About

Bernardita Saez began her career in Chile in 2002 as a corporate finance attorney for Carey & Cia, working in secured finance deals for the country’s urban highways. She then moved on to work in the boutique law firm Silva Lehuede Schultz y Lehuede, and then Cariola & Cia’s corporate mining team, before taking off to Singapore to study under New York University’s NYU@NUS program, in partnership with the National University of Singapore. There she and received a Masters in law and the global economy from NYU and a Masters in law from the National University of Singapore. She returned to Chile in 2009 joining Alessandri & Cia, with a focus on corporate finance law. In March 2011, she joined the Inter-American Development Bank’s sovereign guarantee department in Washington D.C., in the Andes and Caribbean team. At the IDB she worked with project teams in the design, approval, and implementation of development projects. She highlights that ‘this experience at the IDB, my first as in-house counsel, had a profound impact in my professional career, both from an intellectual and intra-personal standpoint. I learned first-hand the value of multicultural and multidisciplinary teams and the importance of understanding the business from the bottom up’. Saez decided to return to Chile in late 2015, first returning to Alessandri, and then in December 2017 she was offered the opportunity to lead the legal and external affairs department at British American Tobacco Chile, her current role. Since joining BAT Chile, she has overseen the implementation of a new anonymous whistleblowing platform for employees and third parties and updated and modernised the team’s model documents and implemented a new contract management system. On these developments Saez highlights that, ‘the implementation of the whistleblowing platform has deeply impacted our work. We feel a great responsibility in ensuring its effectiveness and fairness and understand the value that this tool can have on the institution as a whole. The platform has also allowed our department to gain insights into day-to-day issues, allowing us to strengthen protocols and procedures. It has been a very fulfilling experience and has challenged us to maintain objectivity and professionalism’.