About

After three years in the position of legal director of Pfizer Brazil, Shirley Meschke Mendes Franklin de Oliveira was designated to perform additional roles of cluster legal lead position for Latin America and global product counsel of a very important rare disease product, the latter role she held for two years and the others are ongoing. Over the last 12 years, Meschke has led the legal department at Pfizer Brazil, and has from time to time worked on larger regional projects. She has considerable experience and expertise in corporate responsibility and governance, as well as all commercial and contractual matters. In the last three years she has implemented several changes to improve the legal department. In 2016, she implemented a model for continuous improvement and a system for anticipation and trend analysis. She launched a project to leverage efforts from the whole organisation to reduce exposure liability of current cases, the number and amount of future cases and to improve the overall odds of success. In 2018, she initiated a reassessment of the department’s structure and adjusted it in preparation of upcoming challenges including the selection of a new litigation management tool and a chat bot for legal and tax matters. She has also led on some major transactions including the acquisition and divestment of a generic company, the divestment of Animal Health and Devices businesses, the acquisition of a portfolio of anti-infective medicines, the acquisition of Hospira (an oncology and hospital business) and other products and licenses. Meschke has also spent considerable time working on pro-bono activities including refugee employment work, and attended a program in South Africa along with other Pfizer colleagues to work on Pfizer’s response and charity work involving the prevention and treatment of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases. Meschke described this time as a highlight of her career, ‘[it made me] break out of the comfort zone and leave routine activities behind; it taught me a lot about the reality of other markets and customers, and also about other cultures and Pfizer’s internal processes, most of which are usually unknown to us; this experience also helped me foster the engagement of people to projects that may change the healthcare reality in developing countries and, by so doing, have a significant impact on the life of people’.