Austin K. So is Division/Deputy General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Board Member of Heraeus, a Fortune Global 500 multinational manufacturing conglomerate with $23 billion in revenues and 15,000 employees working in 126 subsidiaries across 6 continents.
As General Counsel and Secretary of Heraeus’s global medical devices division, Austin leads a team of six lawyers in the US, Germany and China, and reports to the Division CEO in Switzerland and Global General Counsel in Germany. In addition, Austin serves on the Board of two medical device companies within the Heraeus Group. As Deputy General Counsel and Secretary for the Americas, Austin helped build a new US Legal Department from the ground up. He currently supports 12 operating companies manufacturing diverse products, including sensors, instruments, chemicals, industrial lamps, quartz glass, optical fiber and photovoltaic paste. In this role, he reports to President and General Counsel for the Americas and oversees litigation, commercial transactions, employment matters, government investigations and compliance for all US companies within the Heraeus Group.
In the past year, Austin has received five prestigious recognitions:
- Top-3 Finalist for Outstanding In-House Counsel of the Year from the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)
- Finalist for Best Small Legal Department of the Year from the ACC
- Diverse Attorney of the Year from The Legal Intelligencer
- Change Agent 2015 from the Council of Urban Professionals
- Corporate Leadership Award from the Asian Pacific American Lawyers Association of New Jersey
Prior to joining Heraeus, Austin practiced both litigation and corporate transactional law at top New York law firms. Austin received his A.B. from Harvard and his J.D. from Penn Law.