Meg Cavanaugh – Commvault

Mentorship sits at the center of Meg Cavanaugh’s leadership philosophy, shaped in part by the unlikely way her own legal career began. She entered law school on a dare, intent on proving someone wrong, but along the way, she discovered the power of guidance, opportunity, and steady encouragement.

Meg Cavanaugh | Commvault | Senior Vice President, Legal

That early experience of testing herself and seizing incremental chances to grow now informs how she develops others. As senior vice president of legal at Commvault, she channels that perspective into building not just a global legal organization, but a culture where emerging lawyers and legal professionals are pushed to stretch, supported as they learn, and reminded that small opportunities, taken consistently, can define an entire career trajectory.

Commvault is a global leader in cyber resilience, data protection, and recovery solutions, helping enterprises protect, manage, and recover data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Its platform supports organizations facing growing threats from ransomware, regulatory complexity, and digital transformation. This business reality has shaped what legal leadership looks like inside the company. For Cavanaugh, the legal function is not a back-office service. It is a strategic, trusted advisor embedded in growth, governance, and innovation.

In just four years, in partnership with longtime colleague and Commvault’s Chief Trust Officer Danielle Sheer, they have reengineered Commvault’s legal department from a primarily U.S.-based function into a globally integrated team. Today, the legal organization includes roughly 30 professionals, three-quarters of whom are attorneys, working across commercial, privacy, securities, compliance, employment, and emerging technology issues. The scale reflects both the pace of Commvault’s expansion and Cavanaugh’s belief that legal must evolve alongside the business.

Cavanaugh’s path into law was unconventional. After earning a degree in criminal justice from Worcester State University, she entered Suffolk University Law School with something to prove. What began as a challenge quickly turned into momentum. She finished near the top of her class and kept saying yes to the next opportunity in front of her.

That approach carried her through early roles and eventually into the technology sector. Before joining Commvault, she spent more than six years at Carbonite, building experience in privacy and commercial law at a time when cloud adoption and data protection were accelerating across industries. She also spent a year living and working in London, an experience that broadened her perspective on global business culture.

Scaling the legal function into a growth engine

Cavanaugh’s first priority was not just adding headcount. It was redefining how the team worked. She focused on awareness, leadership development, and expanding legal’s footprint across the business. The result has been a shift from a reactive model to a proactive, strategic team of partners.

Alongside her global leadership team, Cavanaugh brought key functions in-house, including immigration and enterprise risk management, reducing reliance on outside counsel while increasing speed and institutional knowledge. Her dream team also created an entirely new securities department to manage the growing complexity of public company obligations, investor communications, and regulatory reporting.

That expanded infrastructure enabled one of the most significant transactions in Commvault’s history. In 2023, the company completed a $900 million convertible note offering, a deal that required coordination across multiple banks, intense diligence, and close alignment with finance leadership.

For Cavanaugh, the successful outcome validated her belief that legal teams can be both operationally rigorous and commercially agile.

“It is not only about technical precision,” she says. “You have to understand the business, build relationships, and be willing to collaborate across functions for ‘legal’ to really add value.”

Building leaders, not just lawyers

While deal execution and regulatory expansion are visible milestones, Cavanaugh measures success by something less tangible. She is focused on building the next generation of leaders inside Commvault.

“Everybody is different, and that is one of the hardest parts of leadership,” Cavanaugh says. “Managing personalities, learning how people work best, and helping them grow is the most rewarding part of the job.”

She emphasizes coachability, creativity, and emotional intelligence alongside legal skill. That philosophy has helped her build a culture where lawyers are comfortable taking on new types of work, engaging directly with business leaders, and stretching into unfamiliar territory.

Mentorship is a constant theme in her leadership style. She encourages early-career professionals to look for incremental growth opportunities rather than waiting for rare, career-defining moments.

“When mentoring, I tell people there are small opportunities every day compared to big opportunities once in a while,” Cavanaugh says. “If you keep showing up and doing the work, those moments start to add up.”

Modernizing the playbook

As Commvault invests in AI, automation, and advanced cyber resiliency technologies, the legal organization is evolving alongside it. Cavanaugh sees artificial intelligence as a tool for efficiency, not a replacement for judgment.

“We are careful about how we bring AI into our work because credibility and accuracy matter,” Cavanaugh says. “Low-level work will be automated, but nothing replaces human oversight. AI cannot negotiate a deal or resolve a dispute… yet. You still need people for that.”

Her team is already exploring how AI can support contract management, compliance workflows, and internal knowledge sharing. At the same time, she is planning for emerging regulatory challenges such as cloud sovereignty, cross-border data rules, and shifting privacy standards. Those priorities influence how she hires, often looking for candidates who bring both technical expertise and curiosity about emerging legal and business trends.

Cavanaugh recognizes that leadership today looks different from it did a decade ago. Remote work, hybrid teams, and shifting cultural norms have reshaped how organizations operate.

“The traditional model does not fit the reality of how people live and work anymore,” she says. “You have to meet people where they are and build systems that support flexibility while maintaining accountability.”

That philosophy mirrors the way she built Commvault’s legal team. It is distributed, collaborative, and designed to scale as the company grows.

Looking ahead, Cavanaugh remains focused on sustaining momentum. Her goal is to ensure the legal team remains aligned with Commvault’s mission to help organizations protect and recover their most critical digital assets.

The transformation she has led is not finished. It is ongoing, shaped by new technologies, new markets, and new expectations of what legal leadership can deliver. For Cavanaugh, that challenge is exactly what makes the role meaningful.

What began as a dare has become a career defined by adaptability, ambition, and trust in the people around her. At Commvault, she is not just building a legal function – she is building a global team designed to grow with the business, navigate uncertainty, and help shape the company’s future.