Innovator – Erica Irvin

Erica Irvin is Group Vice President and Chief Counsel for Legal at Albertsons Companies Inc., charged with leading a team of attorney and non-attorney professionals to support the company’s digital and technology transformation.

With 25 years of experience as in-house counsel at public, private and start-up companies in industries ranging from telecom, payment processing to for-profit higher ed and now consumer retail, Irvin has overseen numerous corporate initiatives, led strategy for the legal support of the implementation of industry-shaping technological innovations, and the wholesale transformation of legal and business operations. While leading through change and building corporate legal functions from the ground up, she has developed deep relationships with partners while scaling legal support of businesses to meet a variety of market demands.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and George Washington University National Law Center, Irvin has a wealth of experience advising businesses in areas including but not limited to technology, intellectual property, marketing compliance, and privacy, as well as e-commerce and digital products. She is recognized for her ability to recruit, manage, and develop top talent and build a diverse workforce that reflects the highest standards of delivering immediate value to the business. She strives to keep her teams inspired even as she drives them to deliver superior legal guidance in innovative ways.

Irvin’s expertise in business operations enables her to deliver value with speed—crucial in an increasingly digital world. Of her current role at Albertsons, she explained, “Designing the legal support of digital transformation of a nationally recognized, brick-and mortar-consumer business requires wearing many hats and a deep understanding of a range of disciplines, from intellectual property and negotiating contracts to ensuring marketing compliance and managing customer relationships.”

Technology and the management of data are at the heart of all her work, however. As she put it, “Leveraging data, understanding how data is collected, and strictly enforcing guidelines about how data can be used is both exciting and challenging, but a necessity in a time of unprecedented digital disruption and opportunity.”