Category: Interviews

Everything we do at Nestlé is rooted in our core values of respect: respect for people, respect for the planet, and respect for diversity and difference of thought. Nestlé has one of the most diverse consumer bases of any company, with activities in nearly 200 countries globally. There is no way to understand that consumer base if we do not embrace diversity in our operations, looking at things from different perspectives to get the best outcome possible.

When I joined the executive board in 2019 I was conscious of how seriously the company takes its commitments to D&I and was excited to propel the D&I programme forwards. While I see my role more as a supporting force to the broader company initiatives, there is still a lot that a GC can do to help drive change.

It starts with being purposeful with your own team, asking: Is it diverse enough? Are we building the right culture? Are we benefiting from diverse thought and approaches? How do we know? Are we actively identifying areas where we might be short? If so, how can we fill those, whether through external hiring or searching harder within the organisation?

The freedom to speak up

To get the best out of your people, you need to create an environment where they feel free to speak up. This underpins more than diversity and inclusion. Business methodologies from Lean to Six Sigma teach us that when teams are empowered to speak up, they improve performance; likewise, the ability, freedom and trust to speak up can enable strong safety and compliance cultures. A culture that supports D&I also supports innovation and idea generation and. allows you to examine a problem or opportunity from multiple perspectives and ultimately find the most robust answer.

For a legal function, having the freedom to speak up is doubly important. An environment where people feel comfortable to express what they feel is ethical or the right thing to do enables my team to act as a guardian of our core values more effectively. Targets and metrics are important ways to measure progress, but they are not the end goal. Creating a welcoming and open culture should be the first concern of any GC.

I am also a big believer in creating a working environment where everyone can bring their full self to work and perform at their best. Ultimately, strong performance and inclusive, collaborative behaviours are the most valued and valuable to a complex multinational organization.

Not-so-hidden talent

For female lawyers, the advice I commonly give is to just be yourself. Don’t try to fit in a mould. Build on your strengths and use those strengths to create a more inclusive environment. Christie Smith, the former vice president of inclusion and diversity at Apple once said the most important thing you can do to promote diversity is to say hello. That is a very powerful idea. That one simple gesture creates an environment that is more inclusive in an instant.

Even if you are not in a leadership position you can be a leader in everyday circumstances. For example, if you notice there are people who haven’t had a chance to speak, you can create space for them and encourage them to give their views. That way we can all be leaders in creating an inclusive environment.

Beyond that, I am proud to support Nestlé’s goal of having at least 30% women among its top 200 managers by 2022. That is an ambitious goal, but our approach has been to say, “We have almost 300,000 employees globally; with more women at the top, we reinforce our inclusive culture, make Nestlé an even better company and contribute to shaping an equal society. All of this helps drive our business performance.”

When the UK introduced a similar target for female representation on UK company boards, it was a success. I remember one board chair commenting that it’s amazing how many qualified candidates you can find once you look. That is often the case: the talent is there, you just need to change how you are looking for it.

To succeed

The biggest step you can make as in-house counsel is to get out from behind your desk – even if it’s a virtual tour. You need to visit operations, understand the business rationale, and see how things work on the ground. Whether you’re at a mine, at a retail gas station, or in a supermarket. That gives you a more holistic perspective and allows you to contribute more meaningfully, not only in a legal sense but in a broader commercial sense.

On an interpersonal level, it’s about asking yourself the right questions continuously: how you can help someone, how you can create space where people feel free to share their experiences and collaborate, or how you can share your knowledge and experience and open doors for people to progress their careers.

“This is what a lawyer looks like”

I have always been a strong believer in the value of engaging with communities directly. During my time as president of the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) I made community engagement my mission. HNBA representatives would go into schools in primarily black and brown communities wearing these t-shirts that had “This is what a lawyer looks like” printed on them and the kids would say, “Wait, you’re a lawyer?”. It was awesome to see that we could change their perceptions of what a lawyer looks like and make them realise they can do this job.

When I think back to my own experience of education and entry into law, I can see how useful that sort of awareness would have been. I am always very open about my experiences because I want people who find themselves in a similar situation to know these experiences are not incompatible with a successful career. I went to law school with a baby and graduated top of my class!

I was raised in a predominately Latino community where young women were not necessarily encouraged to pursue an education. I was the first person in my family to graduate high school. I married young and had my first baby when I was in college. I didn’t have any guidance on which college to apply to or any of the important questions students should take for granted: What do you want to pursue? Is this the right school? Is this the best school? Frankly, I based where I was going to study on its proximity to my boyfriend.

At college, and especially at law school, it was very, very lonely. I didn’t feel like I belonged. If you are from a background where higher education is not the norm you carry a kind of imposter syndrome around with you. Even now, after a successful 20-year career that sense of being an outsider occasionally lurks back in. Every so often I will hear a comment and think, “oh my gosh, maybe this was all just a lucky streak”. Rationally, I know that is not true, but it is something I know a lot of minorities have to deal with in the workplace, and it was certainly something I had to deal with in my early career. I was surrounded by people who did not look or sound like me, and who very likely did not have the same experiences as me.

I was a Hispanic woman, married with a kid; I just didn’t fit the mould of a successful lawyer. At law school, I was counselled by the career service team not to mention that I had a child when applying for jobs. I had to pretend to be someone I was not, and went through the first few years of my practice as a lawyer almost as two separate people living parallel lives. But I’m not someone who ever backs down. I used negative comments and prejudices to fuel me. Besides, as a young mother there was more at stake than just myself. The ability to fail was not n option.

More than a ‘diversity hire’

Majority communities can have a hard time understanding the sense of isolation or otherness that comes with being a minority in the workplace. Any complaints are seen as an attack on affirmative action programmes and minority-inclusive hiring practices. This is missing the point. As diverse candidate you naturally approach an interview thinking, “Am I here as a potential diversity hire? Does the company want me because of all the things I’ve done, or does it want me because I am a woman, and especially a woman of colour?” This is not a case of being paranoid, ot is just reporting the facts.  As any minority will know, people actually do say these things.

A few years ago, I was at a dinner with a law firm and we got to talking about a particular judge who was African American. One of the partners dismissed this judge’s experience on the grounds that he was, “an affirmative action hire”. He was discussing a federal judge who went to a phenomenal school, yet felt comfortable using that language.

A couple of years later we had a partnership retreat that included a D&I component. When it came to questions from the audience, I stood up and told this story. The lawyer who had made those comments was in the audience and knew exactly what I was talking about. I wasn’t going to publicly name and shame him, but it was my way of demonstrating the point that someone will sit through a discussion of D&I without being aware of this hypocrisy, or of how outrageous and damaging these beliefs are. This sort of prejudice in the legal profession is far more widespread that is commonly acknowledged.

Leading by example

If you want to judge whether a company is truly diverse, look at the makeup of its wider management. Don’t just look at the diversity and inclusion committee, which is where you tend to find diverse people – look at who the decision-makers are and whether they are diverse. Then ask, what does that company consider a diverse team looks like? Is it just having a woman on the board, or is it a real mix of people who have got there because the company is prepared to promote talent wherever it sees it?

In that sense, it is incredibly refreshing to work at a global company like Lenovo, where I deal with a diverse set of people from all over the world. We have a CEO who is compassionate and passionate about all issues that concern underrepresented or disadvantaged people. At the start of the pandemic, he put his own personal money and effort into sending laptops to poor communities throughout China, with a personal letter from him to the recipients.

When Black Lives Matter took off, we held some really honest townhall meetings to discuss how staff felt about the movement and what more could be done to improve the workplace. We held roundtable discussions where people were free to ask bold questions about how we were going to deal with the issues BLM raised, or to make sure that all our people felt included. Not only that, but the company matches our financial contributions to social causes one to five, which made a big difference.

That commitment to D&I bleeds through everything at Lenovo. I don’t feel like my gender or my ethnicity has any bearing on how people approach me as a lawyer. Corporations are doing so much better with diversity and inclusion than law firms in the US. Law firms could really learn a lot from their clients.

The 0.2%

Of course, counsel we can say that law firms need to change until they’re blue in the face. Let’s focus on actions rather than words. In a role where you are looking at candidates, dealing with vendors, or spending money, you have the power to effect the kind of change you are preaching. Leaders in any senior-level executive position have the power to move the dial, and there is a duty to be very intentional when it comes to diversity.

I am proud to say that my entire team is diverse. I require all my outside counsel to have a diverse team. We request biannual reports giving the various demographics within the team, and more importantly we check what role each lawyer will play on a particular piece of work. Diverse talent needs to have an actual, critical, material role in the work, it can’t just be somebody who is there for optics.

One thing that I absolutely know for sure is that until we can give equal access to underrepresented communities, and particularly to black and brown communities, we are going to find ourselves dealing with these issues in the law continuously.

The legal profession remains of the least diverse professions in the US. Just 5% of lawyers are of Hispanic heritage, even though such people make up about 18% of the population. In the IP space it is even worse. Latinas make up less than 0.2% of IP lawyers. Just think about that number for a second. A community makes up about 18% of the US population accounts for less than 0.2% of IP lawyers.  That level of disparity is not something that will change without intentional efforts on the part of GCs and senior counsel.

Of course, we need to think about what constitutes “diversity”, that diversity programmes are truly inclusive and not alienating any group. I have thought about this many times. Should we make diversity an economic issue, for example? Communities of colour are disproportionately poorer, but many other groups face socio-economic exclusion. The reality is this: white privilege is still white privilege. We need to address the disadvantages inherent to being a person of colour in the United States before we can look at bigger issues.

It is also a problem we can solve. Black and brown communities are abysmally underrepresented in the legal profession. As GCs we may not be able to change everything, but we can change that.

For GCs, the very first question you need to ask yourself is how much of a diverse and inclusive mindset you have as a leader. Only then can you successfully analyse how diverse and inclusive your current team is, both with respect to hard numbers but also in terms of its culture.

Luckily, I work for a company that is perhaps one of the most diverse in the world. This helps tremendously when looking at the composition of teams, but most importantly at the culture of the organization.

Diversity and Inclusion brings more value than most people think. Companies with successful D&I cultures grow faster, stronger and more sustainably. D&I attracts the best talent, it provides a much stronger management base that takes into account a more robust view of business, society, customers and consumers, and it allows you to contribute to positive change in society.  At the end of the day, we are here to leave a better place for the next generation. Embracing diversity and being inclusive will certainly contribute to that.

Deploying D&I policies on a global scale is one of the biggest challenges for any type of global corporation, particularly one with a footprint like Unilever’s. We have to understand that a diversity and inclusion agenda means respecting different cultures in different parts of the world. It is hard to come up with a rigid approach to certain metrics that may have varying degrees of relevancy in different parts of the world. You have to really understand and cater for that, because the main reason for having a diversity and inclusion agenda is to make sure that every individual in the company has the exact same opportunity to succeed as anyone else. To do that, you need to cater for realities and cultures in different places.

From my perspective, values rest on universal principles that should apply everywhere, like treating everyone in the organization with respect, providing equal opportunities no matter the gender, race, age, religion, sexual orientation or any personal beliefs.  Living and breathing these values makes us richer, stronger, and more united in every corner of our organization.

While it could be challenging to drive consistent metrics across regions with their own cultural characteristics and idiosyncrasies, I think the best way to reconcile that tension is to ensure that values are never compromised, no matter the circumstances.  That to me is a must and reflects the culture of your organization.

Better business in the digital sphere

As head of Unilever’s legal team overseeing data privacy and digital, I frequently find myself balancing the value of certain data related propositions with the complexity and cost required to execute them in a legally compliant manner.  It always comes down to finding that reasonable balance. What I have found helpful is to start our assessments by asking the question ‘what is the purpose of collecting personal data, in this case related to diversity and inclusion?’ This data point will lead to other relevant questions about proportionality and transparency but understanding the purpose works an effective gate and it’s definitely a strong start.

Most large organization have stats and metrics to measure their diversity and inclusion efforts, but few people realize how complicated and sensitive it is to process such information. When it comes to diversity and inclusion, most personal data is considered sensitive personal information, and for a good reason. The potential harm to the individual is heightened compared to other types of personal data, and as such organizations need to think very carefully about how such data is collected, used, and protected. The stakes are high.

From a data privacy perspective, the rules governing what sort of data organizations are permitted to hold will only get tighter. The entire ecosystem, from individuals to regulators and lawmakers, is taking more interest in use and misuse of personal data. That means we need to be ahead of the game and think through how and why we collect information. But there is an even more important question to be considered. The question of ethics.

Transitioning from what is legally required to what is ethically expected is a challenging but powerful journey that I think all players in this space should consider. It’s not only the right thing to do but also what most stakeholders would expect in these times. .

Ultimately, we want to be compliant with data protection laws while helping advance our D&I agenda, do the right thing for our employees, for the company, and for the whole ecosystem of partners, suppliers, customers, and consumers. I want to make sure that any information we collect is strictly necessary to achieve the ultimate purpose of advancing our D&I agenda and do something that is aligned with our corporate values and high ethical standards, while protecting individual privacy rights.

I think data and digital professionals will continue to face the challenge of finding the right balance between supporting legitimate business initiatives and remaining in compliance with the spectrum of regulations on a country-by-country basis – including sometimes outdated regulations.

Unilever is one of the leaders in the brand safety movement, which concerns itself with ensuring that our brands are presented to consumers in safe environments and of course a key part of this effort is holding media outlets and agencies accountable for that. It’s not as simple as it sounds though,  mainly because the digital space is formed of so many different players that it has become a complex, non-linear ecosystem. However, I believe that  all players but in particular the most influential ones have a degree of social responsibility to improve the digital ecosystem in the interest of millions of viewers who consume media and as a consequence advertising.

I have the privilege to serve as a board member of the Better Business Bureau National Programs Inc, a globally recognized organization that fosters consumer trust in advertising which is the reference point in the United States with regards to self-regulation and many other globally relevant programs. The BBB National Programs is a great example of an organization that really has the consumer interests at its heart. It truly stands for transparency and fairness in advertising. As such there is very much similarity in values between Unilever and the BBB National Programs and that’s why I accepted the board role without hesitation.

It has been a great experience being part of BBB NP’s board, it has given me an invaluable platform from which I can contribute my experience and passion for certain topics and perhaps shape in some way or form the strategic agenda of the organization. It has also given me an external perspective of the market place, consumers, and companies in many different industries. As GC, I have learned that having an external perspective of the world and the industry where your company operates is an invaluable enabler of a diverse vision. It also energizes me to continue to drive positive change.