About

Virgilio Diaz Mendoza is the regional general counsel of Siemens Mobility in Colombia since August 2018. As such, he is the head of legal for the Mobility organization in Colombia, Peru and Argentina. Until July 2018, he was senior legal counsel for Siemens in Colombia, general counsel for Venezuela and the regional lead lawyer for the Process Industries and Drives (PD), Digital Factory (DF) and Mobility (MO) divisions in South America, excluding Brazil. To this role he brings his experiences in the public sector working in Bogota’s court system and for the Bogota City District Department of Government, and teaching contract law as a guest professor at the National University of Colombia, which he continues to date. He identifies that this initial experience in the public sector is important to his development as an in-house corporate lawyer as it ‘allowed me to know the other side of the business and better understand the point of view of public entities, as well as their true interests or concerns when negotiating with the private sector. Also, this insight has been very important when structuring legal strategies and working on important infrastructure projects for Siemens’. His role as general counsel for Venezuela had an important impact on his work in Colombia by serving as a source of innovation and location of ‘recursive ways of doing legal work in Colombia’. Diaz plays a key role in Siemens’ investments in high profile infrastructure products and projects in Colombia of which he is incredibly proud. He has also been involved in some of the largest transactions and strategic planning of Siemens across the region in the Mobility infrastructure business. Indeed, he has achieved important cultural change within the business units of Siemens that he comes into contact with by increasing his commercial role and elevating the role of the company lawyer to that of a business partner able to tailor each legal transaction to the business needs of the company.