Konrad Pola Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder

As Diligen’s CEO, Konrad is responsible for the company’s product direction and vision, ensuring that the Diligen platform meets the needs of the evolving legal market.

Prior to co-founding Diligen with Laura van Wyngaarden in 2015, Konrad practised securities law, corporate finance and M&A at leading global and Canadian law firms. Having repeatedly faced the realities of inefficient contract review processes, in particular due diligence, while in practice, Konrad designed Diligen to help firms streamline this critical task. While planning to launch Diligen, Pola taught himself to code on the subway as he commuted to and from his firm. He and Laura teamed up to apply the emerging field of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to streamline the end-to-end process of sorting documents, summarizing contracts and spotting critical provisions. Through Diligen, Pola and van Wyngaarden have introduced practical applications of AI to the field of law, and are leading voices promoting technology and AI-based innovation within the global legal community. Konrad has been featured in Above the Law, Artificial Lawyer, Lawyer’s Daily, Analytics Insight, Reinventing Professionals, Canadian Lawyer, Legaltech News, Law.com and others. Konrad has a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) from Oxford University.

Laura Van Wyngaarden Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder

As Diligen’s COO, Laura’s focus is on building key strategic partnerships with high quality partners as well as working closely with Diligen’s global client base. Laura is passionate about the connection between technology and human work, seeking to identify and explore innovative ways to reduce time and improve the accuracy of human tasks. AI-powered Diligen is a perfect example, transforming the way lawyers review contracts and embrace automation.

Laura frequently speaks about legal technology, artificial intelligence, the future of law and leadership. She has spoken at Legalweek, ILTACON, Evolve the Law, Ryerson University’s Legal Innovation Zone, TechTO, New York City Legal Tech Meetup, Startup Grind and Northwestern’s Global Legal Innovation Summit among others. She has been featured in Above the Law, Artificial Lawyer, Lawyer’s Daily, Legaltech News, Analytics Insight, The National Law Journal, High Performance Counsel, Canadian Lawyer, CCCA Magazine and others. Laura holds undergraduate and honors degrees from the University of Cape Town and a Masters from Oxford University.

Alison Meredith Chief Legal Officer

In her role as Chief Legal Officer, Alison oversees legal matters at Diligen. Alison also works directly with clients to train clauses on the Diligen platform focused on analyzing contracts more effectively. Prior to joining Diligen, Alison worked for top tier law firms in various roles such as Document Review Team Lead in countries including Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada. Her background in legal technology is of great value to law firms and corporate legal departments in need of AI contract clause expertise. Alison frequently authors contract clause trend articles for the Diligen blog and was recently published in Legal IT Insider. Alison has a Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Arts degree from the Victoria University of Wellington.

Andrzej Swaton Senior Full Stack Engineer

Andrzej is part of Diligen’s AI software development team focused on creating the most intuitive, user friendly and well designed applications for AI and machine learning powered contract review. Currently, his prime responsibilities at Diligen are focused on UI/UX and the overall look and feel of the contract review platform. Andrzej is a talented full-stack web developer with almost a decade of professional experience and a master’s degree in computer science. He enjoys working with cutting-edge technologies that make web applications faster and better. Andrzej is a javascript enthusiast with experience ranging from Single Page Apps in frameworks like Ember and Vue through node.js micro services, real time applications to programming IoT robots.

Ryan Williams Junior Software Engineer

Ryan is part of Diligen’s AI software development team focused on creating the most intuitive, user friendly and well designed applications for AI and machine learning powered contract review. His Full Stack Software expertise includes experience with Node.js, React, PostgreSQL, Typescript, Javascript, and Jest, Prior to joining Diligen, Ryan spent three years with Toronto-based BuzzBuzzHome where he excelled in software development as well as senior data analyst roles. Ryan is a highly motivated self-starter, fuelled by curiosity and passionate about all things legal tech and machine learning.

Madaline Zannes Marketing & Social Media Manager

Madaline brings a wealth of content marketing and industry experience to the Diligen team. In her current role, she manages Diligen’s day-to-day content marketing activities including the popular corporate blog and thriving social media channels including Twitter and LinkedIn.

In 2018, she was awarded Greek America’s Forty Under 40, and was named top legal influencer by Disruptor Daily. With experience working in law firms and legal technology, Madaline helps bridge the gap for lawyers keen on innovation. When she is not hosting Diligen’s engaging Twitter Chats, she is delivering content for the Ross Intelligence blog, Disruptor Daily, Inman News and the Huffington Post. She graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School (Juris Doctor, 2012), and holds undergraduate degrees in both Health Sciences and English from York University.