Natasha Walwyn Robinson Drives Forward to Victory: Leveraging Her Professional Experiences to Blaze New Trails
Natasha Walwyn Robinson
Sony Music, American Public Television, Morgan Stanley, and Meta – these are some of the stops Natasha Robinson has made on the amazing tour of her legal career.
Robinson, who resides in Charlotte, joined Meta eleven months ago as Senior Legal Counsel on the Instagram legal team. Meta is the parent company for popular social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. She obtained the role through the Mom Project, an organization that serves working moms, seeking flexible opportunities, in competitive roles at leading corporations. At Meta, Robinson provides general legal counseling to internal teams tasked with launching new products and features on Instagram Reels, Feed, Explore, and Stories.
“At Meta, I’m essentially like a mini general counsel. I’m a generalist; I do a bit of everything. I give advice, I do research, I talk about regulatory compliance. I help with pre-litigation issue spotting,” she said.
Landing this role with Meta was not only a dream come true but also a full-circle moment because Natasha never imagined that she would work for the organization that sparked her interest in social media. Twenty-one years ago, a handful of college students from prestigious schools were invited to beta test Facebook after its successful launch at Harvard. The University of Virginia was on this list, and at the suggestion of one of her friends, Robinson signed up as a beta user. She was motivated to sign up because Facebook seemed like a new and exciting way to stay in touch with UVa alumni as they chartered the next phase of their post-graduate experience — their careers.
Visualizing Your Destination
While many things have changed since then, one thing has remained the same. Robinson has always had a determination to navigate unfamiliar territory, to learn new things about herself and formulate innovative ways to advocate and give back to others. She cites being born and raised in Cambridge, Mass., a world-renowned educational, cultural, and political hub as the foundation for her intellectual curiosity, love for technology, social justice, and passion for leadership.
Throughout her career, Robinson has pushed beyond her limits to reach new heights to advocate, not only for herself, but for her community. Since moving to Charlotte in 2017, she founded and led the nonprofit organization, Blacks in Technology Foundation-Charlotte, and held numerous leadership positions with the county and state bars, including her recent tenure as communications chair of the North Carolina Bar Association’s Sports & Entertainment Law Section, 26th Judicial District Grievance Committee member and past chair of the Mecklenburg County Bar Real Estate Section.
“I’ve always been a dreamer. I know that sounds cliche, but I just refuse to be put in a box, and I’ve always just had this mindset where if I try something and I fail, I pick myself up again, whatever it may be,” she said.
Preparing for the Journey
Natasha was encouraged by her first-year contracts professor to pursue transactional law, but it wasn’t until she landed a competitive internship that she confirmed that this type of work was where she saw herself practicing. While at Suffolk Law, she interned in the corporate law department of Sony Music BMG Music Entertainment, where she shadowed lawyers on the corporate governance, real estate, intellectual property, litigation, and employment legal teams who served business executives and team members across the organization. She received mentorship and industry insights from A&R and recording artist clients – one of whom was Matthew Knowles, Beyonce’s father and manager at the time. Robinson’s experiences there also helped her to realize how important it was to learn about new technology.
“What everyone was saying that was consistent to all of us and every executive we met was that the Internet was becoming a force to reckon with because of the way that we distributed music, which was primarily through radio. With Napster, there was a big copyright lawsuit. We were not able to keep up with the pace of technology and weren’t sure where the music industry was headed and how we were going to be able to embrace it.
“So that seed was already planted from that experience. I was like, OK, technology is something that if I want to have a career in music or in entertainment, I need to kind of understand it.”
Embracing Change
“An opportunity came up to follow one of my mentors to work at a tech company called Oracle, and at the time I was like, ‘Tech?’ I thought. ‘I don’t know. I like computers. That’s great and all. I don’t know if that’s something I would want to focus on day-to-day.’
“I really do enjoy the corporate in-house generalist role, but my mentor, she was like, ‘if you can learn this, you’re going to be set because technology is the future, and you should really just think about it.’ So I left my public television job (at the time) on a leap of faith to follow her, and ended up staying in technology, where I’ve been for the past 15 years.”
Focusing on technology opened up new opportunities in her career. For example, she recalls fondly how, several years ago, she had the chance to interview for a career-defining role where she would be spearheading a global procurement legal team, leading a patent committee, and advising the C-suite on diversity matters at Progress Software.
When she went to the interview, which was in person, she was eight months pregnant.
“It was a role I wanted so badly because it would allow me to really flourish in my IP practice, which is something that I really wanted to build upon at that time in my career.
“It was a very rich, deep role and very broad and really spoke to a lot of my different interests. And so I was like, I’m going to go for it. They were all so encouraging because they believed that I could do the job, and I could do it well.”
She flourished there, creating the legal department’s first-ever law student intern program and creating the company’s first-ever employee resource group for Black employees, Black@Progress.
From Progress, Robinson landed at Splunk, a leader in big data and cybersecurity. She initially served as lead product legal counsel for their developer platform, where she excelled, giving rise to the opportunity to lead their global marketing and trademarks legal practice. She jokes that she was happily in the “driver’s seat” at Splunk because she oversaw all legal work related to their F1 partnership with McLaren. She also served her community as treasurer of the Black employee resource group, B.E.A.M.S.
By far, one of her proudest moments in her career journey in North Carolina was being named by the Charlotte Business Journal as a “Woman Leader at the Forefront of AI and Digital Information.”
Fuel to Keep Going
One of the most important things is finding people in your corner.
“Don’t limit yourself,” she said. “Unfortunately for women, sometimes that is the narrative, that there are certain things that you must do, or you should be focusing on in your life, whether you’re a parent or not a parent. Be true to who you are. And if there are things that you want to do, look for the helpers. Look for people who understand and are willing to support you, and give little energy to the naysayers, people who, just for whatever reason, feel like you don’t fit whatever mold or what they think you’re supposed to do.
“My children remind me of that every day, to make sure that I keep working at making it the best place I can be within my little sphere of influence for them to thrive and grow.”
“When I was in undergrad,” she continued, “there were very few women in STEM. I was really isolated. And now it’s so different. And I love that. I love that that’s not the case anymore. So I wanted to see what other opportunities open up for them. They literally have endless opportunities to grow and figure out what they want to do with their lives.”
Throughout her career and in her life, Robinson has crossed many finish lines by moving forward and believing in what she can do. Support from a great team plus a hopeful mindset can lead to awesome wins. It’s a thrill to see what you can do when you don’t limit yourself.
Next Stop
You’ll just have to catch Natasha to find out! Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Jessica Junqueira is communications manager for the North Carolina Bar Association.