Could you tell us a bit about your significant successes in your role?

When I joined Medtronic over six years ago, a new company was incorporated. This company was an integrated health solution company that provided services that could include our own medical devices, as well as competitors, allowing the integration of a sole service for both public and private health institutions. The legal infrastructure was created under the legal team’s counsel, who studied different possible corporate structure scenarios to avoid antitrust practices, and provided corporate firewalls to keep confidential information, competitors’ prices, and business models protected.

About three years ago, I worked on a big project known as “Grupo Angeles minimal invasive integrated services” to be rendered by Medtronic in 25 hospitals within Mexico. This agreement needed to be closed prior to the last day of December 2019, so negotiations were tough. The main challenges were terms and conditions regarding prices, services, and exclusivity. This was envisioned as a millionaire business for Medtronic, considering Grupo Angeles is one of the most prestigious Private Health Institutions in Mexico. Negotiations closed on December 31st and the 5-year agreement was signed in February 2020. Since then, Minimal Invasive Services are provided by Medtronic in all 25 Grupo Angeles’ hospitals within Mexico. The legal department works daily with the business on this project, developing better ways to work to render a first-class service.

Privacy by Design, one of my current projects, started when I was appointed as leader for the Privacy COE for Latin America, the decision was to start, together with an expert team, constructing a program for Mexico; after identifying all processes around operating units and functional areas, the auditing process started, and actionable items were delivered to each unit and function. Now, they know what their role is and how they need to process all personal data. It has been stimulating, and now a change is visible. Privacy is a live matter so I will continue working locally and with the COE team, looking to replicate this project in all Latin American countries, where the goal is to localise the program to their specific legislation creating a Latin American Privacy by Design Program.

As a legal function, contracts are part of our daily work so, the ability to manage and keep track of requests is crucial. Therefore, I worked on an optimisation contract tool, which allows internal clients to request contracts and also follow up on their requests. “Legal mas Cerca” (as we named the tool) also provides statistics of service levels such as the number of days it takes to draft, negotiate, and execute a contract. To this date the Mexican Legal department is the best rated legal team in Latin America.