As a partner at a prominent Houston litigation boutique, Denise Hansen was preparing for opening arguments in July 2008 representing ConocoPhillips in a major construction payment dispute with a contractor when she slipped out of a courtroom in Contra Costa County, California, to call her son to wish him a happy fifth birthday.
When she finished her call, she started crying in the bathroom.
“I remember thinking right then that I would not miss another birthday of his ever again and that something needed to change,” Hansen told The Texas Lawbook.
Hansen walked back into the courtroom and presented her client’s case in a bench trial over the next six weeks.
“The contractor was inept and overbilled us,” she said. “We won the trial.”
Ironically, the damages expert in the trial also worked for Siemens Energy at the time.
“He knew how much I was struggling with missing milestones in my son’s life and how I had several more cases like this one scheduled over the next year,” she said. “He told me that Siemens Energy was hiring a senior lawyer for their oil and gas division [and] he thought I’d be a good fit for it.”
During the middle of the trial, Hansen submitted her resume and got the job.
Seventeen years later, Hansen is still at Siemens Energy, where she was promoted to general counsel of its North American operations in 2020.
While Hansen and her legal team have achieved huge successes during her time at Siemens Energy — the $7.6 billion merger with Dresser Rand in 2023 and the multibillion-dollar carve-out of Siemens Energy from Siemens in 2020, to name two — the past 18 months have been among the most challenging in her career.
Hansen has dealt with the consequences from constantly evolving tariffs; the continuous and massive federal regulatory changes in the energy sector, including the dialing back of wind-industry tax credits; the executive orders regarding diversity and inclusion; the emergence and employment of artificial intelligence; the successful licensing necessary to do potential work in Venezuela; and the extraordinary growth that SEI has experienced.
“I think the tariff and executive order initiatives and responsiveness along with our massive growth and expansion plans in the U.S. are taking up the most of my time right now,” she told The Texas Lawbook.
Siemens Energy has 90,000 employees operating in 90 countries with a market cap of nearly $150 billion.
Throughout the legal and business communities, Hansen has seemingly earned unanimous respect.
“Denise possesses superb instincts and the ability to anticipate how a matter will unfold — two, three and even four steps ahead,” said Reed Smith partner Francisco Rivero. “She can identify issues and manage risk in a way that cannot be taught. Equally important, she is not afraid to push back when the circumstances warrant it, and I believe that has made all the difference in reaching the right outcomes on some very thorny issues. If I had to describe her in a single phrase, it would be as a ‘steady hand.’”
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honoring Hansen with the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department (21 or more attorneys).
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Denise Hansen dives into AI and shares an easy ice breaker for conversation with her.
“Denise never asks anything of her team that she would not do herself,” said Rivero, who nominated Hansen for the award. “She engenders deep loyalty because she is entirely devoted to her colleagues, her legal department and the commercial groups she supports. That devotion is reciprocated, and it is easy to see why.”
“Throughout her career, Denise has consistently overcome adversity and persevered,” Rivero said. “She was one of the first women partners at her firm. During her time as a litigation partner, she successfully balanced a full docket and family responsibilities while fighting and beating breast cancer. At every step of the way, Denise has confronted and overcome challenges with thoughtfulness and grace.”
Kirkland & Ellis partner Bob Allen said Hansen is “an incredibly talented and skilled lawyer, but those are just table stakes.”
“What makes Denise unique is that she is a leader,” Allen said. “She truly cares about her colleagues and has built a fantastic team environment.”
Katie Erno, counsel at Crowell & Moring, said Hansen’s “exceptional combination of business acumen and legal judgment” makes her a strong leader.
“We have watched Denise navigate complex and novel challenges, from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis to more recent challenges for government contractors stemming from numerous executive orders issued by the current administration,” Erno said. “Through it all, she is quick, thinks several steps ahead, pivots when necessary and equips herself with the knowledge she needs to best serve her clients.”
There is one issue — one battle — that was more extraordinary than all of those achievements combined.
“This is a hard one to talk about,” Hansen told The Lawbook. “I found out I had Stage IV breast cancer in late 2011/early 2012. The support I had from not only my family and personal friends, but also my work friends and colleagues, contributed to my success and the reason I am a 13-plus-year survivor. Cancer makes you have perspective. You have no choice. It makes you think about things in a different way and not panic or worry about things that, in the grand scheme of life, you have no control over or which are not critical. Your definition of critical gets adjusted.”
Hansen’s battle against cancer spanned over a year and a half. There were two three-month rounds of chemo and then an extended period of radiation followed by proton therapy.
“I never took time off the year I was having treatment except for the times I had surgery,” she said. “I vividly remember being on a conference call while getting chemo — you had to be there all day, so why not take your computer and phone and get some work done. No one on the call knew where I was or what I was doing.”
This was in 2012, before there were Zoom meetings.
“Two business colleagues from different business areas were arguing heatedly about a settlement strategy,” she said. “And I just remember thinking in a very weird, calm way, ‘Wow, this is really not that complicated.’ I normally would’ve just let them duke it out and prepared the documents once they eventually agreed on a solution. But I found myself suggesting a compromise very early and getting right to the ‘end’ solution that I think they would’ve gotten to eventually because I knew the nurse was coming back in to start a different chemo in 15 minutes and I wanted to speed things up.”
Hansen said the legal team often finds themselves in the middle of a lot of things that are not technically legal.
“We are the deal makers, but we are also the peacemakers,” she said. “We drive solutions, and we often take on crucial roles that might not be traditional legal roles just to get things over the finish line. I think cancer taught me to do more of that — to drive solutions earlier and not to waste time. It’s the bigger picture. And I really try not to sweat the small stuff anymore.”
Hansen said answering The Lawbook’s questions “served as a good reminder to me to focus on that perspective right now in this exciting energy market with all the challenges that come with it.”
“Also, I love to celebrate birthdays now more than I ever did,” she said. “Every birthday is a gift.”
Hansen was born in Houston but grew up an hour north of Houston in Huntsville, where she lived with her mom and twin sister. Her mom taught high school English and journalism. Her stepfather was a real estate appraiser.
The roots of Hansen’s interest in law came early in high school when her mother helped start the school’s mock trial team, which was sponsored by a local lawyer. The first year, she played the role of a witness. The second year, she was a lawyer.
“I made the team and knew immediately I wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer,” she said.
Hansen’s first mock trial was, ironically, an oil and gas dispute involving land and mineral rights.
“Funny how things work out,” she said.
After earning her bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M, she went to the University of Texas School of Law, where she graduated in 1992.
For 17 years, Hansen was a trial lawyer at Beirne Maynard in Houston, which she described as a remarkable experience. She made partner in only five years.
The 2008 California trial for ConocoPhillips was her last big case before going in-house to Siemens Energy in February 2009 as senior lawyer for the oil and gas division at Siemens.
In 2014, Siemens Energy acquired Dresser-Rand. SEI initially kept Dresser-Rand as a separate company for a few years.
Siemens Energy had Hansen take a transitional role as associate GC at Dresser-Rand. In 2017, she was made the company’s general counsel.
“When we eventually merged the two entities together, I resumed my lead lawyer role for the merged Siemens Energy Oil and Gas legal team in the U.S., with both the Dresser-Rand and SEI teams joined together,” she said.
In 2020, Siemens Energy named Hansen as its general counsel.
Only months into her tenure as general counsel, the compliance function at Siemens Energy uncovered that misconduct by former employees had led to confidential competitor pricing information being improperly shared with the company during the RFP process for a gas turbine project tender.
Experts in corporate compliance widely praise Hansen for how she handled the situation.
“It was by far one of the most challenging periods of my 30-plus year career as a lawyer,” she said. “But it was also one of the best learning experiences of my career.”
Hansen worked with the compliance team to investigate the claims, kept senior leadership informed of the facts, advised on the decision to voluntarily disclose the information to customers and competitors and worked with the appropriate governmental authorities. SEI also took disciplinary action against several individuals and further enhanced its already-strong compliance program.
“My role was to guide the company through discovery, investigation, voluntary disclosure, regulator engagement and remediation as well as the litigation — ensuring a disciplined, transparent response that balanced legal risk management with credibility, accountability and long‑term trust,” she said. “In parallel, I worked closely with compliance and HR to ensure timely and appropriate disciplinary actions, including separations where warranted.”
“I was not proud of the circumstances that led to this situation, but I was very proud of how our organization handled it when the bad behavior was discovered,” she said.
Rivero said Hansen has experienced many extraordinary successes during her 17 years at Siemens Energy.
“She has been confronted with and excelled in a myriad of circumstances — cutting across divisions, reporting structures and industries,” he said. “If I had to choose one, I would point to her work on the Siemens Energy spinoff from Siemens, which was a monumental task and achievement. At a time when there could have been significant uncertainty about how such a spinoff would affect thousands of workers, Denise was a steadying force who guided the organization toward still waters.”
“Today, Siemens Energy is a global powerhouse in energy technology, and Denise helped chart its path,” Rivero said.
A major challenge during the past 18 months, according to Hansen, is “the ever-changing nature of tariffs.”
Hansen said the “volatility surrounding the topic creates an uncertainty and a challenging environment for any general counsel and legal department to navigate, particularly if you are a global company like we are with factories all over the world.”
“Trying to explain that volatility and adjust to it from the standpoint of customer contract approaches and risk mitigation to vendor contracts and risk allocation to advising our foreign parent board and business partners about the legality and legal bases for those changes presents challenges that I am not sure I see an end to any time soon,” she said. “And [they are] ones that I am not sure we’ve had to face before.”
Hansen said she is proud of the legal department’s participation in pro bono work and charitable activities.
“We participate in pro bono clinics several times a year and have three to four dedicated charitable activities that the full team participates in every year,” she said. “We always have a day of volunteering at the Food Banks in Houston and Orlando and work with other selected charities each year, like activities to support local children’s hospitals, homeless and veterans’ charities. These activities give back to our communities but also serve as great motivational and team building time together as well.”
Hansen said her best days at Siemens Energy have not been the court victories or the number of deals closed, but the good times shared with her coworkers.
“The best days are the times they made me laugh the hardest, even during difficult challenges,” she said. “When someone got good news from a difficult medical situation — including the day I personally found out I was cancer free and I was able to share the news with everyone at work. There are so many day that I feel like I and our team helped the business on important matters. And those are great days. But the ‘best’ days have been about the people I work with.”
Kirkland partner Gregg LoCascio said Hansen has always been “calm, collected and analytical, even when faced with difficult decisions in complex matters.”
“Denise is a tenacious survivor who has not met a challenge she cannot overcome,” he said. “And she can be heard on fall weekends yelling ‘gig ‘em Aggies.’”
Fun Facts: Denise Hansen
- Favorite book: I cannot name just one. I read a lot, and I am usually reading two to three books at a time, depending on my mood. Usually, I have one nonfiction book and two fiction books going at the same time. They will range from light, beachy reads to murder mysteries, action thrillers and “who done its” to John Grisham-type lawyer novels and some sort of autobiography or historical book about something that interests me. I am currently reading a lot of fiction that is set in World War I or World War II, like The Tatooist of Auschwitz, The Keeper of Lost Art and The Paris Agent as well as Greenlights (Matthew McConaughey’s memoir — even though he is a Longhorn, I still like him) and My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
- Favorite movie: My Cousin Vinny. It will never not make me laugh.
- Favorite drink: Water and champagne or espresso martinis.
- Favorite restaurant: Pappasito’s. Best chicken fajitas and tortillas on the planet!
- Favorite all-time vacation: My husband and I eloped in Fiji and honeymooned there. It was beautiful, was the first time I ever took off for more than a week, and there were no phones, internet/cell service or TVs. It was heaven.