where I was not happy in my career.
And that really provided me with a valuable lesson that there is an intrinsic value in happiness that is often discounted. Especially when you’re younger in your career, you can become very focused on like, how much money am I making? What’s my title? You know, these are important things, you know, to set us goals, but at the end of the day, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to make you happy. So, for me, being happy in my job, you know, looking forward to getting to the office and seeing my team and doing the work that I do, that to me is what success is.
What are some of your core values that you have integrated into your professional life?
So, I think one of the core values for me is respect. I treat every person on my team at the law firm in general with the same amount of respect. I don’t care what your title is, whether you work in the mail room, whether you’re the managing partner, the chair of the firm, the success of the firm depends on everybody there.
If one person can’t do their job, then the whole firm suffers. So I really try to instill that value in the way that I lead my team, because everybody has an integral role to play, whether you have been, you know, you’re fresh out of school and you’re new and you’re learning, or you are a veteran on the team and you are, you know, mentoring the people that are coming new to the team. You know, that is the core value that I operate by.
What are some of the best ways to recruit talent and build teams?
I would say an important part of building a strong team is collaboration. Everybody needs to feel like they can provide input that, like I said, you know, team success, the team succeeds together, we fail together. And a team failure is a lot easier to swallow if you have been part of that, and you can learn from that, because it’s a team mistake.
And so, to me, collaboration, making sure that everybody feels like they can share their ideas, not be afraid to say, you know, I don’t really agree with this direction, like maybe we should think about, you know, this factor, or moving in this opposite direction. So, collaboration, providing that safe space for people to share honest criticism, honest feedback. To me, that’s what allows the team to excel.
What are some of the benefits of establishing your business in Waterloo Region?
To me, the tech sector in KW is incredible. There is so much opportunity and innovation in KW, which we’re really excited about being able to embrace. And I certainly try to, you know, bring that innovation into my team.
So that, to me, is something that excites me about having our KW office and being able to lead a team in KW.
What inspires you?
What inspires me is, you know, trying to make the world, might be a bit too general, but make somebody’s day better every day. So that might be, you know, as simple as, you know, holding the door for somebody, and who’s, you know, saying hello to somebody who’s looking a little bit down.
The volunteer work that I do, you know, pointing something out to a client when I was doing the corporate work, being like, have you thought about that? And then being like, oh, wow, you know, like I hadn’t, like, thanks for, thanks for raising that. So, to be able to, you know, finish the day feeling like I have made it better for one single person, that to me is what inspires me, is trying to, you know, make sure that every day is a bit better because of an action that I have done that has impacted on somebody.
What advice would you give to other professionals?
Yeah, so I would say take risk is advice that I would provide to women and to leaders. I have been able to transition into this role because I was willing to take risks, take risks in terms of having difficult and potentially uncomfortable conversations, taking risks in terms of moving into practice areas that I didn’t have any experience in, and trusting in myself to be able to figure it out. And I think that is something that women often lack, is the confidence in themselves that, to know that they’ll figure it out. There might be a job posting and you have experience or qualifications for 70% of it.
Well, apply. Like, just take the risk. What’s the worst that happens? You don’t get an interview.
Okay, well, no harm, no foul. But if you haven’t even put the application in, you absolutely are not going to get an interview. So, like, take risk, especially in yourself.
I mean, like, it is the lowest risk gamble you can take, you know, taking a risk that, you know, is going to result in something better for you. So, I would say, risk-taking, whether you’re a leader or a woman, you know, starting off in her career, don’t be afraid to take risk. That’s amazing.
What value does Lerners see in community involvement?
Very important value for Lerners is being involved and engaged in the communities where we have offices. You know, we’re new to the KW region.
We are in our fifth year here in this area. So, a great way for us to get to learn about the community, but also to help the community learn that we’re here is to become engaged in community organizations. So, I mean, the hostel has been, you know, one of the key ones for us, the chamber, obviously has been, you know, great to get to meet other business professionals in the community.
You know, we’ve sponsored several of the Chamber events, which has allowed us to, you know, get brand awareness for the law firm, but also for the lawyers to meet people in the community. So yeah, so very much whenever we come into a new community, we want to make sure that we’re building relationships, but also, you know, supporting the community that we want to support us.
Are there any side projects that you are working on?
So, a couple of years ago, I started, I guess I would call it an online community called Child Free Women in the Workplace.
And it’s really meant to raise awareness about folks at work who do not have kids and kind of different experience, sometimes discrimination that people without kids face often there can be you know different expectations on them in terms of you know workload when they can should be taking holidays who has to work late who has to work in the evenings who needs to be at the office early when you don’t have kids the expectation is it’s easier for you to kind of have that flexibility because you don’t have child care responsibilities.
So, I’m really excited about the ability to raise awareness about the perspective of child-free workers. And I really think it’s something that employers need to be turning their minds to because more individuals are choosing to not have children. So obviously, it’s very important that there are policies in place that support those that choose to have children, but you don’t want to do that to the exclusion of recognizing the different needs and priorities of your child free workers.
Where can we find out more about you and Lerners?
LinkedIn, I would say would be the best spot to find me. And then obviously the Lerner’s website, if they’re looking for more information about the law firm.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
