Chaman Sidhu

Non-Executive Director, Innovation Victoria & former Group Chief Legal Officer, Xero

Chaman Sidhu is a non-executive director and former Chief Legal Officer with over 25 years’ experience helping global technology, digital and media companies grow, scale and expand into international markets. She combines deep expertise in intellectual property, commercial dealmaking, capital markets, and ethical data use with a practical, founder-friendly approach to governance and risk. She is known for building high-performing teams and cultures that scale.

Chaman serves on the Boards of Innovation Victoria, global construction SaaS company Buildxact, and The Wheeler Centre (Deputy Chair). She brings a passion for helping founders and innovators turn great technology and ideas into durable, globally scalable businesses.

She was Group Chief Legal Officer and Company Secretary at Xero Ltd from 2016 to 2022, as the company expanded across global markets and grew from small cap to top 20 ASX. Her C-suite contributions spanned global markets strategy, capital raisings, listings strategy, M&A, cross-border commercial partnerships and multi-country regulatory strategy for new products. She co-sponsored Xero’s ethical data use and AI strategy, and grew its global legal, regulatory and government relations team more than sixfold.

Before Xero, Chaman was Group General Counsel and Company Secretary at Envato, a global digital marketplace scale-up, where she re-launched the licensing and IP management structure for its two-sided marketplaces. She held the same role at Lonely Planet, supporting its digital transformation and its founders’ exit to BBC Worldwide.

Chaman holds an LLM in Intellectual Property from New York University, where she was a Hauser Global Scholar. The Financial Times named her one of the top five global high-growth General Counsel.