Angela Steele, ’02, Speaks on Confidence and her Career at the General Counsel Conference Midwest
'Don't Self-Select Yourself Out': How the US GC of McDonald's Rose to the Top
Through her career, Angela Steele—now the U.S. general counsel for McDonald’s—has continually applied for jobs she thought she wasn’t qualified for and likely wouldn’t get.
Yet she also had the confidence she could figure them out.
“I thought, ‘I could probably do this. How hard could it be?’ Steele told attendees Wednesday at ALM Global’s General Counsel Conference Midwest in Chicago.
As it turns out, Steele did get those jobs, which allowed her to build legal expertise in a broad range of specialties as well as deep management savvy —accomplishments that allowed her to rocket up the legal department ladder at Chicago-based McDonald’s.
The 2002 University of Chicago Law School graduate started her career in IP law at Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson before branching into commercial litigation at Greenberg Traurig.
Since joining McDonald’s in 2011 as senior counsel for marketing and IP, she’s zigged and zagged through an array of career-enhancing and personally rewarding posts, including general counsel for Latin America, managing counsel for an international-development-licensing team based in Singapore, managing counsel for the marketing and IP team, and, in 2020, interim U.S. general counsel. A year later, McDonald’s dropped the interim tag.
“I have a very varied background that I would not trade for anything,” Steele told Heather Nevitt, ALM’s editor-in-chief of corporate coverage, during a wide-ranging interview kicking off the final day of the two-day conference.
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