About

Valéria Camacho Martins Schmitke has 18 years of experience as a local general counsel starting in 2000 at Real Previdência e Seguros (ABN Amro Bank in Brazil). Afterwards, she moved to Metropolitan Life Seguros e Previdência Privada (MetLife Brazil). In 2008 she joined Zurich Brazil and stayed in the position of local general counsel until 2017 when she assumed the role of regional general counsel of Latin America. In this role she has been responsible for all legal matters across the region, as well as many distribution agreements, acquisitions of companies and other major projects. As this is her first regional position, Schmitke said she is ‘learning about being a regional general counsel, which has been a pleasant journey. In addition, working for US, Dutch, Swiss and Brazilian companies gave a broad view of styles and easy adaptation’. Her approach to management is to foster the development of in-house counsel as ‘risk takers and managers of the legal risk of the company. In-house lawyers are executives within the company and do not simply give legal opinion and leave the decision to the business’. She adds that she has ‘always changed the style of the legal department to be business oriented without losing sight of protection to the company and its stakeholders’.