Tania Tandon: this year’s recipient of the Extraordinary Member Award

In The Landmark’s Tower Suite, in front of the impressive windows overlooking the winter garden, Tania Tandon sat with an almost disbelieving smile. In front of her, the gleaming Skultuna-crafted Extraordinary Member Award 2025 on the table – a symbol of a journey that began with an Indian junior doctor moving to Sweden in 1970s and has since led to a new kind of law firm in the UK, a bridge between cultures, and a remarkable contribution to the Swedish–British business community.

The room was almost empty. The murmur of preparations for the Christmas Luncheon drifted in from the corridors of The Landmark, but in the Tower Suite, it was just Tania and the award that still felt slightly unreal to her.

“It feels incredible,” says Tania Tandon, Founder of TandonHildebrand and recipient of the Extraordinary Member Award 2025. “It also feels to me like it’s almost the wrong way around. I feel like I should be saying a massive thanks to the Swedish Chamber for everything it’s done for me and my career and for me personally.”

For Tania, the award is as much about family as it is about professional achievement. Her father, an Indian doctor, came to Sweden as a junior doctor in the early 1970s, at a time when it was unusual to be Indian in Sweden. “Sweden received him with very warm, open arms,” she says. When the Chamber informed her about the award at a local Marylebone pub, the first number she dialled was his. “It makes him particularly proud,” she adds.

That blend of cultures is the starting point of Tania’s story. She was born in Sweden to an Indian father and British mother. Her father’s medical career then took the family from Sweden to Kuwait with a group of researchers from Lund University, and later to the UAE. “I went from a small school in Sweden to a school with 150 nationalities,” she recalls.

As a teenager she moved again, this time to the UK, where she finished school, studied law and, as she puts it with a smile, “got stuck” after meeting her British husband. Her legal career followed a traditional path in a famously competitive environment. “I applied for 47 training contracts and I received one,” she says. “I found out when I got the job that the reason why they had chosen me was because I was Swedish on my CV – so it helps.”

That single opportunity opened the door to leading international law firms such as Eversheds and later Trowers & Hamlins, where she became a partner. Yet the same curiosity and restlessness that had taken her across borders as a child eventually made her question the traditional law firm model itself.

Through the Swedish Chamber, which she already joined in 2009, Tania was exposed to a wide range of businesses, sectors and ideas. “I felt that I somehow outgrew the traditional model and I was becoming restless to try something new,” she explains. The result was TandonHildebrand, the firm she co-founded with Richard Hildebrand. At first glance, it looks like any other City practice. At its core, it is built on a radical principle: there are no billable hours.

“We don’t base fees on time,” Tania says. “In the UK that is the basis of every law firm. It drives the advice to clients, the financial budgeting, the behaviours, the hierarchy, the culture – it sits behind absolutely everything. And we don’t have that.”

If the Chamber helped inspire Tania’s entrepreneurial leap, it also deepened her connection to the Swedish–British business community. Her partnership with Richard was strengthened through their joint engagement. As a corporate lawyer and an employment lawyer, they saw a complementary way to serve Swedish businesses in the UK – and the Chamber became the platform where that offering came to life.

Joining the Chamber’s Board of Directors in 2016 was another turning point. “It was such a surprise and an incredible honour to be invited to join the board,” she recalls. “One of the highlights was being able to sit at the table with the sort of companies and calibre of professionals that I was able to.”

What has stayed with her most, however, is the character of the Chamber itself. “It is a supportive, warm and proud, constructive network,” she says. “People are there because they want to be there and they’re proud to be there.” From the inside, she has seen how a small team of 14 can deliver what many assume is the work of a much larger organisation. “If you ask people today, during the Christmas Luncheon, how many people work at the Chamber, they will probably say a hundred,” she notes, admiring the efficiency, professionalism, and energy that radiates from the team.

Over the years, the Chamber has become “a kind of extension” of Tania and her firm – a complementary driving force that connects people, ideas and markets across borders. Her long-standing commitment, from welcoming scholars to London to championing the community at every turn, is rooted not in strategy but instinct. “It’s all reciprocal and it’s relationship building,” she says. “It’s a mutual kind of give and take.”

That spirit of reciprocity lies at the heart of why Tania receives the Extraordinary Member Award 2025. Yet, in true Tania fashion, she insists the gratitude should flow in the other direction. “I always feel supported by the Chamber,” she says. “Almost this award that I’m getting is like you’ve beaten me to it, because it definitely is a two-way stream.”

Back in the Tower Suite at The Landmark, with the Skultuna award resting between us, that two-way stream feels almost tangible: one person, one firm, and one community that have grown together – and will continue to shape each other in the years to come.