Roman Lalich

After completing his MBA, Roman Lalich thought law school would be his next step. “I always wanted to go to law school,” he recalls. “I wanted to practice corporate law, and mentors at the time suggested that an MBA would be really useful. So I did the MBA first, and then joined the workforce. Law school got pushed to the back burner.”

Over time, Lalich built a successful career in corporate governance, a field that sits at the intersection of business strategy and law. “A lot of corporate secretaries and governance professionals are lawyers by trade,” he explains. “I didn’t want to stop my career progression to become a full-time law student, but I wanted that deeper legal background.”

When several colleagues mentioned Osgoode’s Professional LLM in Business Law, he decided to look into it. “They told me that you don’t have to be a lawyer, as long as you’re working in a field closely connected to the law,” he says. “I did more research and thought, this would be a really good fit. A lot of the work I do is so connected to the law that having that background would complement it perfectly.”

That decision paid off. Lalich completed the program while serving in a senior governance role at The Co-operators Group, where he led the creation of an enterprise governance framework to unify governance practices across 72 subsidiaries. “It really unlocked a new way of thinking,” he says. “My MBA unlocked one layer, and the LLM added another. It helped me think differently and approach problems from a broader perspective.”

Now Director and Assistant Corporate Secretary at Purolator Inc., Lalich leads corporate governance, subsidiary oversight, and board operations for Purolator Holdings and its global subsidiaries. In this role, he has guided the development of enterprise governance structures, compliance and ESG strategies, and governance due diligence for major acquisitions.

Among the courses that stood out most were those taught by Professor Poonam Puri. “I had her for three classes: Corporate Governance, Boards of Directors, and a course on stakeholder relations,” Lalich says. “Her classes were so relevant to what I was doing day-to-day. Understanding things like piercing the corporate veil, director duties, and liability really helped me build frameworks that safeguard both the organization and its directors.”

Even though much of the program was virtual, Lalich found a strong sense of connection. “There were six or seven people I saw in almost every class,” he says. “You develop a rapport, you know each other’s industries, you work together in groups. It felt very collaborative, and graduation was great because we finally met in person.”

Beyond his corporate role, Lalich has also held leadership roles across several boards and advisory bodies, including as Chair of the Director Recruitment Committee and Governance Review Taskforce at Libro Credit Union, Chair of the Board at the Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital Foundation, Second Vice-Chair and Governance Committee Chair at the Middlesex Hospital Alliance, and adjunct faculty for the Governance Professionals of Canada, where he teaches national programs on enterprise governance and ESG oversight.

For Lalich, the LLM also changed how he approaches conversations with lawyers and executives. “It enhanced how I was able to show up,” he says. “Before, I was approaching things purely from a business or governance standpoint. After the LLM, I could engage more deeply on legal issues, ask better questions, challenge advice, and make sure decisions were grounded in both governance and law.”

His advice to prospective students is simple: “Do it. Whatever apprehension you have – about workload, about making connections – it will definitely be worth it.”