________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In tennis, you can’ t replay the last point. You focus, execute, and move on. Kristin Rinaldi leads Arxada’ s legal team with the same mindset.
Kristin plans the next play even as the rally continues. She balances precision with forward momentum and acknowledges challenges without dwelling on them. Her approach helps keep her team steady in a fast-paced private equity-backed environment.
As Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Arxada, a Bain Capital and Cinven portfolio company, Kristin oversees Legal, Intellectual Property, Compliance, and Trade Compliance for Arxada’ s approximate 3,200 staff globally. When Arxada separated from Lonza in 2021 and became an independent business, her department had to adapt in real time, setting the tone for how Legal would operate in a more self-reliant environment. Arxada is a global science-based specialty ingredients business focusing on multiple end-markets, primarily in human health and nutrition, home and personal care, paints and coatings, and wood protection.
Shaping an independent company
“ The Legal team has evolved along with Arxada’ s journey as an independent company,” Kristin shares.
Before the carveout, Arxada operated as a segment within a large Swiss life sciences company. After the transaction, Arxada, as a standalone company, needed its own systems, governance model, and decision-making framework, no longer able to depend on a parent organization’ s infrastructure.
“ We became responsible for legal frameworks that had to work across different business models, risk profiles, and growth trajectories,” Kristin notes.
That shift meant, over time, a redesign. She focused on building what she calls“ right-sized resourcing, foundational programs and governance, as well as business embedded partnering.” Her team assessed where it had depth and where it had gaps, then rebalanced coverage to match Arxada’ s growing needs.
“ When we became an independent company, we were slightly overrepresented in some areas and maybe slightly underrepresented in others,” Kristin observes.“ And when you have a lean base, you need to be creative with your resources.”
That creativity goes beyond internal roles. Kristin and her team reviewed external support models to ensure that outside counsel and service providers fit Arxada’ s new environment.“ We’ ve made significant changes to nearly all of our outsourced services over the last few years,” she explains.
In a private equity environment, timelines move fast, and expectations remain high. Kristin views the department’ s operating model as a practical tool and strives to help the business move forward rather than a formality that slows it down.
Communication, clarity and compliance
Communication is the thread that keeps strategy, risk, and execution aligned across
32