Chief Legal Officer at Unilever
Ritva Sotamaa was appointed Chief Legal Officer of Unilever in February 2013 and has over 25 years of experience as a global legal executive. Ritva is responsible for the company’s Legal, Intellectual Property and Compliance functions and is a member of Unilever’s Leadership Executive.
Ritva was born in Kankaanpää, Finland in 1963 and earned a Master of Laws from the University of Turku, Finland. She has trained on the bench (judge qualification).
Prior to joining Unilever, Ritva spent most of her career within the healthcare industry. She has worked extended periods of time in global corporations in Finland, USA, Germany and United Kingdom covering a broad range of legal matters, managing multinational teams and operating as part of business executive teams.
She was global General Counsel for Siemens Healthcare from 2009 to 2013, based in Erlangen, Germany. Between 2003 and 2009, she held several General Counsel roles at GE Healthcare, mostly based out of Wisconsin, USA. Ritva started her legal career in Finland in 1989 at Instrumentarium Corporation, a Finnish publicly listed healthcare company, as legal counsel for the company’s international business. Between 1996 and 1998, she was Legal Counsel for Partek Corporation and returned to Instrumentarium in 1998 as General Counsel, in which position she served until the company was acquired by GE in 2003.
Non-executive positions
Ritva is also a non-executive director of the Finnish branded consumer goods company Fiskars Corporation.
