Sandie Okoro

In July 2019, Okoro featured in a biography film as part of the First 100 Years of Women (2014–2019): Women in Law campaign, created to mark 100 years since British women were legally allowed to joined the professions, including law.

In November 2016 she was appointed senior vice-president and general counsel for the World Bank Group.

At the 2016 UK Diversity Legal Awards, Okoro was given a BSN Lifetime Achievement Award.

Okoro has been listed several times in the Powerlist, a listing of the most influential black people in the United Kingdom. In the 2015 list she was at fourth place (or fifth, as third place was shared).

Okoro has been involved with organisations including the Black British Business Awards, the Law Society’s Diversity Access Scheme, and International Lawyers for Africa (ILFA), of which she was president in 2014.

In 2014 City, University of London awarded Okoro an honorary doctorate for her “outstanding achievements in the legal profession and financial services”, noting that in her then role of general counsel at HSBC Asset Management “She is the only female lawyer from an ethnic minority holding such a position in the City”.

In 2014 The Guardian listed Okoro as one of “10 women who are changing the face of the City”.

Okoro has a son and a daughter, and in 2010 was on the board of governors of her daughter’s school.

In 1997 and 1999 Okoro completed the London Marathon.

Okoro worked at Schroders from 1990 to April 2007, rising to be head of legal for corporate services and then joined Barings as its global general counsel. After seven years at Barings she moved to become global general counsel at HSBC Global Asset Management.

She attended Putney High School and then studied law and politics at the University of Birmingham. After university she studied at the Inns of Court School of Law, now part of City, University of London, and joined Lincoln’s Inn, qualifying as a barrister in 1988. In a change of course she re-qualified as a solicitor and in 1990 joined Schroders as head of its trusts team.

Sandie Okoro (born 1964) is a British lawyer, appointed in 2016 as senior vice-president and general counsel at the World Bank Group. She has previously been general counsel at Barings Asset Management, and head of legal at Schroders Investment Management International.

Okoro was born in Fulham, London, in 1964, and grew up in nearby Balham. Her father was a teacher from Nigeria, and her mother a nurse from Trinidad. At the age of nine she decided she wanted to become a judge, influenced by the television programme Crown Court, and undeterred by a school teacher, asking the class their chosen careers, who said “Sandie, little black girls from Balham don’t become judges.”