Sandie Okoro, OBE

Appointed

Dr Sandie Okoro joined the Bank as Group General Counsel in April 2022. In the role she leads the Bank’s Legal, Group Corporate Secretariat and Shared Investigative Services functions.

Career

Sandie is preeminent lawyer, having served as General Counsel and Senior Vice President, and Vice President for Compliance, at the World Bank Group. Prior to joining the World Bank, Sandie was General Counsel for HSBC Global Asset Management and Global General Counsel at Barings.

Sandie is an Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple in the United Kingdom (2018) and was named one of the Upstanding 100 Leading Ethnic Minority Executives (2016), Top 20 Global General Counsel (2019) by the Financial Times, and was recognised as Britain’s 5th most influential person of African and African Caribbean heritage by Powerlist (2018). She holds Honorary Doctorates in Law from City University London (2014), London Southbank University (2018), and her alma mater Birmingham University (2019).

Sandie received a lifetime achievement award from the UK Black Solicitors Network (2016), was named one of the Power 100 Women by City A.M. and 100 Women to Watch by Female FTSE Board. She received the Howard University 2019 Vanguard Women Award for her accomplishments as a woman of colour who has blazed the trail and her commitment to mentoring young women and advancing the rights of women and girls globally. She is also the recipient of the Beyond the Glass Ceiling Award presented by the Leadership Institute for Women of Color Attorneys (2019), the Chambers 100 Outstanding Global General Counsel (2019), and an honoree of Harvard Law’s 7th Annual International Women’s Day Portrait Exhibit (2020). In 2024, Sandie received an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to diversity in international finance.

External appointments

Sandie was appointed inaugural Chair of the UK-based charity Women of the World Foundation in June 2021, she received an honorary lifetime Emeritus membership of the Law Societies’ Compact and Forum for Sustainable Development Goal 16 in June 2022, and she is a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Sandie has previously been a council member of the human rights organization JUSTICE, Ambassador for the Law Society’s Diversity Access Scheme and she sat on the Equality Standards Panel of the Premier League.