Heather Devine – TRAFFIX Group

We caught up with Heather C. Devine, chief legal officer at TRAFFIX Group, in their Canadian offices in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. The works of local Canadian artists with transportation themes catch my eye, but not as much as the Totem pole adjacent to her chair.

Heather Devine | TRAFFIX Group | Chief Legal Officer

She displays awards recognizing her service as Canadian Transport Lawyers Association’s Past President, for several years spent as committee and conference co-chair for the Transportation Lawyer Association (TLA), as annual plenary speaker and writer with the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, and for her role as Vice President International with the International Association of Defence Counsel.

She pauses her schedule to tell me about her role at TRAFFIX—a Canadian-born conglomerate comprising 14 international entities across Canada, the United States and Mexico. TRAFFIX is a rapidly expanding billion-dollar enterprise leveraging experience, industry-leading technology, and a trusted carrier network to tackle the most complete logistical challenges with precision and expertise, she explains. Continuously innovating, TRAFFIX invests in developing proprietary technologies to solve the international supply chain’s complex labyrinth of customer needs.

Devine plays a crucial role in TRAFFIX’s growth and operational excellence. She is responsible for creating a lean, efficient, and technologically advanced legal team to support all entities within TRAFFIX Group, which range from brokerage to factoring. In a short period, her leadership has driven key projects and initiatives essential for the Group’s success.

Devine works closely with Daniel Snow, Managing Partner, and Dilanthi De Alwis Mummert, CFO, advising capable, dedicated teams in Legal, Risk and Finance. Her mandate is to engage sales and operations teams to fully utilize the legal and risk structure of TRAFFIX’s many services and empower TRAFFIX to identify, develop and solve customer needs using a blend of expertise, dedicated customer attention, and innovative proprietary technologies.

Devine’s approach ensures that TRAFFIX team members understand the service parameters and know how to use this understanding to achieve TRAFFIX’s vision. Everyone at TRAFFIX is considered to be an expert who is expected to provide custom solutions to complex supply chain requirements while at the same time managing risk for TRAFFIX and its customers. This comprehensive understanding goes beyond a selling pitch, enabling team members to deliver exceptional service and creating value for TRAFFIX in a seamless enterprise.

Driving expansion with trailblazing vision

Devine is deeply invested in TRAFFIX, which has grown from a one-truck operation to a billion-dollar enterprise and a top supplier for USPS and other prestigious clients. This impressive growth has been achieved under managing partners Daniel Snow, Mark Southey, and Duane Coghlan, known for their clever and entrepreneurial approach. To date, they have maintained and increased TRAFFIX’s success achieved during the COVID-19 pandemic, a testament to their hands-on involvement at every company level.

When Devine joined TRAFFIX, she trailblazed a new role.  Since 1979, when Chuck Snow, a trailblazer with a vision for logistics, founded TRAFFIX, TRAFFIX grew successfully without inhouse counsel, relying upon the expertise of Chuck and then Daniel Snow, who worked with a specialized risk team and a panel of highly experienced external counsel. Devine’s first role at TRAFFIX was to learn the operations and structure of TRAFFIX business to ensure that implementing a more formal legal in-house structure did not detract from the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit that founded TRAFFIX’s success.

As Devine became more integrated into TRAFFIX business structures, she identified areas to support the expansion efforts led by the three current managing partners, Daniel Snow, Mark Southey and Duane Coghlan.  In the first year, Devine worked with TRAFFIX to create standard operating procedures to integrate quality assurance processes across all business units and in all countries of operations. The standard operating procedures, including those for high-risk events and third-party contract approval, required identifying the procedures already in place, then recording and improving those that should be memorialized, and then using AI and other tools to create present and train TRAFFIX team members on the SOPs to achieve TRAFFIX buy-in.

Once the SOPs were in place, Devine focused on improving the autonomy of individual business units by creating playbooks for customer and operational agreements to be developed, negotiated and executed without external counsel or in-house legal involvement.  The playbooks enable TRAFFIX sales and operations to work seamlessly with TRAFFIX customers, implement new technology without delay, and significantly reduce legal fees.

Devine explains: “What I love about TRAFFIX is its intelligent approach to problem-solving for our customers, and I contribute to that success by providing our people at TRAFFIX with the tools to solve problems seamlessly and, at the same time, create value for our company and protect and limit TRAFFIX risk.”

Leading a team with an intelligent approach

Team building is another area where Devine excels. She has a proven track record of creating adept and intelligent internal organizations, having previously established an international law practice and successful trial team recognized for their trial law expertise. At TRAFFIX, she continues to build strong teams, understanding each business unit’s unique needs and pressures and providing tailored legal solutions.

Devine believes that success in the legal department derives from balancing the implementation of new proprietary technologies with legal operations while maintaining strong legal hygiene. She embraces AI and new technologies to augment future growth, utilizing AI-powered analytics tools to gain insights into legal fee budgeting and management.

“I believe this approach ensures that TRAFFIX remains at the forefront of legal innovation regarding both the monetization of TRAFFIX services and the legal operations required to service both sales and the developing technologies,” she says.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2024 and beyond, Devine is focusing on developing innovative legal operations and creating legal tools to enable TRAFFIX team members to be confident, informed and autonomous when doing business with customers. This includes rolling out a one-click cross-border customer agreement, which is phone readable and governs Canada-U.S.-Mexico moves, and finally, drafting user-friendly terms and conditions for TRAFFIX’s new apps, including API and EDI service agreements.

“My goal is to work closely with our CTO, Marc Knoop and his brilliant team to create playbooks for each aspect of TRAFFIX’s business, ensuring autonomy and efficiency across the board and incorporating the robotics under development right now,” Devine adds.

Despite the challenges of managing a small legal team for such a large Group, Devine is impressed daily by the talent and dedication of her colleagues like Sarah Geisel, VP of Legal at TRAFFIX. She ensures the best talent is hired and retained by offering challenging opportunities, interesting articles, seminars, webinars, and conferences to expand their network and career goals. Balancing her intense work schedule with personal time is a constant challenge, but Devine remains committed to being well-rounded and attentive to her family and personal interests.

Aspiring teen to legal powerhouse

Devine has built an impressive legal career rooted in a passion for the law that began when she was just 16. Inspired by the power lawyers had to influence events, she earned her Juris Doctor at Queen’s University after she sailed from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to the Exumas Bahamas on a small yacht, and while she completed a Master of Journalism from Carleton University.

Devine’s legal journey began with prestigious roles in top law firms, first on the East Coast and then on Bay Street, where she worked for many years with Gowling WLG as a full equity partner. Her litigation experience across various business sectors honed her business skills and legal acumen, preparing her to transition to an in-house role as the chief legal officer at TRAFFIX.

With over 20 years as a transportation lawyer, fueled by her love for flying, racing motorcycles, and now sailing her Mirage35, she shifted from private practice to TRAFFIX, one of her clients, just over two years ago.

Balancing her professional achievements with a fulfilling personal life, Devine admires the dedication of her family members to the sciences—her daughter is pursuing a Master of Science in Marine Biology, and her husband is a full professor of science at McMaster University. Devine’s appreciation for her family’s commitment to knowledge inspires her dedication to excellence in her legal career.

“It was always my professional motto to be Client Focused: Success Driven, and now I am TRAFFIX Focused: Success Driven,” Devine explains. “I have the highest expectations for success for TRAFFIX, our Legal & Risk Team, and the future of robotics in the international supply chain. My role as CLO at TRAFFIX makes all these expectations a reality.”