About

Leticia G. Lizardo started her career as a public defender in criminal cases in Honduras, continuing as a human rights lawyer in Washington DC, then as a trade lawyer in Geneva and Brussels. In Brussels she started to increasingly focus on product compliance, life sciences regulatory and WTO trade dispute settlement cases. During her time in private practice, she advised some of the top global 500 corporations in relation to food, food contact materials, chemicals, cosmetics and medicines and medical devices, looking specifically at how to make products compliant with EU legal requirements and ensuring their free circulation within the EU. Lizardo’s first in-house role was with Aperam, the former stainless steel business of Arcelor Mittal. After four years there, she took the challenge to create the legal and compliance department of the SaarGummi Group, a Tier 1 supplier of rubber components in the automotive sector. ‘The experience gained in Aperam’s legal department laid the foundation for my current role, which entailed setting up the legal department of an automotive supplier present in 12 countries and with 7,500 employees worldwide’, says Lizardo. Taking on this role, Lizardo had to develop the function from scratch, making her responsible for mapping out all the legal needs of the company, as well as centralising and creating new processes in order to integrate in-house legal advice in the company’s workflow. ‘This involved, of course, starting from the basics: understanding the business, talking to the main stakeholders, carrying out risk assessments and prioritising action items based on the resources made available’, explains Lizardo. Since then, she has worked on putting new policies in place, devising a multi-annual plan and setting up a legal risk mitigation system, factors that have had a significant positive impact on the group’s overall legal-related expenses. Praised by her peers, one nominator states: ‘She is innovative, creative and she is always focused on making the company’s business possible, providing safe alternatives and not only pointing out risks. She is daily providing a business working model that impresses other corporate counsel’.