with a lot of really smart lawyers who either
don’t have her street smarts or emotional
IQ, and they don’t have a clue why they
don’t get the job done.
“She’s not a table pounder, but she’s
someone who’s going to rely on consensus-
building, somebody who respects different
points of view. She understands something
that a lot of people don’t understand: that
our own perspective might not always be
the right one or the only one.”
Says Chalmers: “Maybe it’s a reflection
of my life—having been raised in different
cultures in different countries, different
colors, different backgrounds. I’ve always
been very tolerant of anything in life.”
CHALMERS GRE W UP IN THE CITY OF
Amritsar, about an hour’s flight northwest
of New Delhi in the Punjab region of India.
Considered a Sikh spiritual capital, it is
home to the Harmandir Sahib “Golden
Temple,” the most important pilgrimage
site in Sikhism. It’s where her father, Gerhard
Glassl, the German son of a bricklayer, met
her mother, Roma Bhandari, the Indian
daughter of a local guesthouse operator.
Besides its spiritual import, Amritsar is also
famous for its textile heritage, which is why
Glassl, a technician specializing in fabrics,
found himself there. Throughout the ’40s
and ’50s he traveled extensively throughout
Asia and the South Pacific, and his tales
of adventure and foreign cultures had a
meaningful impact on his daughter.
“I remember him showing me these
black-and-white photographs of him
standing at the base of Mount Fuji or
eating Japanese food,” she says. “I found it
fascinating. He came from a tiny village in
Bavaria, and had gone and seen the world.”
The other side of her family tree is
marked with “incredibly strong women,”
she says, “who were always bucking the
norm.” Chalmers’ grandmother was a
Parsi who married a Hindu for love, and
encouraged each of her four children to
blaze their own trails. “She ran her own
business, and was always telling stories
about having the courage to try different
things, to find your own way in life, and in
never agreeing with the status quo. She
was also a great believer in the importance
of tolerance.
“When you put those things together, it’s
given me incredible interest and respect for
other cultures, but also a curiosity in how you
bring them together to find a better way.”
When Chalmers was 5, her father was
offered a job designing brassieres at a
Playtex facility in the Philippines, and
Chalmers soon began attending the
International School in Manila. From there
she moved on to the London School of
Economics and qualified as a solicitor
in England, which led to a position
specializing in mergers and acquisitions
at the firm of Lovell White Durrant (today
known as Hogan Lovells). Traveling halfway
across the world made her feel resilient and
bred independence and resourcefulness.
“You’re constantly in an environment which
is alien to you, and for want of a better
phrase, you’re having to figure out how to
fit in,” she says.
While she learned the ropes of private
practice and mergers and acquisitions,
Chalmers received a tip on an in-house
junior lawyer position working on
commercial contracts around the world
at the London offices for Guinness PLC,
makers of the famous Irish dry stout. By
the mid-’90s, Guinness began expanding
into Latin America, and Chalmers was
asked to move to Miami to become the
company’s general counsel for Latin
America and the Caribbean. She was
quickly tasked with learning the legal
systems in Argentina, Colombia, Peru,
Brazil, Venezuela and others to negotiate
distributor terminations and brand
acquisitions, build up relationships with
external law firms, and establish joint
ventures with Latin American partners. Tax
laws, employment laws and incorporating
procedures all flowed through her desk.
But the business grew. Chalmers improved
her Spanish. In 1997 Guinness merged with
Grand Metropolitan and became Diageo,
and Chalmers was given the reins on the
company’s transactions of iconic brands
like Burger King (sold to several private
equity firms, led by Texas Pacific Group in
2002), and she also worked on a long-term
distribution agreement for the Jose Cuervo
brand. “I always had a real fascination
with companies, and the brands, people
and families that companies represented.
The interesting thing about mergers and
acquisitions is it’s like bringing different
cultures together. Ideally the ones that
work are the ones that prove that one plus
one is three or four or five.”
She and her husband, Richard, welcomed
their daughter, Natasha, into the world in
1999. In 2000, she was promoted to general
counsel of Diageo’s international markets,
and in 2002, she was appointed general
counsel of U.S. business and relocated,
again, to Stamford, Connecticut. By the time
InBev called, she’d had exposure to business
on almost every continent.
“Her personal story influences her career,
the decisions she makes, and what she
finds important,” says Blood. “You just
can’t fake that. She speaks universal truths,
and that is: We need to be honest and
passionate about what we do, we need to
work really hard, and be responsible about
what we see.”
Like the best storytellers, Chalmers
continues to add new bits to the narrative.
Her devotion to AB InBev’s social agenda,
environmental and community projects
has become a major endeavo. “She’s
taken the best of AB InBev and brought
it to the rest of the world,” Blood says. “I
think that’s really becoming embedded
in the company’s DNA.” Her work with
Legal Momentum, America’s oldest legal
defense and education fund dedicated to
advancing the rights of women and girls,
is helping to create the next generation of
world-conquerors.
“A significant impact on the positive
evolution of the world is dependent on
access to education [for] everyone, but
also on the role of women in society,” she
says. “I’ve always had a massive interest in
improving the choices that women have.”
In January of 2014, firmly entrenched
in America’s melting pot, the storyteller
landed a fitting capstone to her latest
chapter. The lifelong itinerant officially
became a United States citizen.
