About

Erica Barbagalo leads the legal department at Monsanto, a large international pharmaceutical company and has overseen its transition following the acquisition by Bayer. During this process Barbagalo worked closely with the business leadership, and had an important role in the approval process before the competition authorities, with a strategic role in the negotiation for the agreement with the authority in Brazil, and overseeing the process in other regions. In addition to her work on the Bayer merger, Barbagalo has been involved in important IP cases related to biotechnology, and, in some cases, to plant variety protection, involving the defence of intellectual property rights in Brazil, and the ability to exercise such rights. She has also restructured the South America legal department to integrate two independent law departments, Brazil and LAS (Latin America South, composed of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay), establishing the governance of these combined teams so that the legal department keeps its role as strategic business partner. Highlighting her achievements in her position as South America Law lead, Barbagalo says it ‘has challenged my leadership skills, my ability to influence peers, other stakeholders, and mainly the people management skills, to deal with the integration of two separate and independent legal departments from two large regions, structuring them to work as one team, up to the expectation of the business, and maintaining a high performance team with the highest engagement levels’.