About Christopher Kulawik

Christopher Kulawik is General Counsel of Vista Global. His career has been spent at global, high-growth companies in aviation, technology, luxury, and highly regulated industries, where legal is expected to help the business grow.

The path

Chris graduated with honors from Columbia University and from Harvard Law School, where he was a Notes and Comments Editor of the Harvard Law Review and competed in the Ames Moot Court. His published scholarship has since been cited in the Harvard, Notre Dame, and Florida law reviews.

He clerked for Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the court that decides many of the country's most consequential constitutional and administrative law cases.

He then joined Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in New York, working on high-value, front-page commercial and securities litigation for clients including AIG, Amtrak, and the estate of Lehman Brothers, with matters resolved through more than $1 billion in settlements. His appellate advocacy reached leading courts, including the Second Circuit and the New York Court of Appeals.

From Big Law he moved to the operating side as Vice President of a privacy technology startup. The company was twice named one of the 100 most exciting startups in the world and won the IAPP's 2016 Privacy Innovator award. The role was a hands-on, ground floor education in how a business actually runs.

Chris joined Vista in 2017 as one of its earliest U.S. hires and became General Counsel in 2019. He has since helped turn VistaJet, a single European air carrier, into Vista, a UAE-based private aviation conglomerate with more than 200 business jets, 4,000 employees, 20 offices, and approximately $3 billion in annual revenue across leading brands that include VistaJet, XO, and Apollo.

At Vista, Chris's tenure has included a steady pipeline of acquisitions and their integration, major financial transactions, a global privacy and compliance program, and ESG initiatives such as carbon offset and Sustainable Aviation Fuel transactions.

The approach

• Growth first. Legal's job is to get the business where it is going, safely and quickly.
• Keep the team lean. Small, engaged, and enthusiastic teams that work as part of the business, not beside it.
• Be proactive. Never be the person colleagues only turn to on their worst day.
• Make the call. Advice ends with a clear recommendation and the reasoning behind it.
• Use the tools. AI and automation are part of the daily workflow.

Outside work

Chris travels, hikes, and explores when he can, from Mount St. Helens and Haleakalā to Zion and Athens, and takes photographs along the way. He lives with Lindsey Zahn, an alcohol beverage attorney and founder of Lindsey Zahn P.C., in New York. A selection of his photographs can be found in Field Notes.