On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Ahmed Zedan sits at his office in Elsewedy Electric's New Cairo headquarters. Three time zones are on speakerphone. Four screens are flaring up with data. A factory is navigating changing regional conditions. An ICSED arbitration case has been won. Financial closure is coming up. And a major transaction is closing. Several team members are waiting for his cue. This is the everyday rhythm of the Group Legal Department, and the reason colleagues across the Group have started calling it "the real-life Suits."

At the center of that operation is Zedan himself. He joined Elsewedy Electric in 2013 as a Legal Counsel and climbed steadily through Deputy Legal Director, Legal Director of Projects and Investments, and Group Legal Director before being named Group Chief Legal Officer. More than 21 years into his legal career, he now oversees legal affairs across dozens of companies operating on six continents.

"I didn't arrive at this chair overnight," he says. His path was deliberate: litigation first, then corporate, construction and transactional law, then the top seat. "A senior legal role requires you to understand several areas at once, while knowing when to lean on the specialists in your team."

Protect & Serve

That philosophy crystallized when Zedan and his team rolled out new internal controls and efficiency measures designed to reduce legal exposure across the Group. They presented the initiative under a simple slogan: Protect & Serve, a modern echo of the department's Latin motto, Ad serviendum ac protegendum, "to serve and protect."

The vision impressed CEO Eng. Ahmed Elsewedy. It also helped to position the legal function as a genuine business enabler rather than a bottleneck. The Group Legal Department now operates as a centralized, strategy-driven function, strengthening governance worldwide while supporting growth across six business sectors on six continents. Its daily work balances protecting the Group from risk with enabling timely, ethical decisions. The department puts its motto into practice through its proactive lawyering strategy and the ENABLERS framework of Efficiency, Novelty, Accountability, Business Acumen, Leadership, Expertise, Reliability and Skill.

One of its most ambitious initiatives, Organizational Memory, captures the Group’s history through contracts, negotiations, litigations and precedents so that every new deal builds on the lessons of the last. It drives consistency, efficiency, and long-term strategic value, helping the legal team anticipate challenges and contribute proactively to sustainable governance, operational excellence, and the Group’s global success.

Under his leadership, Elsewedy Electric's Group Legal Department has grown into one of the most diversified and capable global legal departments in the region, a claim not many in-house teams can make. Zedan also sits as a board member on several subsidiaries, locally and internationally, giving him governance oversight that reinforces his legal counsel with direct strategic input.

Trading Seats

Walk into the Group Legal Department on the right day, and you might find the head of the table occupied by someone other than Zedan. A junior counsel leads the call, weighs the options, and joins the decision making, while the Group Chief Legal Officer sits a few chairs down, taking notes. It's one of the more unusual features of his leadership style: he periodically switches roles with members of his team. The exercise is intentional. Team members step into unfamiliar areas of work, get a genuine look at what it means to run a global legal department, and feel firsthand the weight of making the hard calls. While Zedan steps into the respective team member’s place and even uses his/her desk to get the feeling of the challenges being faced by that particular team member.  Along the way, something else takes shape: a stronger sense of connection and belonging across the team. Handing over his seat, even for a day, is Zedan's clearest way of showing how much trust and belief he places in his people. It's also why, when the next challenge lands on the table, his team is always ready to take it on. “Build a team so strong you do not know who the boss is” is a mission that Zedan is striving to achieve.

Discretion as Code

Ask Zedan what underpins a career built on this much sensitive information, and the answer is immediate: confidentiality and trust. In the department, he treats discretion as a cornerstone of professional reputation. Sensitive matters are shared only with the few team members who genuinely need to know.

It's a quiet but firm principle that shapes how the department operates behind the scenes, away from the visibility of the deals and negotiations that make headlines.

Investing in the Next Generation

Zedan's commitment to the profession extends beyond Elsewedy Electric's own legal corridors. Under his leadership, the Group has extended several internship opportunities to law students and graduates; many of them were hired by the Group Legal Department. Zedan earned his LL.B. from his hometown law school in the University of Alexandria, and he believes that the intensity of the internship program in the Group Legal Department is his way of giving back to the community.

His advice to the next generation of lawyers is grounded in the same concepts that shaped his own career. "Students need to speak more in class, not just listen," he says. "A lot of them are afraid to ask questions in a lecture setting. Which leads to them not asking the right questions in a professional one" For young lawyers entering the field, his guidance is equally direct yet thought-provoking: The closer I get the more certain I become that I am far away. Build your knowledge and it will build your name. Work across different practice areas first, then gradually develop your own way of practicing law. But your way of practicing should be rooted on the conviction that Lawyers are soldiers defending the interests of their clients not mercenaries who serve the highest bidders. And it is your job to find solutions not just identify complications.

A Career Rooted in Passion

Zedan's interest in law didn't begin in a courtroom, it began on screen. He traces his early fascination with the profession back to Ahmed Zaki's film Dhidd el-Hukumah ("Against the Government"), crediting the performance with sparking an interest that would eventually define his career.

Decades later, that early spark hasn't dimmed. Despite the pressure of running legal affairs for a global industrial group, Zedan remains committed to the practice of law itself. He enjoys the daily challenges it brings and says he's never seriously entertained the idea of changing professions.

It's that genuine enthusiasm, paired with a disciplined, business-minded approach to legal strategy, that has turned Elsewedy Electric's Legal Department into a strategic advantage outside the Group and  something closer to legend inside the Group, a team sharp enough to earn a nickname borrowed from primetime television, and a leader who has clearly earned his seat at the head of the table.