Team size: Three

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

As part of my role in corporate affairs, last year our organization had to deal with the fact that the operation’s workforce was unionizing, amid a wave driven by the political crisis and social unrest in our country and specifically in the area of our railway operations: Cusco, which was -with other southern Peru´s cities- one of the most impacted. In such scenario, we designed a legal and corporate strategy to create an opportunity to rebuild a collaborative relationship with our workers and generate spaces to know their feelings, concerns, and requirements and deal with them through other ways than a union, which finally has allowed us to obtain a significant reduction in claims, complaints, and labour processes.

On the other hand, the team has been involved in reviewing pre-contractual and contractual documents, highlighting the main risks, and proposing mitigation clauses, that have allowed us to reduce legal and financial contingencies. Finally, we are strengthening our compliance structure, including corporate governance, to deliver on our sustainability strategy.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

Tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning will complement our daily work through the automation of repetitive tasks. In fact, we are implementing digital tools to automate the drafting and implementation of contracts as well as to manage responses to our consumers, allowing us to focus our efforts and talent on sensitive matters such as transactions, corporate compliance and dealing with government regulators. This scenario improves how our team process information, reducing costs and increasing productivity.

What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?

Our country, unfortunately, faces socially and politically complex situations from time to time. For example, the conflictive social scenario generated at the end of last year implied the suspension of our railway and tourist operations in terms like those of the pandemic. In this context and from our position, an important challenge is to address the claims of the communities around our operations and articulates the government’s efforts to boost economic development in the area. For this reason, our ESG management is a strategic pillar of our company.