What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Hyatt’s portfolio includes more than 1,300 hotels and all-inclusive properties in 77 countries across six continents, including one of the largest portfolios of luxury all-inclusive resorts in the world.  Over the past year, as legal team we’ve achieved significant milestones by pursuing new key acquisitions, taking the lead in negotiating new all inclusive- management agreements, active participation adding new properties to Hyatt’s managed portfolio, and supporting Hyatt’s strategic brands expansion in key complementary geographies and new markets in Mexico, Caribbean, South America, and Europe.  Furthermore, we have been on a swift and exciting business coordination path with our different business units, breaking down silos, ensuring success in key contract negotiations, continued review of compliance functions and maintaining and executing a significant global development pipeline.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?   

An innovation that has improved my legal team’s work, is to simply make them start thinking outside the box, being creative in every task. And doesn’t have to be rocket science. I have learned that by involving diverse perspectives from different backgrounds, cultures, disciplines, and experiences, it will help to generate more ideas, challenge assumptions, and find new solutions. Now, to efficiently obtain this brainstorming, we use an effective and unexpensive online tool such as Teams and/or physical tools like whiteboards or sticky notes to share information, visualise and discuss ideas.   By doing that, we have been able to enhance every process and get better results.   In addition, over the last year, we focused on boosting professional productivity through AI, for such purposes we had relevant discussions about the responsible usage of AI, being able to explore new ways to streamline task and enhance efficiency, for instance create stunning power point visuals, transforming complex data into visually compelling presentations.

Finally, we have been pulling agile training, expanding agile themes through department activities, meetings, and reporting.

What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?

Empower the voices of the legal team of Latinos at Hyatt and proactively develop this talent. As a Latino, and working for a global hospitality company, I am deeply committed to championing Latinos, to cultivate the best people and encourage them to get the best from themselves to overcome any obstacles, as we navigate these unprecedented times. At Hyatt we have solid values and share a commitment to care for people so they can be their best.